Youtube is ten years old this week.
It’s first video was posted on April 23, 2005, and since then Me at the zoo has been seen more than 22 million times, even though the clip is a mere 18 seconds long.
Remember that in 2005, most people were still using dial-up connections to access the Internet. Yet to come were Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, broadband access and streaming Netflix.
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim registered youtube.com on February 14, 2005. Twenty-one months later Google bought the site for $1.65 billion in stock.
In 2011 Youtube revealed that 99% of views are generated by 30% of the hosted videos. Today, over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.
In fact, Variety reported last year that American teens idolize Youtubers even more than Hollywood celebrities.
My take: Internet video has made incredible strides in the last ten years. I wonder how things will change in the next ten years. Any thoughts?