A dream imagined by three PayPal employees turns into one of the most frequently visited website of all time.
YouTube was formed by three friends employed by PayPal on Feb 15, 2005 after realizing an opening in the market existed for a website where users could upload and share videos. The three uploaded and shared the first video “Me at the zoo,” showing founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo, on April 23, 2005.
Starting in May, an official public promoting beta was launched, attracting an average of 30,000 users a day. Along with the promotional beta, YouTube promised a free iPod Nano to one random selected member a day until the end of the year.
In November 2005, YouTube received $3.5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. By this time, the website had more than 200,000 registered users and was streaming more than 2 million videos per day. Today, 10 hours of video content is uploaded to Youtube every minute.
Continuing into April 2006, Sequoia Capital had invested more than $11.5 million in YouTube, and was bought out in November by Google for $1.6 billion.
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The Evolution of Dance- Judson Laipply just happens to be the main character in the number one viewed and favorited video clip on YouTube of all time, with over 126 million views. Laipply, a 33-year-old American motivational speaker from Bucyrus, Ohio, was filmed at the finale of one of his shows called, “Inspirational Humor.” Whether it was a college, high school or corperate appearance, the performance had become a crowd favorite. The dance itself is performed to a soundtrack of 33 popular songs from oldest to newest, starting with “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley and ending with “Bye Bye Bye” from N’SYNC. Laipply smoothly transitions to each song, dancing to each generational dance.
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Fred Figglehorn- Lucas Cruikshank is Fred Figglehorn, a fictional 6-year-old character with anger problems and over 380 million views on YouTube. He uses his mother’s camera to communicate his everyday issues and activities, but in a manner so immature, it’s humorous. Fred is constantantly rambling, crying and yelling in his videos. His inability to cope with his problems and his need to complain was introduced on May 1, 2008. Since then, he has received over 1 million subscribers on his channel, appeared on The Tyra Banks Show as well as on Nickelodeon’s iCarly. Cruikshank, the 16-year-old teenager who voices and plays Fred, lives in Columbus, Neb., where his online videos take place.
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Six years in the making- A fixed face becomes familiar as the setting behind it continuously changes, flashing photo after photo. The clothes and hair of this person change as well, varying from relaxed to clean cut, to crazy. Slowly, the facial features of this person show slight changes. After 2,356 photos, one sees the result of a project that took six years.
At the age of 19 Noah Kalina decided to take a photo of himself each day for six years of his life, starting on Jan 11, 2000. When finished, the video was uploaded eight months later with background music from Carly Camondo, a piece consisting of haunting piano. This video has over 13 million views and is arguably one of the first web videos used for art instead of voyeuristic purposes.
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Charlie bit my finger- “Ouch, Charlie. That really hurt!,” Harry repeats in an English accent as his infant brother bites down on his finger. Harry’s face turns red as he confronts the little brother on his lap, ”Ouch, Charlie.” But in a matter of seconds, the two boys begin to giggle. “Charlie bit me.” Harry says, smiling as if it never happened.
Charlie bit my finger – again! is probably one of the most adorable humor videos on YouTube. The video has over 122 million views and 234,000 text comments. The original video is of Charlie biting his own finger, but when Harry was mixed into the scene, the video became a hit. What happened to be a cute moment for the parents of Charlie and Harry , who were sharing their lives with their relatives by uploading the video, quickly became one of the highest viewed viral-videos of all time.
