20 years of YouTube - from garage start-up to global media phenomenon

YouTube went online on February 14, 2005. Planned as a video dating platform, this date seemed ideal to the three founders. However, they soon realized that cat and vacation videos were more popular with users. So the initial concept was quickly scrapped.

YouTube, the platform that has revolutionized the way we consume and share videos, looks back on an eventful history. What began as a small start-up in a garage has developed into a global media phenomenon that connects billions of users worldwide.

YouTube was founded on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. The original concept was for a video dating platform, but this was scrapped after just a few days when it was realized that the few users of the platform at the time tended to share cat videos. This gave rise to the idea of creating a way to share videos online and simplify the search for video content. Karim, who was born in Merseburg, had difficulties finding videos of important events such as the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 or the “Nipplegate” scandal at Super Bowl XXXVIII.

The first public video on YouTube, entitled “Me at the zoo”, was uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005. The 18-second clip shows Karim at the San Diego Zoo, where he comments on the elephants' long trunks. This simple video marked the beginning of a new era in online video culture and has garnered millions of views to date.

YouTube developed rapidly and attracted the attention of investors early on. By 2006, the young company had raised almost 11 million US dollars in investor funds.

YouTube quickly became known not only in the Internet community: The advertising industry also quickly discovered the platform for itself. In November 2005, a commercial featuring Ronaldinho from Nike was the first video to break the one million views barrier. This heralded the age of viral videos. At that time, Google still had its own video service, which was overshadowed by YouTube. Google probably realized quite early on that it would not be able to compete with this rival in the young online video market.

In October 2006, just over a year after it was founded, the platform was acquired by Google for 1.65 billion US dollars. The takeover was probably more of a strategic move by Google to strengthen its position in the online video market. In return, the three YouTube founders received Google shares worth around 735 million US dollars at the time (today's value is around 1.65 billion US dollars).

Under Google's leadership, YouTube experienced further strong growth and became an integral part of the online world. Google invested in YouTube's infrastructure and technology to optimize the platform for the increasing number of users and videos. An important milestone was the introduction of the Partner Program in 2007, which enabled video creators to earn money from their content. The Partner Program was a key factor in YouTube's success, as it encouraged the creation of high-quality content and made the platform attractive to professional content creators. It contributed significantly to the emergence of the “YouTuber” profession and had a lasting impact on the platform's content landscape.

YouTube also expanded into new areas . In 2011, YouTube Live was launched, which enabled live streaming of events and content. This was followed in 2015 by YouTube Red (later YouTube Premium), a paid subscription service that offered ad-free streaming, offline playback and exclusive content. In the same year, the first Notebookcheck videos also appeared on YouTube.

Today, the most clicked videos on YouTube include “Baby Shark Dance” by Pinkfong! Kids' Songs & Stories with over 15 billion views, “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee and “Johny Johny Yes Papa” by LooLoo Kids. YouTube has become one of the most successful video-on-demand platforms in the world. Individual YouTube stars such as Mr. Beast have been able to earn millions through their channels.

Source: https://www.notebookcheck.com/20-Ja...up-zum-globalen-Medienphaenomen.961298.0.html

 

I remember YT really early on when I tipped some of my friends about it and they thought it was all about some family home videos... What's all this fuss about?

 

Me at the zoo was uploaded to the YouTube video platform on April 23, 2005 as the first video that is still publicly viewable today. Videos had already been published on the video platform beforehand for test purposes, but these were never available to the public.

In the 19-second video, one of the founders of YouTube, Jawed Karim, can be seen in front of an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo while saying: “Alright, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that's, that's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to say.” “So here we are in front of the elephants.

The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks, and that's... that's cool. And that's pretty much all you can say about it" The video has now (a of February 2025) been viewed over 348 million times and received 17 million “likes”.

 

Thanks to YouTube we now have such cool words as "unalive" and "self-delete". I'm sure there will be more of the cool YouTube-speak to come. That's while they still allow words to be spoken.

 

My favorite YouTuber has four channels, and his videos have no intro graphics, bumper music, nor any of that other blabla. He doesn't hawk merch, tell people to subscribe and "smash that like button," nor waste any time in getting into the subjects of his videos. The only "bling" about his videos, which are simply-edited, is amusing "thumbnail" image graphics, which aren't on every channel. It's ironic how YouTubers have emulated the legacy-media conventions of entertainment and talk shows that I'd always found annoying. Videos without them seem so refreshing, and keep me coming back.

 

Unfortunately, the monetization of everything did not stop at YouTube and YouTube managed to generate money for artists but on the other hand made life difficult for us with advertising...! I would be willing to pay a small amount for a YouTube without advertising.

 

Yeah...
It's a pity s/he doesn't have any subscribers

 

My YouTube channel also has no advertising and everything is free. www.youtube.com/user/FutureNoise1

 

What started out as a no nonsense video upload, sharing and searching approach become a non searchable video sharing site.

1. Way too many "Pro" channels with the cinematic "blur the crap out of my background" taking over smaller channels with the actual content you searched for
2. See number 1
3. See number 2

It takes going through about 20 channels or more now to get a channel with some random dude with a $50 webcam where you are at peace watching what you actually searched for.

What I hate about Youtube now is they have allowed these way too cinematic, video editing and fx eye candy channels to take over the searches as millions of fools don't have a 30 second attention span so they latch on these silly channels.

My eyes and my mind simply have not time to watch any more "Cinematic" BS channels on youtube where people are using Movie industry setups to show a $10 adapter.

I asked a music keyboard channel why they recorded their voice isolated "proximity effect" ADR ( since his vocal was way out of sync with the video) and then showed the video without the Mic and without any keyboard keystroke noises so I asked why he was overdubbing everything?

Response from the person : I have NT overhead mics so they make my voice sound up close and my keyboard is silent....

My response : So you have solved one of Music Studios greatest problems Microphones actually go over the singers head not in front of them and you have worlds first NO NOISE keyboard.....................No response back from this scammer.

My Youtube channel only shows REAL TIME recordings there are no overdubs of anything, voice is recorded on wireless mic adjust to video sync, and barely any video cuts, zoom cuts are only used to show close shots of hardware and they are a longer cross fade so the eyes of the people watching don't go bananas. Zoom cuts are hard on the eyes due to pupil having to adjust too quickly so use a longer cross fade to help the eye adjust.

 

Last edited: Feb 15, 2025 at 3:34 PM

I need the Link to Your Channel?

 

Isn't that exactly what youtube red is?

There are multiple solutions available for using youtube without ever seeing their overlay adverts and even extensions that skip creator-embedded content within the videos.

Have I misunderstood your post?

 

I don't know what YouTube Red is and how to get rid of the ads other than using an Albanian VPN, help with some ideas. No, it was just about 20 years of YouTube, it's clear that people don't find what YouTube does so wonderful today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/@danfuerthgillis4483

This is an esoteric channel (no monetary purposes)

Videos from nonsense,useless and hilarious information
Videos of some hardware stuff
Some music crap in there
Some eccentric stuff ( too hard to understand for the masses)
Some Vacation videos showing Nature, no humans ruining the shot.
Some Road bike ( Bicycle) related videos ( hardware and other misc stuff)
Misc stuff

Okay grab a beer and go through the videos, just make sure the case of beer is full when you enter the rabbit hole.......

 

Last edited: Feb 16, 2025 at 8:16 PM

Thank you @Dan Fuerth for the link and the explanation.
Big praise for the rescue of Private Sparow!