(organ grinder music)
- Oh, hello there, young man
or lady.
Let me tell you the story of one of your favorite
websites as I knew it back in my day.
It's story time.
SoYouTube is a phenomenon
that we have all come to love.
For many of us, it's not only a site that we use
to learn things, like how to fix the sink,
but it's also the site where we consume
most of our entertainment.
But even though many of us have made
this website part of our everyday lives,
very few of us know about its origins
or just how big it really is today.
So, today, I'm going to give you some
little-known information about the website
that you've come to love so much.
So, here it is.
10 fascinating facts about YouTube
you didn't know.
Number one is stats and traffic.
There are more than 1 billion unique users
that visit YouTube every month,
so it's no wonder that billions of hours
of video get watched daily,
making YouTube the Internet's largest
video hosting website.
But what really makes YouTube unique
is that many of the same people that are consuming
this insane amount of content
are the same people creating it.
In fact, more than 300 hours of video are uploaded
to YouTube every minute.
To put that into context, the amount of video
uploaded to the website every month is more than
the three major U.S. television networks have created
in the last 60 years.
While YouTube was created and is hosted in the U.S.,
more than 80% of traffic that comes to the website
is from outside of the U.S.,
meaning that all of those views allow people like me
to make a living off of what they love,
which is making videos.
So, thank you for watching no matter
where it is: at home, at work,
on your phone on the toilet.
Some of you are watching this video
right now on the pooper.
I know.
Number two is origins.
YouTube was founded in February of 2005
by three early PayPal employees:
Steven Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.
Hurley joined the other founders
after he read an article about the startup
in Wired magazine.
He emailed them about a job,
after which he was brought on to design
the logo for the company,
which is still used today.
Interestingly, the initial seed money for YouTube
came from when eBay bought PayPal
and provided bonuses to the three guys.
When it started to become popular,
the choice of the name YouTube.com
became a huge problem for a similarly named
website UTube.com.
The site's owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment
filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November of 2006
after being regularly overloaded by people
looking for the site.
Universal Tube has since changed
the name of their website to UTubeOnline.com.
Could you imagine if any of the viral sensations
that happened now occurred back then?
That would be pretty confusing.
"Hey Jimmy, this guy's emailing me
"about a Harlem Shake.
"Do we carry one of those?"
Number three is YouTube as a dating service.
Not many people know that YouTube
actually first started as a video dating service.
Originally called Tune In and Hook Up,
the website was heavily influenced
by the website Hot or Not.
Although it operated in the same fashion,
the three founders decided not to go
with the dating site idea,
but decided to keep the video portion of it.
Then, two important events occurred
that forever shaped what we would come to know
as YouTube.
The first event was when Karim was unable to find
the infamous Janet Jackson
wardrobe malfunction video online.
The second event was when Hurley and Chen
were unable to share a video from a dinner party
with friends due to the email attachment limitations
that still exist today.
These two important events made the founders realize
that there was a huge untapped potential
for video sharing online,
and they decided to fill that need.
I love how honest they are
about how the website started, too.
"Well, I couldn't find the titties I wanted to see
"online, so I started a website that I could use
"to watch them titties."
Number four is humble beginnings.
YouTube offices are known for being cool places
full of free food, drinks,
and awesome facilities for employees,
but the original YouTube office, created in 2005,
was anything but glamorous.
In fact, Chad Hurley's garage was the foundation
for the first-ever YouTube office.
They started off slow,
but eventually in 2006 were able to move
into an office space above a pizzeria
near San Mateo, California.
It was there that they hired the first 20 YouTube employees
all eager to be a part of something
exciting and new.
Surprisingly, and embarassingly,
in an attempt to popularize the site,
the company offered $100 to attractive girls
who posted 10 videos or more on the site.
Yeah, that's kinda creepy.
The advertisement was even placed on Craigslist
but was completely ignored,
leaving YouTube with no responses.
What is it about tech nerds and garages,
inventors and garages,
and bands and garages?
I guess if you need to solve something,
you just go sleep in your garage.
(snap) Boom.
Done.
Number five is now and then.
Before 300 hours of video was being uploaded
to the site every minute,
it all started with just one,
a 19 second clip called "Me at the Zoo."
Shot by Yakov Lapitsky, a friend of Jawed Karim,
it shows Jawed at the San Diego Zoo
in front of an elephant enclosure
talking about how long their trunks are.
Since its upload on April 23, 2005,
it has gained a whopping almost 19 million views.
It's the only video on Jawed's channel,
yet that channel has gained over 70,000 subscribers.
In 2008, Jawed launched a venture fund
called Youniverty Ventures,
which helps current and former university students
realize their business ideas.
However, Jawed still remains interested in YouTube
and even spoke out agains the Google+ integration
in 2013 that requires users to have a Google+ account
in order to comment on videos,
which is something everyone loved so very much.
Well, the first YouTube video may have been basic,
but at least he wasn't twerking or something.
Those were simpler times.
Number six is YouTube's purchase.
Within just one year of being launched,
YouTube became a very popular video sharing site.
This got the attention of Google
who saw the potential that online video had,
and in October of 2006, Google bought YouTube
for $1.6 billion in stock
from the three founders only 18 months
after the site's creation.
This worked out quite well
because the founders were just as interested
in selling the website as Google was interested
in buying it.
At the time, YouTube had been in multiple legal battles
with several media companies
over copyright infringement lawsuits.
Another reason that the founders
were so eager to sell it was that on top of the lawsuits,
despite its popularity, YouTube was losing money
at a rate of $500,000 a month.
Of course, Google doesn't enter any business arrangement
with the intention of losing money,
so they were the ones to introduce
advertising on the platform.
Since that purchase, YouTube has grown
exponentially, year over year,
making it the second biggest search engine
just behind Google.com.
So, in other words, Google has a monopoly
on Internet search.
No Microsoft.
Don't say Bing.
Shut, shut your mouth.
Shut your mouth.
No one uses it.
It's never gonna be a thing.
Just stop.
Number seven is milestones.
You may be curious as to some
of the firsts, or milestones on YouTube,
so here's some notable ones.
The first ever YouTube video to hit
1 million views was Brazilian soccer star
Ronaldinho's Nike ad called "Touch of Gold"
after it went viral in 2005.
In 2006, NBC became the first traditional media company
to strike a deal with YouTube
to put their content on the site.
In 2007, YouTube launched the Partnership Program,
which allowed people to get paid
for the content that they upload
to the site, which of course, changed everything.
In April of 2009, YouTube and Vivendi
teamed up to launch the new music video
service called Vevo.
In November of 2009,
high-definition video was
finally enabled on the site.
In 2010, YouTube began offering movies
for rent on the site.
In 2011, YouTube Live was created to enable
the website to stream everything
from concerts to news coverage.
And of course, as of today, there are thousands
of YouTube partners making a living
off of the site.
It's a good living, as long as you can get past
the troll comments.
I know I'm bald, ok, damn! (loud crying)
Number eight is research.
Over the years, a lot of research has been done
on Youtube, its success, and how it's affected culture.
But, despite all the research collected,
it's still not known what makes a video
go viral, although humor,
genuine emotion, and the human experience
all seem to be the most appealing factors.
In fact, research concluded that "going viral"
is not a strategy, but instead, an outcome.
They also found that the success of YouTube
came down to four key factors.
The service offers video recommendations
via the "related video list."
Next, is that users can easily share videos
and embed videos on popular websites.
The third is that there's a sense of community
and interactivity on the site.
And, finally, of course, the incentive
of the partnership program.
Of course, if there was a fifth,
it would be cat videos.
A staple of any successful video sharing site, my friends.
Number nine is sharing.
YouTube was, in fact, not the first video sharing website.
Started in 1997 by Chase Norlin,
ShareYourWorld.com was the first-ever
video-sharing website.
It was designed to watch and share video
over the Internet.
The idea was that most people at the time
were able to get their hands
on digital camera equipment and produce their own work,
so they needed a place to share it.
However, because the Internet was still
in its infancy at the time,
the technology was unable to do much
of what YouTube would later be able to do
with efficient video transcoding and high bandwidth.
The company ended up dying in 2001,
just four years before YouTube,
opening up an opportunity for video sharing
on the Internet.
I'm not gonna lie, though,
I'm actually glad,
because it sounds a lot better to say
I'm a YouTuber as opposed to
I'm a Share Your Worlder.
It just doesn't sound right.
And number 10 is Easter eggs.
One of the least known features on YouTube,
but a favorite to those who know of it,
are hidden Easter eggs on the site.
If you search the term "Beam me up Scotty,"
you'll find the search results
beam on to the screen vertically.
If you search the term "Use the force, Luke,"
the page will shift around
and can only be controlled by your mouse.
If a video begins buffering,
and you don't feel like waiting for it,
if you hit the left arrow, the buffering icon
will magically become a game of snake.
And one of the most recent Easter eggs
is that if you search the term
"Do the Harlem Shake,"
the search results will start dancing
to the music,
and all of a sudden go crazy
doing the actual Harlem Shake.
There's also an Easter egg that if you click
right here, a lot of great stuff
will come to you in the future.
Try it.
And that's all for this time, guys.
Thanks so much for watching.
As always, if you enjoyed this video,
remember to give that like button a click,
and if you'd like to see future videos from me,
be sure to click that red subscribe button
because I upload every Tuesday and Saturday.
I love you guys.
I hope you have a great day,
and I will see you this Saturday
with a brand new video.
Peace.
(Bugle Horn Music)
(Electronic Music)