Almost all of us use YouTube most of the time. But, did you know when was YouTube founded? Let’s find out!
YouTube is a popular video streaming platform used by millions of users worldwide. We spend numerous quality hours on the platform watching our favorite videos. Have you ever thought about when was YouTube founded? Aren’t you interested to find out about the history of the forever trending platform? This article will help you know everything about YouTube’s history and founding.
History of YouTube – Going back to 2005
YouTube was founded in the year 2005 in California, United States. So, who founded it? PayPal’s employees Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen registered the platform in February 2005. They intended to let normal people share videos of their homes and regular routines. The beta version of YouTube was opened in May 2005. During that time, the video streaming site had about 30,000 visitors each day.
The official launch of YouTube happened in December 2005. The platform was getting video views of more than 2 million by December. In January, the video views increased to over 25 million. Very soon, YouTube developed to a great extent and by 2006, it had over 100 million video uploads each day. Since then, the number never dropped down.
The increased rate of video uploads and copyright issues forced YouTube to purchase more financial resources to keep the platform alive. This resulted in YouTube searching for a potential buyer. Google came to the rescue.
Google initially launched its video streaming service in 2005, called Google Video. But, the platform was a failure as it didn’t generate much traffic or traction. So, Google came in front to buy YouTube. It bought YouTube in the year 2006 for about $1.65 billion in stock.
What was the first video uploaded on YouTube?
The first-ever YouTube video was uploaded in the year 2005 on April 23rd. Jawed Karim, the co-founder of YouTube uploaded the very first video at 3:27:12 – titled ‘Me at the zoo.’ The video now has 224 million views.
Today, more than 5 billion videos are watched by users every day on YouTube. There are more than 23 million YouTube channels.
How much profit does YouTube make?
YouTube runs throughout the year with no breaks in video uploads or video streaming. The exceptional performance of YouTube is always wondered about by all. The video streaming platform made more than 15 million US dollars before Google bought it.
Today, YouTube gets about 45% of the overall earnings from a YouTube channel. As there are over 23 million YouTube channels, imagine how much profits YouTube can make in a day!!!
Yes, we are just awestruck as you. YouTube also earns through monthly subscription services.
The best thing about YouTube is the platform does not make profits for itself, but also allows creators to make profits. People who have their own YouTube channels can make a great number of profits by increasing their video views. When a creator posts quality content and has a high number of followers and subscribers, the ad views for the channel also increase. Ad views will help the creators earn money.
Not just ad views, YouTube creators can earn money through various ways such as sponsorship, affiliate marketing, merchandise, etc. So, YouTube is beneficial to both creators and regular users who just use the platform to stream videos posted by others. It offers entertainment and education to users by giving them the video they want to watch. If you have a channel and you want to make it big, you can buy YouTube views.
Interesting facts about YouTube
- YouTube was founded in 2005. But, the ads started appearing on YouTube only in 2007. The first YouTube ad appeared in August 2007. This is approximately 9 months after the video streaming platform was purchased by Google.
- YouTube is owned by Google. Yes, you heard that right! Earlier, we saw how YouTube was bought by Google. Today, YouTube is still owned by Google.
- YouTube has numerous localized versions of it in different countries. Citizens in different countries get unique recommendations and YouTube features. The domain also varies from place to place. Countries such as France, the US, Brazil, the UK, Japan, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, and Spain have their own YouTube sites. Today, there are more than 98 YouTube versions in the world.
- Many countries censored YouTube at different points in time. Though some countries have uncensored YouTube versions, many countries have censored YouTube and blocked the access due to several reasons.
- YouTube is a brand worth more than $100 billion today! Woah! That’s huge!
- YouTube is overtaking traditional cable TV in many countries. In the US, YouTube has a better reach to people of all age groups compared to cable TV. The time that people spend on TV is slowly declining, thanks to YouTube’s diverse content availability in a single spot.
- Did you know what was the first-ever YouTube video to have gained 1 million views? Soccer player Ronaldinho’s tricks video was the first YouTube video to gain 1 million views in 2005. The video was produced by Nike.
- The first video to hit 1 billion views was the ‘Gangnam Style’ video. The video went viral upon its release and reached more than 1 billion views.
You have now got the answer to when was YouTube founded. The facts and history of YouTube are sure as interesting as the videos offered by the platform.