Para 1
YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. They originally started YouTube when they were at PayPal. 2 Months After YouTube was founded the first video was uploaded to the platform by ‘jawed’ called ‘Me at the zoo’ this video is still live on the site today and updates it’s description when significant events happen on YouTube such as the removal of the dislike button in 2022 by changing it to ‘When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube’. Though it’s not currently clear whether or not it is still jawed updating the description or if the account that owns the channel had been hacked in some way. In November 2005 YouTube was ‘angel funded’ with venture firm Sequoia Capital investing $3.5 million. There are rumours that it was started at a company party when they wanted to share videos of the event however, they have since said they can’t remember and that it was just said for marketing. It was also originally started as a dating website as you can see in the photo below. There are options for gender, who you’re seeking and the age range, it allowed favourites and messages, messages is no longer available on YouTube as it got removed in September 2019.
In December 2007 YouTube launched the partner program for channels with over 1,000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time in the year. This allowed even emerging creators to start getting paid from YouTube and helping to make it the career that it is for many people and companies today. In October of 2009 the announcement that google would buy YouTube was announced. Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in google stock. This acquisition was completed on November 13th. At the time it was Googles biggest purchase since they brought dMarc Broadcasting an advertising company that is now AdSense.
Para 2
In YouTube today there is many key players, two of these are Jimmy Donaldson and Linus Sebastian. They both have a variety of channels they also run their own companies off of their YouTube success.
Jimmy Donaldson runs a variety of channels for example Mr Beast, Beast Reacts, Beast Philanthropy and over 10 more. These channels are for a variety of content from his main channel with high production value challenges and donations to Beast Reacts which is for reaction content. He also runs Beast Burger, Feastables and Finger on the App. These are two food companies burgers and chocolate bars and an App that gives away money to the last person who has their finger on the app. He started uploading to YouTube in February 2012 when he was 13, his original channel was called MrBeast6000 this was later renamed to today’s MrBeast. His earlier content was let’s plays and Minecraft content, once his content started taking off he dropped out of his uni and was made to move out the family home.
And Linus runs ones such as Linus Tech Tips, Short Circuit and Tech Linked as well as over 5 more, his main channel LTT is for tech advise as well as increasingly more information about the company and their new spaces and equipment, Short Circuit is for Unboxings and Tech Linked is their three times a week news show. He also runs Floatplane and Creator Warehouse; Floatplane is his own video streaming service for ad free streaming of his channels as well as other creators and Creator Warehouse is for Merch for his channels and others in the future. Linus started Linus Tech Tips when he was still working at Computer Shop NCIX, he was a digital content creator for their channel NCIX Tech Tips and Linus Tech Tips was created by his boss originally to allow him more freedom of the content. Once he left NCIX to go full time on YouTube he managed to get the channel as his property.
Para 3
Starting in 2006 YouTube had around 20 million Users per month, this increased to 800 million in 2012. There isn’t much data dating back that far however I can presume that they mostly consumed YouTube on desktops as the first iPhone didn’t get released till 2007. This would have increased as more people started using phones to the point that post people would have owned a mobile phone in 2012! I would also assume that since mobile usage started increasing they stated work on a mobile app. Now in 2022 the YouTube mobile app accounts for 70% of all YouTube traffic. In 2012 YouTube also started reporting their user statistics, 60 hours of Video was uploaded every minute, over 4 billion YouTube videos are viewed every day and over 4 billion hours of video are watched every month, they also say that over 700 YouTube videos are shared to twitter every minute. YouTube has also changed with the content that is being uploaded to it, it used to be the case that videos were very simple however now there are more niches and new niches within those niches. For example, with MrBeast he used to have one channel that he uploaded all his content to such as challenges, reactions, let’s plays and more. Now he has MrBeast for his challenges, Beast Reacts for his reaction videos and MrBeast Gaming for let’s plays, he’s achieved this though his much larger team that allows him to focus more on being on camera rather than editing and prep work.