When was YouTube Founded- All that you need to know

YouTube today isn’t just a video distribution platform but is a part of life for most of us. The giant platform houses more than four billion hours of watch-time every month with an estimated five hundred hours of videos that people upload every passing minute. Well, till the time you opened the post and currently reading this, probably people have uploaded hundreds of hours of video content uploaded on YouTube. That’s crazy, right? Since its inception, the application has been transforming itself to make users stick to it. On the other hand, it also brought a profitable career for YouTubers into the limelight. But, many of us don’t know, when was YouTube founded? Well, it was Valentine’s Day of February 14th, 2005, when the registration came up, and it has turned 16 years old now. Let’s get into the history! 

The magicians behind the magical journey

 Well, at the time of its invention, the idea was just to build a website on which users could upload video-dating profiles. In the initial days, they used to publish ads were offering around $20 to women to encourage them to upload such a video. But now, we all know where YouTube stands! 

But, by whom was YouTube founded? Char Hurley along with the co-founder Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were the men behind the curtain. As the founders said, the idea took birth at a dinner party in San Fransisco, a year before its launch.   

Let’s introduce you to the trio who founded YouTube

As mention above, three guys founded YouTube:

Chad Hurley – One of then who founded youtube

The trio used to work at Paypal when founded YouTube. Chad pursued design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1999. His primary focus when working with PayPal was the user experience (UX) of their interface. 

Jawed Karim

Born in 1979 in Meresburg, East Germany, Jawed Karim under the supervision of his parents moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1992 after they experienced xenophobia in Germany. He was a dropout with computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Then he joined Paypal as an early employee and carried out a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University. 

Steve Chan

Steven Shih Chen migrated along with his family to the U.S, 8 years after his birth in 1978 in Taipei, Taiwan. He graduated in the year 2002 holding a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This was the beginning of the formation of the trio who later founded YouTube.

The purpose behind – why was youtube founded

Though the YouTube authority started it as a date-profile uploading website, very soon they found that people have started publishing random videos. Observing this and after getting plenty of feedback, the founders ultimately understood what could lay the path of success for YouTube. 

From just a date-profile sharing platform, they converted it to a platform where anyone can publish videos as per their preferences. There was a hope that every user will have access to upload, view, and share content without any limitation.  

They launched the beta version in May 2005, and posted the first-ever video “Me at the zoo”, . It was one of the founders himself, Karim who published this 19 secs clip shoot at San Diego Zoo featuring elephants.

Talking about the first viral video on YouTube, it was a clip of the Brazilian football player Ronaldinho receiving Golden Boots. Nike was the first one among other giant companies who embraced and understood the promotional potential of this wonderful platform. 

The naming story – how was the name youtube founded

The name ‘YouTube’ stands straight-forward and self-explanatory. ‘You’ refers to user-generated content and ‘Tube’ indicates an old age term for television. Within just a few days after the website URL, was booked, a company called Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment filed a lawsuit against YouTube. 

They claimed that YouTube’s website address is very identical to that of theirs which was utube.com. However, utube.com didn’t succeed with the case and at present their website address is www.utubeonline.com. Since the time, YouTube was a toddler; it has witnessed exponential growth with billions of users across 75 + countries and around 60 languages presently.  

The fuel for YouTube – It’s money-making 

All businesses do need to make money and the same goes with YouTube. Before they sold it to Google, YouTube stated monthly revenue of around $15 million. Well, that’s a lot for a newly launched company, isn’t it? 

However, the number though sounds big but wasn’t profitable at all even when Google was acquiring it back in 2006. But what made Google acquire YouTube? Well, Google already tried with their platform of similar nature to that of YouTube. Google named it ‘google video’, but unfortunately couldn’t win users against YouTube. Besides, the potential of YouTube as a platform for online video service was clear to Google. 

Google, however, didn’t change the way YouTube used to operate or even the name. But, they took steps to bring profitability out of their investment on YouTube. Google already held enormous traffic and with the addition of Google ads service to YouTube’s video content, who could stop the profitability. 

A recent study says that YouTube was bagging almost around $200 million annually, out of which the maximum ratio was of advertising revenue. Targeted advertising, featured content promotion came into play with time and later paid ads before playing videos came into the picture. 

But are advertisements the only source of income for YouTube? Though ads are the main source it isn’t the only moneymaker for YouTube. Paid Tv service, YouTube Premium and Music Premium subscriptions are add-ons to their revenue.    

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