YouTube is the largest online video sharing platform in the present context with over 500 hours of video content uploading to the platform every minute. Its headquarter is located in 901 Cherry Avenue San Bruno, California, United States. There are about 2.70 billion YouTube users worldwide, out of 5 billion people who access the internet. At the present context, it is the daily source of entertainment and educational purpose and source of income for many people but how its journey started is what we are here to discuss. It all started back in 2005 when three former PayPal employees named Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim formed YouTube. It allows users to upload videos, view them, rate them with likes and dislikes, share them, report, make comments on videos, and subscribe other user.
History
The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 14, 2005, with video upload options being integrated on April 23, 2005. The first YouTube video of 18 seconds length, titled “Me at the Zoo” was uploaded on April 23, 2005, in the channel named “Jawed” where the co-owner Jawed Karim was seen at the San Diego Zoo and currently has over 302 million views and over 15 million likes and 10 million comments. As of June 2005, YouTube's slogan was "Your Digital Video Repository". The rapid rise of YouTube and its future potential makes Google to bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since then it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries. In August 2007, YouTube introduced pre-roll ads from which they can generate revenue and a year after in November 2008 Google reached an agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, INC. (MGM), to show some of the studio’s full-length movies and television shows, the broadcasts being free to watch, with advertisements running alongside the programs. The rapid recognition with the audiences makes YouTube to go live in April 2011 where it broadcast wide range of live content, from concerts and the royal wedding to news coverage and various sports.
New Heights from 2012- present
YouTube gains massive popularity from 2012 when a song named “Gangnam Style” brought in more than 1 billion views for YouTube in December 2012. The view counter could not record numbers greater than a 32-bit integer, so it was updated to a 64-bit integer. That year YouTube became the go-to place for the presidential election coverage in August 2012. From then onwards, the site has been creating new benchmarks. With reaching 1 billion unique monthly visitors in March 2013 to advertising new movies by posting new trailers and clips in the site has been increased rapidly. It not only promotes movies but helps music industry grow as well. Soon the transition of quality of videos was also done with new 360 degree videos and 8K videos adding to the site in June of 2015. As the audiences generated more traffic in the site, it makes the developer launch more features like YouTube TV, subscription services, adding notes to the videos within playlists by the creator of the playlist and more. During the COVID 19 pandemic, YouTube got further push when most of the world was under stay at home order. This allows the access of YouTube to increase. It was estimated that YouTube was accounting for 15% of all internet traffic, twice its pre-pandemic level which results in generating more revenue. YouTube had $19.8 billion in revenue in 2020 in contrast to US$8.1 billion in 2017, US$11.1 billion in 2018 and US$15.1 billion in 2019. But as of end of 2023, YouTube has more than 2.70 billion active users and generated $22.31 billion via revenue in the first three quarters of 2023
Below is the table showing major events happened in YouTube in each passing year.
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Year Events
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2005 YouTube’s domain was registered and was launched.
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2006 Google purchased YouTube for USD 1.65 billion.
Filtering launched.
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2007 Started partner program forl content creators.
Local language version was created.
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2008 480p videos and videos analytic tool was launched.
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2009 720p and 1080p videos was launched
Automatic speech recognition feature was added.
1 billion views/day.
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2010 4K videos and thumbs rating system was introduced.
YouTube rentals.
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2011 YouTube live started.
Feature film rentals.
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2012 First 1 billion views video.
2013 Integration of comment section.
2014 60 fps videos introduced.
2015 YouTube Red launched.
2016 YouTube subscription service launched.
Live streaming with 360 degree and 1440 p.
2017 New logo was created.
YouTube TV.
2018 YouTube headquarter shooting incident.
YouTube Red rebranded as YouTube Premium.
2019 Removal of annotations and auto share features.
2020 Remove categories.
2021 Removal of public dislike count.
2022 Second most popular social network globally.
2023 Crackdown on ad blockers.
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This online video sharing platform has been the second most popular social network as 720,000 hours of video are uploaded to the platform daily. One can have wide range of data surfing through it and looking at the growth this site has, one can say YouTube can get rock solid in the service it provides and hamper other apps with similar feature. It not only provides videos facility but helps to generate income for the creator within the site which appeal lot more people to associate with YouTube.
