YouTube celebrates 15 years of existence! On this occasion, we invite you to discover or rediscover the first video posted on the platform. Entitled “Me at the zoo,” this cult 18-second clip was released on April 23, 2005, at 8:31 p.m. by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.
“So here we are in front of the elephants, the cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really long trunks … it’s cool and that’s about all there is to it has to say ”exclaims Jawed Karim in a video called to stay in the annals of the web. Shot at the San Diego Zoo, the video is obviously of little interest.
However, this is a historical sequence, seen by more than 90 million Internet users. It’s still less than the song Despacito by Luis Fonsi (6.7 billion views).
At the origins of the creation of YouTube: the “nipplegate”
YouTube was therefore created 15 years ago. The platform was imagined and developed by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, former employees at PayPal.
Legend has it that Jawed Karim had the idea to set up a website allowing easy sharing of videos.
He says the idea began to sprout in his mind during the “nipplegate”. During the 2004 Super Bowl, Justin Timberlake accidentally stripped Janet Jackson’s right breast on stage.
Frustrated at not finding the video of the event on the web, the young man decides to launch YouTube.
A year after the video was posted at the San Diego Zoo, the three fellows sold their baby to Google for $ 1.6 billion in stock.
Today, YouTube generates $ 15 billion annually. The platform has more than two billion active monthly users.
