8 Insights About YouTube on 19th Anniversary

1. Founders

On February 14, 2005, YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley. They were all formerly early employees of PayPal.

2. First Video

On April 23, 2005, Jawid Karim uploaded the first video on YouTube. It was titled Me at the zoo, and showed co-founder Karim enjoying his time at the San Diego Zoo. It can still be found on YouTube.

3. Headquarters

Earlier YouTubes headquarters were located in San Mateo, California situated above a Japanese restaurant and a pizzeria. The current headquarters are in San Bruno, California.

4. Popularity

YouTube is the worlds second most visited website, and the first is Google Search. The site has over 2.5 billion monthly users who together spend above one billion hours watching videos daily.

5. Google Owned

In October 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion which in 2022 equaled $2.4 billion. Google brought significant changes to the site by updating its business model, offering the option of generating revenue from paid content.

6. New CEO

Chad Hurley was the previous CEO of YouTube. However, in 2010 when YouTube was acquired by Google, the CEO changed to Salar Kamangar. In 2014 Susan Wojcicki took over the role. In 2023, the current CEO Neal Mohan was appointed.

7. Added Features

Google introduced many new features to YouTube. It expanded beyond the main website and started to offer network television, and mobile apps, and enabled YouTube to be linked with other platforms. New video categories were inaugurated such as short films, music videos, news, video clips, feature films, teasers, songs, documentaries, live streams, movie trailers, vlogs, and more.

8. Valued by Big Names

Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, and other established media corporations have utilized YouTube by using the platform to advertise their companies to a greater audience.