In April 2005, the internet was a very different place. Social networks as we know them today did not yet exist, and sharing videos online was difficult. It was against this backdrop that former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded the video-sharing site YouTube. Their idea was to create a platform that would allow users to instantly upload and share videos with friends.
First Video, uploaded to YouTube on April 24, 2005, was titled "Me at the Zoo". In the 18-second video, Javed Karim stands in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo and talks about how long their trunks are. Shot in a low resolution of 320×240, the video is reminiscent of the times of slow internet. It's interesting that it turned out to be prophetic: After YouTube launched to the general public in November 2005, it was precisely these personal and simple videos that became incredibly popular.
Javeda Karim was filmed by a friend Yakov Lapitsky.
Javed Karim uploaded a video to his channel (username: jawed), which to this day contains only this video. Despite this, it has millions of subscribers.
On each anniversary, the first YouTube video gains a few hundred thousand more views. Its creator, Soviet immigrant Yakov Lapitsky, had no idea why he was making the video. He only found out a month later, when Karim sent him a link to the website.
“I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Every time something unusual popped up there, Javed would send me an email saying, ‘Check out this video.’ I was finishing up my dissertation at the time, so those emails—which came every 15 to 30 minutes—helped me take my mind off things a little.”
YAKOV LAPITSKY
Creator of the first YouTube video
A year later, Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion. Today, the platform generates $4 billion a year for its owners, although it remains unprofitable. YouTube has more than 1 billion users, and its first video garners hundreds of thousands of views on each anniversary.
The story of the first YouTube video is the story of how a simple idea and a random video started a revolution in the world of online video.
- As of the time of this publication, the video has more than 342 million views, 17 million likes, and more than 10 million comments
- After YouTube was launched, Karim took on a less active role in managing the company, but received shares following its sale to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
- Since then, the video has become something of an internet classic and a symbol of YouTube’s humble beginnings—a platform that would go on to dominate the world of online video.
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