YouTube turns 16: Take a look at its journey
It’s been 16 years since YouTube launched to the public in early 2005. In the beginning. YouTube was more about creation and community building rather than fame or money.
Now it has over 2 billion monthly visitors who keep scrolling millions of hours of content every single day. After Google’s acquisition, YouTube went from being a repository of amateur video to a powerhouse of original content.
Now let’s take a look at how YouTube got its explosive start and maintained that momentum to become the undisputed king of online video.
TIMELINE
2004: Three employees of e-payment startup PayPal – Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim started working on an idea. This idea was about creating a website that allowed its users to upload video-dating profiles. All this worked out of Hurley’s garage in Menlo Park, California.
February 2005: On 14 February, Hurley- as CEO- registered the trademark, logo, and domain for YouTube. The website was launched to a small number of users. However, as a dating site, it attracted little interest. This further forced the co-founder to take out advertisements paying women $20 to upload dating videos. Rather users started uploading videos of all kinds apart from dating videos.
April 2005: Based on the feedback, the co-founders transformed YouTube into a free video-hosting platform where each video has a unique link.
April 2005: While YouTube was still in private beta, the first video ever was uploaded on the website. The video, named “Me at the Zoo” was of18 seconds duration. It shows Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego zoo and talking about their trunks.
September 2005: Lauded investment firm Sequoia Capital invests $3.5 million in YouTube’s Series A round.
October 2005: YouTube got 1 million views for the first time on the video. The video was a viral Nike advertisement showing Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho receiving his pair of “Golden Boots.” All this demonstrates the power of YouTube’s role in marketing and virality.
February 2006: YouTube’s “Content Verification Program.” was launched in October 2007 to help content creators know videos that infringe on their copyrights and get them removed.
April 2006: Venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Artis Capital Management invested $8 million in YouTube’s Series B funding round. This summed up the total investment to around $12 million. When YouTube is acquired months later, these firms’ investments pay out massively.
October 2006: Google finally acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, netting the cofounders nearly $400 million each in profits. The same day the deal went through, YouTube moves to its headquarters in San Bruno, California.
June 2007: The same month Apple launched its first iPhone, YouTube launched its mobile site. Chad Hurley, predicts that mobile is “going to be a huge market,” making YouTube’s mobile site a “natural transition.”
July 2007: YouTube joined hands with CNN to host a presidential debate during the 2008 election cycle, featuring video questions submitted by the public. Seven out of the 16 presidential candidates in 2008 announced their campaigns through YouTube.
August 2007: Google rolled out the first advertisement on YouTube videos. Instead of an option for traditional pre-video ads, the company chooses a new in-video format featuring semi-transparent banners that pop up on the lower portion of videos and can be clicked away after several seconds.
December 2007: YouTube rolls out its “Partner Program” to select creators, allowing them to earn money from their content based on ad revenue. It allows YouTubers to turn their hobby into a career.
September 2008: The viral hit, “Evolution of Dance,” became the first YouTube video to get 100 million views. This video turned its star Judson Laipply into one of the earliest YouTubers.
November 2008: YouTube expanded its ad offerings to include sponsored videos and pre-roll ads, a format YouTube long said it wouldn’t resort to because those ads were too intrusive to the audience.
April 2009: Usher introduced 15-year-old Justin Bieber to the world via a video on YouTube. Bieber would release his music video for “Baby” the following year, and it remains one of the most-disliked videos on all of YouTube.
April 2009: YouTube teams up with media company Vivendi. They together launch a new music video service called Vevo, in response to music companies’ complaints about piracy and unfair licensing terms. As part of the deal, Vevo can distribute its music videos on YouTube, setting the groundwork for Vevo’s massive YouTube presence today.
October 2009: YouTube reveals that it has surpassed the milestone of 1 billion views a day. By this time, more than 20 hours of video were being uploaded to YouTube every minute.
April 2010: Felix Kjellberg joined YouTube to create content with the channel name PewDiePie. Since then he has surpassed 100 million subscribers. He is the most subscribed to the solo creator on YouTube today.
October 2010: Chad Hurley gives up the position of Youtube’s CEO. Google replaced him with Salar Kamangar. He was already known to be leading daily operations for two years prior.
December 2010: YouTube introduces skippable ads with a format called “TrueView,” allowing consumers to skip over ads after five seconds and launch straight into the videos they want to watch.
April 2011: YouTube enters into broadcast business with the launch of ‘YouTube Live’. This allows the site to stream all types of content.
May 2011: YouTube launches a ‘rental service’ offer. In this consumers can choose movies and TV shows to rent and stream directly on the platform.
October 2011: YouTube invests $100 million into its first batch of original channels in a push to create original content on the platform. YouTube partnered with established brands and major celebrities, a move that creators see as the platform’s disregard for their value and influence.
August 2012: YouTube becomes the go-to place for presidential elections by launching the “YouTube Elections Hub.”
December 2012: “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video ever to hit 1 billion views, just five months after it’s first posted. The Psy music video later “broke” YouTube’s view count tracker, and is still one of the most-viewed videos on all of YouTube.
January 2013: YouTube launches “YouTube Spaces” in Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, New York, and Sao Paulo. This space functions as recording and creating studios for YouTube content creators.
March 2013: YouTube reached 1 billion monthly users.
Feburary 2014: Susan Wojcicki – became the new CEO of YouTube. She was Google’s 16th employee who helped convince the company to buy the video-sharing platform.
February 2015: Google launched a “family-friendly” version of the video platform named YouTube Kids. It filters content for miners, offers parental control. Now it attracts more than 8 million users a week.
August 2015: ‘YouTube Gaming’ debuts as a way for gamers to live stream their play sessions to a live audience, also interact and chat with fans in real-time.
October 2015: YouTube unveils ‘YouTube Red’, its subscription service that lets customers watch videos and stream music without ads. One can also access exclusive content featuring major YouTubers. After three years, YouTube Red was renamed YouTube Premium, and spun off its music-streaming to a separate service called ‘YouTube Music’.
August 2016: YouTube started notifying creators when their videos are demonetized — i.e. the platform’s algorithm has decided some part of the clip doesn’t comply with “advertiser-friendly content guidelines,” so it’s ineligible to make money.
March 2017: Major companies across US and international markets pull their ads from YouTube en masse after the Times of London reported that ads are appearing alongside extremist and offensive content. YouTube’s ability to police content is questioned, and analysts estimate the boycott costs the company $750 million.
April 2017: YouTube makes the first of two major algorithm changes: puts stricter policies on ads, and revamped its Partner Program to raise the requirements of eligibility for money-generating channels. YouTube TV, an on-demand streaming service, was also officially launched in select markets.
November 2017: Across YouTube Kids, users find family-friendly videos containing disturbing and abusive content. Even more, advertisers pulled their ads, and YouTube responds by updating its policies around age-restricted content.
February 2019: YouTuber Matt Watson exposes a “soft-core pedophilia ring” living in the comments on YouTube videos featuring children, where pedophiles trade remarks and links. Another exodus of advertisers occurs, and YouTube responded by disabling comments on videos featuring children.
September 2019: The Federal Trade Commission fines YouTube $170 million following an investigation into whether the platform violates children’s privacy laws by collecting the data of children under the age of 13 without their parents’ consent. The FTC settlement also required YouTube to create a system where creators flag their content as family-friendly.
December 2019: Six months after the Maza-Crowder controversy, YouTube updated its harassment policy to ban content that “maliciously insults” others — from creators to public figures.
February 2020: For the first time since YouTube was acquired 14 years ago, Google breaks out the video platform’s ad revenue. YouTube generated $14 billion in 2019, 9% of parent company Alphabet’s total ad revenue.
