YouTube is Ten!

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This week celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first video being uploaded to YouTube. The site was set up in 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. The first video – “Met at the Zoo” – was uploaded on 23rd April 2005 and featured Jawed Karim. Since then, the video platform has grown to be the 3rd most visited site on the internet (behind Google and Facebook).

Here’s a brief overview of the journey so far…

The domain name youtube.com was registered on February 14th 2005. The stars rating system was introduced in August 2005, and subscriptions and playlists were added in October. In October 2006, the site was acquired by Google for $1.65bn.

In 2007, the partner program (allowing users to monetise their content) was introduced, as was content ID – the system that checks for copyright infringements in uploaded videos.

In November 2013, changes meant that a Google+ account was needed to comment on a YouTube video, causing some controversy over the integration with Google. More recently, in February this year, an app called YouTube Kids was released, allowing only child-friendly content from the site.

Now, YouTube has over 1 billion users worldwide. More than 300 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute, and the site has over 1 million advertisers. Some countries ban access to the site, including China, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.

The most viewed video is Gangnam Style by Psy. Others in the top ten most-viewed videos are Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, LMFAO, Eminem, Shakira and Enrique Iglesias. There is only one video in the top 30 that is not a music video – that video is ‘Charlie bit my finger’. The most subscribed channel is Swedish gamer PewDiePie.

Here are the most viewed videos each year since the founding of the site:

  • 2005 – Nike Touch of Gold – 1,259,289 views*
  • 2006 – Evolution of Dance – 291,071,015 views*
  • 2007 – Charlie bit my finger – 818,045,210 views*
  • 2008 – Coke and Mentos experiment – 274,588,881 views*
  • 2009 – Bad Romance by Lady Gaga – 621,546,311 views*
  • 2010 – Baby by Justin Bieber – 1,160,348,547 views*
  • 2011 – Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO – 859,160,271 views*
  • 2012 – Gangnam Style by Psy – 2,315,111,390 views*
  • 2013 – Roar by Katy Perry – 895,269,727 views*
  • 2014 – Dark Horse by Katy Perry – 923,136,912 views*

*Number of views as of 27/4/15

Let us know what your favourite video from the last 10 years is!

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