YouTube Facts And Things You Definitely Didn’t Know!

The idea of creating a channel called YouTube first came way back in the year 2005, to Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were PayPal employees at the time. The official platform was launched on 15 February, 2005. Through the months, YouTube grew and was brought over by Google Inc., for  $ 1.65 million. While we know the rest as history, here are some facts you probably didn’t know about one of the largest video storing and sharing platform!

1. YouTube was originally a dating site 

According to the tales of gone by, the concept of YouTube didn’t come straight away. The platform was initially supposed to be a video dating site called Tune In To Hook Up. Inspired by HotorNot, the idea wasn’t accepted the way the founders thought and was eventually scrapped. The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two different events. The first was Karim’s inability to find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e mail attachment limitations.

2. The first ever YouTube video 

The first ever YouTube video ever uploaded was shot by Yakov Lapitsky. The video shows Karim in front of an elephant enclosure, talking about long trunks! While it wasn’t all that special a video, it still garnered a lot of attention and raked in 48,043,480 views since being uploaded on 23 April, 2005. Check out the video here if you haven’t already!

3. 400 Hours of videos per minute 

According to recent statistics, more than 400 hours of video is uploaded to the site per minute. With over one billion users on YouTube at any given point of the day, stats show one third of the population uses this video sharing and watching platform on an every day basis!

4. YouTube’s April’s Fools Day prank

YouTube’s first April’s Fool’s Day prank was way back in the year 2008. The first prank was redirected to Rick Astley’s song, Never Gonna Give You Up and since then, the pranks have been known as Rickrolling!

5. Charlie Bit My Finger remains to be the most liked video 

If you don’t take into account the music and song videos, then without contest, the most liked video on YouTube is the Charlie Bit My Finger video! Uploaded over ten years ago, the video has over 860 million views from the time of its upload. Watch it here if you haven’t or if you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years.

Despite being created less than two decades ago, it would take an average human over 1700 years to watch ALL the videos on the platform. Created with the idea of bringing people together on common ground, YouTube has reached a success stance which even the founders didn’t think possible!