In February of 2005 the world changed. When Jawed Karim uploaded Me at the zoo, the video sharing site YouTube was started. The way people created, viewed, consumed, and learned content changed.
Jawed Karim wasn't alone in his endeavor to fix the video sharing problem of the turn of the century, two fellow PayPal employees, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, were there to get it all started.
According to Wikipedia, Hurley and Chen came up with the YouTube idea during a dinner party at Chen's apartment. Not too long after the idea grew, in large part, from an $11.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital. The first YouTube headquarters were located above a pizzeria and Japanese steakhouse in San Mateo, California.
Six months after launching the domain www.youtube.com the website announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and receiving more than 100 million video views per day.
YouTube continues to be the dominant provider of online video in the US. According to research by comScore there have been over 14 billion videos viewed, and that 48 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute. YouTube is the third most visited site on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook.
In late 2006, Google purchased YouTube for more than $1.65 billion in Google stock. In November of 2008, YouTube reached agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS to offer full-length films and TV episodes on the site.
The future of YouTube continues to be bright. With a majority of the content uploaded by individuals, it will continue to be a place where anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can communicate their message to the world.
