Skip to main content

YouTube launched 17 years ago today with this video

It was 17 years ago on Sunday that a 25-year-old guy called Jawed Karim uploaded the first video to YouTube, kickstarting a service that went on to become the go-to hub for video streaming and giving anyone with a camera and a good idea the chance to make a living out of their own content.

The first video was, it has to be said, nothing to write home about. The low-res, 19-second clip (below), called Me at the Zoo, features YouTube co-founder Karim at San Diego Zoo, helpfully pointing out that elephants have remarkably long trunks.

Me at the zoo

Like most videos that landed on the streaming site in those early days, the clip lacks the highly produced touches that feature so heavily in much of the content that fills the platform today.

Recommended Videos

“All right, so here we are in front of the elephants,” Karim says to the camera on YouTube’s first-ever video. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks, and that’s cool, and that’s pretty much all there is to say.”

Of course, when he recorded and uploaded the clip, Karim had know idea that YouTube would go on to become the phenomenon that it is today. Nor that his video would rack up hundreds of millions of views in the years that followed.

A month after Karim’s video hit the site in April 2005, YouTube launched a public beta of the service before an official launch in November of that year. At around the same time, Karim left YouTube to study for a master’s degree in computer science at Stanford University, but received shares worth tens of millions of dollars when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. Karim went on to co-found a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures (now YVentures), with Airbnb and Reddit among those benefiting from investments.

The creator of YouTube’s first video occasionally edits the clip’s description to express his opinion if the company makes a change to the platform that he doesn’t like. Last year, for example, Karim criticized YouTube’s removal of public dislike counts.

As of April 2022, the elephant clip has been viewed more than 228 million times and received more than 11 million comments. A recent one said: “Let’s be honest, we’re all going to show our children this video one day.”

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
More AI may be coming to YouTube in a big way
a content creator recording a thing in the kitchen with a bowl of food

YouTube content creators could soon be able to brainstorm video topic, title, and thumbnail ideas with Gemini AI as part of the "brainstorm with Gemini" experiment Google is currently testing, the company announced via its Creator Insider channel.

The feature is first being released to a small number of selected content creators for critique, as a spokesperson from the company told TechCrunch, before the company decides whether to roll it out to all users. "We're collecting feedback at this stage to make sure we're developing these features thoughtfully and will improve the feature based on feedback," the video's host said.

Read more
YouTube tells creators to start labeling ‘realistic’ AI content
YouTube on Roku.

YouTube is taking steps to try to help viewers better understand if what they’re watching has been created, whether completely or in part, by generative AI.

“Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves -- from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process,” YouTube said in a message shared on Monday. “But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.”

Read more
How to make a GIF from a YouTube video
woman sitting and using laptop

 

Sometimes, whether you're chatting with friends or posting on social media, words just aren't enough -- you need a GIF to fully convey your feelings. If there's a moment from a YouTube video that you want to snip into a GIF, the good news is that you don't need complex software to so it. There are now a bunch of ways to make a GIF from a YouTube video right in your browser.

Read more