Youtube, the world’s largest video sharing website, is perhaps familiar to us, but how much do you know about this site? Let\'s see six amazing YouTube facts that may surprise you.
PayPal’s role in creating YouTube
Before establishing Youtube in 2005, three Youtube cofounders including Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim had a chance to work together at an Internet start up called PayPal. Actually, Hurley designed the PayPal logo after reading one article about this payment company and e-mailing it to look for a job. Youtube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buy-out of PayPal, which meant that if there was no PayPal, there would be no YouTube.
The logo of PayPal
YouTube’s origins as a Dating Site
Three cofounders didn’t think about YouTube concept when they founded it. Therefore, YouTube ran as a video dating site dubbed “Tune In Hook Up” influenced by HotorNot. YouTube we know today is inspired by two major events. Firstly, Karim couldn’t find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction”. Then Hurley and Chen failed in sharing video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations.
An initial idea about the YouTube site
YouTube vs. Utube
The domain name YouTube.com registered on Valentine’s Day in 2005 resulted in a big misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment based in Perrysburg, Ohio because its domain was “utube.com” and sounded the same to “YouTube”. This manufacturing company failed in blaming its business damage to YouTube and now named “utubeonline.com”.
Many people previously misunderstood that YouTube also called utube
The First Ever YouTube Video
The first video ever uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005 was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo. It captured co-founder Jawed Karim in front of the elephant enclosure going on about long trunks and attracted about 4,282,497 views since its debut.
Some amazing YouTube Statistics
As of Feb. 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide that searched about 92 billion pages per month. It means that we spend around 2.9 billion hours (over 325,000 years) on YouTube in a month.
These statistics are just for the main YouTube website, not including video watched on mobile devices
The most viewed and liked video
The most viewed video of all time not counting music videos is “Charlie bit my finger” with an astounding 282,151,886 (at the time of writing). However, if you include music videos from the U.S., Justin Bieber, whose “Baby” video has over 466 million views, took the crown. The star is surely happy when hearing the good news.
I am a web developer. I love technology and have a passion of writing articles about technology news, especially new products.
Articles Source: Six Amazing Facts about YouTube
