YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, founded by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
YouTube allows users to upload videos, view them, rate them with likes and dislikes, share them, add videos to playlists, report, make comments on videos, and subscribe to other users. The slogan "Broadcast Yourself" used for several years and the reference to user profiles as "Channels" signifies the premise upon which the platform is based, of allowing anyone to operate a personal broadcasting station in resemblance to television with the extension of video on demand.
As such, the platform offers a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. Available content includes video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers, live streams, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.
, there were more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each minute, and one billion hours of content being watched on YouTube every day. , YouTube is the second-most popular website in the world, behind Google, according to Alexa Internet. , more than 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Based on reported quarterly advertising revenue, YouTube is estimated to have in annual revenues.
YouTube has faced criticism over aspects of its operations, including its handling of copyrighted content contained within uploaded videos, its recommendation algorithms perpetuating videos that promote conspiracy theories and falsehoods, hosting videos ostensibly targeting children but containing violent or sexually suggestive content involving popular characters, videos of minors attracting pedophilic activities in their comment sections, and fluctuating policies on the types of content that is eligible to be monetized with advertising.
Founding (2005)
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, when they worked for PayPal. Prior to working for PayPal, Hurley studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. YouTube's initial headquarters was above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.
The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 14, 2005, with an open beta on April 23, 2005, with the slogan "Tune In, Hook Up" ─ the original idea of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The concept was an online dating service that ultimately failed but had an exceptional video and uploading platform. After the infamous Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson Halftime show incident, they found it difficult to find any videos of it on the internet. After noticing that a video sharing platform did not exist, they dropped the dating aspect of the site. The idea of the new company was for non-computer experts to be able to use a simple interface that allowed the user to publish, upload and view streaming videos through standard web browsers and modern internet speeds. Ultimately, creating an easy-to-use video streaming platform that wouldn't stress out the new internet users of the mid-2000s. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and currently has over 355 million views and 17 million likes. Hurley was behind the look of the website, creating the logo.Owings, L. (2017). YouTube. Checkerboard Library. Chen made sure the page actually worked and that there would be no issues with the uploading and playback process. Karim was a programmer and helped in making sure the initial website was put together properly and helped in both design and programming.
As of June 2005, YouTube's slogan was "Your Digital Video Repository".
YouTube began as an angel-funded enterprise working from a makeshift office in a garage. In November 2005, venture firm Sequoia Capital invested an initial $3.5 million, and Roelof Botha (a partner of the firm and former CFO of PayPal) joined the YouTube board of directors. In April 2006, Sequoia and Artis Capital Management invested an additional $8 million in the company, which had experienced significant growth in its first few months.
As of December 2005, the number of commenters' videos, favourites, and friends was directly indicated in the comment section, as well as a video's backlinks, comment counts in suggested videos, and rating indicator in video listings search results and channel pages. The site slogan was "Broadcast yourself. Watch and share your videos worldwide!", which would later become just "Broadcast yourself". Later, while some of these indicators were removed, the watch page displayed playlists linking back to a video as of 2007, like SoundCloud does as of 2022.
Growth, purchase by Google, and Person of the Year (2006) After opening on a beta service in April 2005, YouTube.com was trafficking around 30,000 viewers a day within just a few months of launch. After launching eight months later they would be hosting well over two million viewers a day on the website. By March 2006 the site had more than 25 million videos uploaded and was generating around 20,000 uploads a day. During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing sites on the World Wide Web,"YouTube is the Fastest Growing Website", Gavin O'malley, Advertising Age, July 21, 2006. hosting more than 65,000 new video uploads. The site delivered an average of 100 million video views per day in July. However, this did not come without any problems, the rapid growth in users meant YouTube had to keep up with it technologically speaking. They needed new equipment and wider broadband internet connection to serve an ever growing audience. The increasing copyright infringement problems and lack in commercializing YouTube eventually led to outsourcing to Google who later failed in their own video platform "Google Video". It was ranked the fifth-most-popular website on Alexa, far out-pacing even MySpace's rate of growth. The website averaged nearly 20 million visitors per month according to Nielsen/NetRatings, with around 44% female and 56% male visitors. The 12- to 17-year-old age group was dominant. YouTube's pre-eminence in the online market was substantial. According to the website Hitwise.com, YouTube commanded up to 64% of the UK online video market.
YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC in June 2006.
The first targeted advertising on the site came in February 2006 in the form of participatory video ads, which were videos in their own right that offered users the opportunity to view exclusive content by clicking on the ad. The first such ad was for the Fox show Prison Break and solely appeared above videos on Paris Hilton's channel. At the time, the channel was operated by Warner Bros. Records and was cited as the first brand channel on the platform. Participatory video ads were designed to link specific promotions to specific channels rather than advertising on the entire platform at once. When the ads were introduced, in August 2006, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley rejected the idea of expanding into areas of advertising seen as less user-friendly at the time, saying, "we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no." However, YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.
On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock, which was completed on November 13. At that time it was Google's second-largest acquisition. This kickstarted YouTube's rise to becoming a global media dominator, creating a multi-billion-dollar business that has surpassed most television stations and other media markets, sparking success for many YouTubers. Indeed, YouTube as an entity generated more than twice the amount of revenues in 2018 than any major TV network (with $15 billion compared to NBC's $7 billion). The agreement between Google and YouTube came after YouTube presented three agreements with media companies in an attempt to avoid copyright-infringement lawsuits. YouTube planned to continue operating independently, with its co-founders and 68 employees working within Google. Viral videos were the main factor for YouTube's growth in the beginning of its early days with Google, for example Evolution of Dance, Charlie Bit My Finger, David After the Dentist, and more viral videos.
Google's February 7, 2007, SEC filing revealed the breakdown of profits for YouTube's investors after the sale to Google. In 2010, Chad Hurley's profit was more than $395 million while Steve Chen's profit was more than $326 million.
In 2006, Time magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large mirror as its annual "Time Person of the Year". It cited user-created media such as that posted on YouTube and featured the site's originators along with several content creators. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times also reviewed posted content on YouTube in 2006, with particular regard to its effects on corporate communications and recruitment. PC World magazine named YouTube the ninth of its Top 10 Best Products of 2006. In 2007, both Sports Illustrated and Dime Magazine featured positive reviews of a basketball highlight video titled, The Ultimate Pistol Pete Maravich MIX.
Continued growth and functionality (2007–2013)
It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.
YouTube's early website layout featured a pane of currently watched videos, as well as video listings with detailed information such as full (2006) and later expandable (2007) descriptions, as well as profile pictures (2006), ratings, comment counts, and tags. Channels' pages were equipped with standalone view counters, bulletin boards, and were awarded badges for various rank-based achievements, such as "#15 – Most Subscribed (This Month)", "#89 – Most Subscribed (All Time)", and "#15 – Most Viewed (This Week)". Channels themselves had a view count indicator.Sample channel page archive from April 20th, 2007
In March 2007, YouTube launched the YouTube Awards, an annual competition in which users voted on the best user-generated videos of the year. The awards were presented twice, in 2007 and 2008. Video contests with prizes existed as early as December 2005, possibly earlier.
At "youtube.com/browse", there were various web feeds, including a list of the videos most recently uploaded to the site, suggesting an upload rate of approximately two videos per minute as of April 2007."Most recent" feed (twenty videos per page) in April 2007: Last video on first page uploaded eleven minutes ago. Other feeds included the most viewed, highest rated, most discussed, most "favourited", most backlinked, staff picks, videos with most video responses, and "Watch on mobile". Some feeds could be filtered by categories including but not limited to "Autos & Vehicles", "Music", "News & Politics", "People & Blogs", "Travel & Places", and feeds except "Most recent" (where inapplicable) could be filtered by time range ("Today", "This week", "This month", "All time"). An uncaptioned Verizon Wireless logo resided on the "Watch on mobile" feed, suggesting a partnership.
In June 2007, YouTube expanded the visibility of the "related videos" feature, to be shown also on embedded videos. Recommendations for related videos became a major source of traffic for new and old videos, according to some YouTube users.