The first Youtube video went live April 23, 2005. Titled “Me at the zoo,” it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. You can still view it on the site. The same day, Youtube launched a public beta. The domain had been live since February 15, 2005. This was the humble beginning of something that changed how we watch television and how content is created and delivered.
Where the idea for Youtube came from
A common story is that Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they wanted to share videos they had taken at a dinner party at Chen’s apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred. While neither confirming nor denying the story, Chen called it very digestible marketing.
There are conflicting stories about where the idea actually came from.
Karim said the inspiration for YouTube came from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. The controversy happened when Justin Timberlake briefly exposed Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime show. Karim could not easily find video clips of either online, which gave him the idea for a video-sharing site.
Hurley and Chen said their original idea was a video version of an online dating service influenced by the website Hot or Not. They posted on Craigslist offering attractive women $100 to upload videos of themselves to YouTube. When they couldn’t find enough dating videos, they decided to accept uploads of any video.
The first Youtube video reflected this.
What the first Youtube video led to
Regardless of how it happened, Youtube became the place where anyone could share their homemade video content. Although much of the early content was pirated, eventually many rightsholders realized there was money to be made and uploaded legitimate copies of their content, opening a way to monetize content that had languished for decades in much the same way the VCR did in the 1980s. But homemade content also flourished. There are only so many videos you can make about, say, hitting yourself with a fastball at close range. But it wasn’t terribly long before independent content creators found ways to make video that would get an audience, and to make a living doing so.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.