YouTube history timeline from origin to Now
YouTube is a site to show the whole world and give a voice to everyone. It is an online platform to share video content. It is popular for its main motive to ensure the freedom of the people for their expression, Information, and opportunity. So, it is in the second position on the top list of social media by active users.
Origin of Youtube
The founding members of YouTube are Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. They activated the "YouTube.com" domain on February 14, 2005. Also, the team integrated the video uploading option on April 23, 2005. They constructed this site on the concept of an online dating service. Also, this site was named "Tune In, Hook Up". This concept ultimately failed but gave rise to an exceptional video exploring and uploading platform.
The milestone concept that gives rise to today's YouTube is the "Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson Halftime show incident". All three creators can't find any videos related to the incident on the internet. After all, noticing the non-existence of such a platform, they changed the project to a video-sharing platform. Also, the idea of this new company formed was to publish, upload, and view streaming videos through standard web browsers even for a non-computer expert. They launched the YouTube site in December 2005.
"Me at the zoo", the First YouTube video
The first-ever uploaded video on YouTube is the video with the title "Me at the zoo". The co-founder of this site, Jawed Karim uploaded this video from his account named 'jawed' on April 24, 2005. This video is an 18-second long video and has 133 million views and also 5.6 million likes. Also, it shows Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, San Diego, California.
Working offices and Investments in YouTube
YouTube was started as an angel-funded enterprise. They worked from a makeshift office in a garage. The American venture capital firm; Sequoia Capital invested $3.5 million in November 2005. Also, a partner of the firm; Roelof Botha joined the YouTube board of directors. Sequoia and Artis Capital Management invested $8 million in the company in April 2006. This investment experienced significant growth in its first few months. YouTube-team established its headquarters in San Bruno, California, the United States in 2010.
YouTube Growth in a rapid way
YouTube got popular in a short interval of time because of its unique motto of providing a voice to users. It was trafficking around 30,000 viewers a day just a month after operating the beta service in May 2005. There were over 25 million videos uploaded and 20,000 uploads a day by march 2006. It was one of the fastest-growing sites on the World Wide Web. Accordingly, about 2000 million users are monthly active users on YouTube with 3 billion monthly unique visitors at present time. So, it is now the second to the top 20 social media.
Major events on YouTube
Some of the events that occurred are listed chronologically below.
2005 July
It embedded videos in HTML. Also, the top videos page was introduced in the same month.
2005 August
YouTube instigated the 5- star rating system the videos. This system helped a lot to find reviews of the videos at that time.
2005 October
It added the playlists feature where the user can sort the videos they wanted to watch and enjoy the videos. In the same month, it added the feature of a Full-screen view of the videos. Besides, it initiated the feature of subscribing to a channel to get the videos by the channel to the top priorities in the same month.
2006 February
YouTube being more specific about the channel, personalized the profiles with more details about the channel.
2006 March
Youtube set a 10-minute-long time limit to the videos. Thus, to remove the piracy and copyright of longer videos like movies and shows, this time limit was set.
2006 April
It initiated a director's function so that the user can directly edit his video.
2006 May
Youtube added a feature to respond to a video on this social media. It is most to get feedback about the uploaded videos so that the user can do better in his next videos. The same month, it also initiated the cellphone video uploading system for the user's convenience.
2006 June
Further personalized profiles were a need to increase the genuineness of the channel. So, It added more information about the creator and the channel. It also added a feature of viewing watch history.
2007 March
To recognize the best user-generated videos of the previous year, YouTube also launched its own awards promotion. YouTube awarded its users in seven categories: Most Creative, Most Inspirational, Best Series, Best Comedy Video, Best Music Video, Best Commentary, and Most Adorable.
2007 June
It has earned its popularity throughout the world. So, an idea struck to build its versions in local languages. Hence, this idea came into action that month.
2007 July and November
CNN and YouTube produced a presidential debate program. Democratic and Republican US presidential hopefuls handled questions related to the present scenario. Also, these questions are submitted through YouTube. The recently held presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden began on 30 September 2020, Wednesday and ended on 23 October 2020, Friday.
2008 March
It updated the feature to upload 480p videos by this month. Also, it introduced the video analytics tool so that the user can analyze the uploaded videos.
2008 November
YouTube held out an agreement with the film industries like MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS. This agreement allows the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site. It was first accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows".
2008 December
YouTube added a feature of the audio swap. Therefore, It helps the users to add audio to their video.
2009 July
It updated the features to support high resolutions videos. The supported resolution of videos was up to 720p.
2009 November
This month, YouTube supports the resolution up to 1080p. Thus, the quality of the videos got increased.
2009 December
YouTube has included the feature of automatic voice recognition. It generally used this feature to generate auto-generated captions (subtitles) for the videos. Besides, the Vivo added many YouTube videos upon its launch over the year and had inflated views.
2010 March
The most important for a publisher is to know how people like published items (videos). Ratings by the viewers helped a lot with video publishing channels. The company introduced the Thumbs rating system. It also made channels easier to get feedback on the posted videos.
2010 July
YouTube added the feature of functioning with 4K videos. The user can upload, and even view videos with a resolution of 4K.
2011 November
It launched YouTube Analytics. Youtube Analytics lets users monitor the performance of their channels and videos. It also helps to handle claimed content with up-to-date metrics and reports. A ton of data is available in different reports (e.g. Views, Traffic sources, Demographics).
Youtube also included feature film rentals. It helps users to find the greatest and latest movies and shows on YouTube.
2012 August
Google video was one of the free video-hosting services from google. It was also similar to YouTube. This service ultimately got shut down and the video content of this service was migrated to YouTube.
2014 October
It also supported 60fps frame rates in the videos. It made videos more smooth and clear.
2015 March
YouTube supported 360-degree videos. These videos are also known as immersive videos or spherical videos.
2015 October
It launched youtube red. YouTube Red lets users enjoy videos across all of YouTube without ads. It also lets users save videos to watch offline on their phone or tablet and play videos in the background, all for $9.99 a month.
2018 April 3
Nasim Najafi Aghdam attacked the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. She shot with a 9 mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol and four injuries were reported. Also, she shot herself in her chest after the shooting.
2019 November
YouTube announced that the service would phase out the YouTube Studio in the classic version to all YouTube creators by the spring of 2020. YouTube made it available and accessible to some YouTube creators by the end of March 2020.
In June 2020, it then phased out the ability to use categories.
In conclusion, there might be some changes and updates in the future. All the facts are based on the research done in 2020.
