YouTube celebrated its 21st anniversary at the weekend, and in honor of that milestone, here are some fun facts about the video sharing website.
Over the past 21 years, YouTube has become synonymous with video sharing and has helped to make it easier than ever for people to get their message out there.
Indeed, the website has helped to make stars out of many people, from PewDiePie to Mr Beast and many others, who all started off small with a camera and a dream.
But now the website has celebrated its 21st anniversary, so to recognise the milestone, here are some fun facts about YouTube that you might not know.
YouTube is the second-most visited website
YouTube is a global phenomenon and is the second-most visited website in the world, behind only Google – which, of course, owns YouTube.
YouTube has more than 2.5 billion active users every month, and there is more than 15 billion videos on the site to choose from. Currently, just five countries have banned YouTube – China, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and Iran.
Its founders were also involved in another iconic platform
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Jawid Karim and Steve Chen. The three had been early employees at another giant of the online world, PayPal. They are credited with developing some of its core components – for instance Jawed developed its real-time anti-fraud system. When that company was bought by eBay, the three became wealthy and, having left the company, were looking for a new challenge.
The idea for YouTube is surrounded in myth
Where the idea for YouTube came from has several myths surrounding it. One story is that Chad and Steve came up with the idea after they had problems sharing videos they’d shot at a dinner party. Jawid has denied this happened and Steve has since admitted that the story was good for creating a story around the brand.
Jawid says the idea came after the notorious Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show – the one with Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ – when the clip couldn’t easily be found afterwards on the internet.
YouTube was also apparently nearly a dating site. Chad and Steve wanted to create a video version of an online dating service, but when they struggled to find enough videos for that, they changed plans and opened the site up to any video.
You can still see the first ever video uploaded to YouTube
The first video ever uploaded to YouTube is still there. It is entitled ‘Me at the Zoo’ and shows Jawid on his visit to the San Diego Zoo.
In the early days, clips could only be 100MB in size and clips lasted only around 30 seconds.
The most viewed video is for pre-schoolers
Of the billions of videos on YouTube, one stands above the rest in terms of views – with more than 16.5 billion since it was uploaded. That video? Baby Shark. For perspective, there are only about 8 billion people in the world. However, as any parents of a pre-schooler who has loved the video will know, it will be played upteen times until the child grows out of it (any parent reading this – they will do. Eventually.)
Biggest YouTube viewers
While YouTube was founded in the US, that isn’t the country that uses YouTube the most. While the USA is in second place, with 253 million users, it is way behind India, which has 491 million users of the site. Brazil has the third highest number of users, at 144 million.
The most searched term on YouTube
The most searched term on YouTube in the US in recent years isn’t Baby Shark, it is ASMR. It seems people can’t get enough of videos that give sensations of relaxation and wellbeing and ‘brain tingles’.
‘Song’ is the second most searched for term. The most searched for creator is MrBeast.
