If you’re someone who uses the internet daily, you’ve probably used the website YouTube at least once in your life. The video-sharing platform was created way back in 2005 by three former PayPal employees. The original idea was to create an online dating website. Well, that didn’t work but they saw the potential of the website they created to stream videos. Thus, YouTube was born. Who would’ve thought the team that was once operating in a garage would become the second most-visited site by people. YouTube is one of the most visited platforms by a lot of people around the globe and is the number one go-to place when it comes to everything video-related. If you want to learn more about YouTube then you came to the right place!
Content List
1#) Stream for hours (or days) on YouTube
Did you know that around 500 hours worth of videos is uploaded every minute on the platform! That’s one of the craziest YouTube facts out there when you come to think about it. On a single day, billions of videos are watched. As of writing, the longest video upload on YouTube is 571 hours long. The video was made by Jonathan Harchick and was a compilation of his trip to Chile. For those who know their way around the technical side of YouTube and video making, the fact that he was able to make a video this long is impressive. YouTube only limits uploaders to 20 GB per video. For you to make a video that almost lasts 24 days means you need to compress the file. Imagine how much time and data it took for the video to upload successfully!
2#) The first video to reach billions of views
If we’re talking about viral content, Korean singer and rapper Psy surpassed a lot of people’s expectations. His hit song, Gangnam Style, was the first video to reach a billion views. We’re pretty sure you’ve heard the song and saw the viral dance craze. Flash mobs, celebrities, and even some politicians had their fair share of participating in the viral dance craze.
Though Gangnam Style was the first video to hit one billion, Despacito, a song by Luis Fonsi is currently the most viewed video on Youtube with 6.9 billion views. Despacito was able to garner a billion views after 97 days while Gangnam Style took 5 months.
3#) Google owns YouTube
Yes, the number one most-visited website owns YouTube! Google paid a whopping $1.65 billion in 2006 for the then years and a half old YouTube. If you think about it now, that investment was good! Later on, Google admitted that they overpaid for YouTube. How much do you ask? They overpaid $1 billion! At the time, YouTube was nowhere near the price Google paid for. Though they intended to pay more to secure the deal and to scare off other bidders.
4#) Utube sued YouTube
When YouTube registered their domain site on Valentine’s day 2005, there was already an existing company that sounds exactly like YouTube. Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corporation bought their domain site, utube.com, in 1996. When YouTube was created, a lot of people were misspelling the video platform’s website and were always redirected to the tube mill company’s site. This caused a lot of lags and made the Youtube site crash a lot. The rollform equipment company sued YouTube because of the inconvenience it caused to the small Ohio company. The charges were dropped later on and the rollform company bought another domain to minimize confusion.
5#) YouTube’s very first video
Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube, was the first person to upload a video on YouTube. The video is entitled “Me At The Zoo’ and is 18 seconds long. Just like what the title suggests, the video features a young Jawed showing off some elephants at the zoo. As of writing, the video has more than 100 million views. Since Jawed was the first one to upload a video way back in 2005, he is considered to be the first YouTuber.
6#) YouTube in numbers
Every month, YouTube gets 1.9 billion unique viewers. The platform can be accessed in 90 countries and supports 80 different languages. Most of the views that YouTube is getting are from mobile phone users. To be exact, around 70% uses YouTube mobile. The most-watched YouTube videos are music videos. The most-watched music video in 24 hours is the song How You Like That by South Korean girl group, Blackpink. Every year, YouTube earns around $15 billion!
7#) How to get started as a YouTuber?
If you’re thinking of monetizing a video on YouTube, you must become an official YouTube Partner first. There are some qualifications you must possess before you become a YouTube partner. For starters, you must have more than 1,000 subscribers in your channel, your videos should reach 4,000 viewership per year, and make sure that the YouTube Partner Program is available in your country. Only then can you start making money off your YouTube videos. There is a 40% increase every year on the number of channels earning 6-figures per year.