America
YouTube attains new milestone on 10th birthday
New York, April 23
The ‘popstar’ YouTube that
actually made several popstars what they are today, including Justin
Bieber and Zoella, has turned 10 on Thursday.
It’s been 10 years
since Jawed Karim -- the man behind the concept of the video sharing
site -- uploaded the first ever video of his zoo visit on the website.
The
then 25 year-old posted the 19-second clip titled "Me at the Zoo" on
April 23, 2005, which was filmed at San Diego Zoo's elephant enclosure.
The
unassuming video in praise of elephants, marked the humble beginnings
of the third most-popular website on the planet. Ten years on, it has
become an essential tool for marketing and promotion allowing users to
upload, view, and share videos.
Karim co-founded YouTube with
former PayPal employees Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Obsessed with
technology and learning, Karim originally dreamed up the concept of a
video-sharing site.
Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for a whopping $1.65 billion in stock.
YouTube
has made stars of the likes of Justin Bieber and Vlogger Zoella, who
first came to public attention through videos posted online.
Psy's
'Gangnam' style became the most viewed video clip of all time with 2.24
billion views, catapulting the previously unknown South Korean rapper
to global stardom.
It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed
as much bandwidth as the entire internet in 2000, International
Business Times reported.
Alexa, that analytically insights to
benchmark, compares and optimizes businesses on the web, ranks YouTube
as the third most visited website on internet, behind Google and
Facebook.
Today, YouTube has 800 million unique users a month
and 300 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, three
times more than in 2014.