YouTube started as a video dating site
The founders (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim) registered the domain name on Valentine’s Day. They weren’t sure what direction they wanted to take with the site, but because of the date, they gave it the tagline “Tune In Hook Up.”
According to CNET, Chen said at the 2016 SXSW conference: “We always thought there was something with ‘video,’ but what would the actual practical application be? (…) We thought dating was the obvious choice.”
The first video uploaded to YouTube in 2005 was titled “Me at the Zoo.”
Me at the zoo was uploaded by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. The title has never changed, but occasionally Karim disagrees with a decision made by YouTube’s current management and uses the video description to criticize it.
The longest video uploaded to YouTube lasted 596.5 hours
Jonathan Harchick has twice set the record for the longest video of all time on YouTube. Harchick’s initially uploaded a 571 hour long video and later surpassed that by uploading “Longest Video on YouTube: 596.5 Hours”.
None of Harchick’s videos are yet publicly viewable on YouTube. The longest video on YouTube in 2022 is probably the 213 hour long video uploaded by user Reazon Zean.
The first video to reach a million views on YouTube was a Nike ad
In October 2005, Nike uploaded an ad featuring Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho. The video reached one million views ten days later. Nike later removed the video, but in 2015 Nike uploaded a remastered version of the video to celebrate the ad’s 10th anniversary.
Because media trademark licensing is sometimes stupid, this remastered video has also since been removed from the Nike channel. The video was uploaded in August 2006 by user teammac05 (who appears to have no connection to Nike) and is still viewable on YouTube in 2022.
The first video to reach one billion views on YouTube was Gangnam Style
In 2012, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” reached one billion views on YouTube. Although “Gangnam Style” is no longer the only video to do this (it’s not even the most viewed video anymore), it was the first to break the barrier.
YouTube I’s Early Corporate Officesn San Mateo, CaliforniaWere BBetween a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant
In 2006, the Washington Post wrote: “There is no sign outside the office of Internet video sensation YouTube Inc., located in a second-floor loft on the main shopping strip of this small Silicon Valley town. Two glass doors, sandwiched between a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant, lead to a clunky elevator that ascends one floor and carries visitors to YouTube’s one-room suite, where 60 young employees are elbow to elbow crammed into computer screens staring at each other.”
Header image: Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash
Mason Pelt is a guest writer for ArticleSubmission.news. He was a contributor to SiliconANGLE and has written for TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Social Media Today and more.
He is the managing director of Push ROI and served as an informal consultant in building the first ArticleSubmission.news website. Ask him why you shouldn’t work with Spring Free EV.
