In the year 2004, three young entrepreneurs and former Paypal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim felt videos weren’t really being addressed on the Internet. They observed that a lot of people were collecting video clips on their cellphone but there was no easy way to watch and share Videos on the Internet.
Initially, they came up with the idea of building a video sharing dating website. They registered their site on 14th February 2005 on Valentines Day and wanted to upload videos of people introducing themselves and saying what they were interested in. They also came up with a slogan saying- “Tune in, Hook Up”.
They named their site “YouTube” (meaning Your TV with “You” referring to content being user generated and “Tube” being old term for Televison). However, no one participated and the video dating site idea failed miserably.
So, the founders decided to open up the site for users to post any video they wanted. In April 2005, Jawed Karim (co- founder of Youtube) uploaded the first video on YouTube titled “Me At The Zoo”. Users loved this new concept and soon videos started getting viral on Youtube.
Its growth and rising popularity attracted Google and in October 2006 Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion (within 18 months of its launch).
Youtube has continued to grow over the years and is the largest online video sharing platform in the world today with more than 2 billion monthly users, and a site started by 3 young entrepreneurs has changed the way people watch and share videos forever.