YouTube logo image via Andrew Perry/Flickr
This Saturday, February 14, video-sharing site YouTube will mark its 10th birthday as one of the most visited sites on the web and as a real game changer in how consumers watch and share content online.
Each week, we at Siliconrepublic.com have been bringing readers the week’s top viral videos that references the power YouTube has over the world’s audience, with more than 1bn views of videos every day and more than 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter every minute.
Started by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim, YouTube’s first video back in 2005 was hardly revolutionary, entitled Me At the Zoo. The video showed Karim talking about elephants and was a mere 20 seconds long. It didn’t appear on the site until December that year.
Facing a rocky start losing money hand over fist – US$500,000 a month to be exact – Google stepped in to save the day. The internet search giant helped to make YouTube the behemoth it is today after purchasing the site for just US$15m and shares, shares which are now valued at nearly US$2bn.
Since then, becoming a ‘YouTuber’ has become as much of a legitimate business as making a TV show, with one user, PewDiePie, proving an example to follow with millions of dollars in revenue and more than 34m subscribers, more than many TV shows.
The site’s future remains bright. YouTube recently added its own music-subscription service, YouTube Music Key, movie rentals and live streaming to arguably make it one of the most watched TV networks in the world.
Infographic provided by Tom Hopkins of One Productions
