20 interesting facts about YouTube that you probably didn't know... and will surprise you

[shukla7789]

ANDoutuber, ElRubius, Nyan the cat, Mr Beast, PewDiePie, Baby Shark, LoFi Girl, ASMR… the last two decades of popular culture would not be the same without the existence of YouTube, the social network that forever changed the way we see the world. But the history of YouTube is full of curiosities that you surely don't know and that will leave you speechless. Do you want to check it out? Let's go!


1. Who created YouTube
As we told you in our history of social media , YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim . Remember this name well, because it will appear more often in this article

2. Why YouTube is called YouTube
The name “YouTube” is derived from two words: “You” and “Tube.” The term “tube” has historically been used as a colloquial way of referring to television, so YouTube could be translated as something like… Teletú

3. The beginnings in California
YouTube's initial headquarters were above a pizzeria and a amazon database restaurant in San Mateo, California, just 17 kilometers as the crow flies from the place where Sergei Brin and Larry Page had created Google 8 years earlier, as we told you in the article about the history of Google .

4. YouTube was born as a dating portal
In fact, the founders' idea was not to create a video social network as we know it today but… a dating portal based on video profiles . In fact , Karim himself confessed that the first slogan of Youtube was: Tune in, Hook up, which means “Tune in and connect”… although in reality “hook up” could also be translated as “hook up with someone” so…

5. Frustrating beginnings
20 INTERESTING FACTS you didn't know about YouTube
As a dating site, YouTube was not doing very well and they barely had any videos, so they made two decisions:

One, upload videos of planes taking off and landing. According to Karim, they were “desperate” to have videos to show. No, don’t try to look for them, he himself admitted to having deleted them when the website… took off
In parallel, they posted ads in Las Vegas and Los Angeles offering $20 to women who uploaded videos introducing themselves. Spoiler alert: it didn't work, and none of them uploaded any videos… So they decided to abandon the dating site idea.
6. What was the first video in the history of YouTube?
Jawed Karim posted the first official video in YouTube history. It is titled “Me at the zoo” and was uploaded by the YouTube co-founder on April 23, 2005. The video features a very young Karim at a San Diego zoo, in front of the elephant cage, commenting on how long their trunks are .