Featured Image Credit: SOPA Images / Getty Images / YouTube
If we were to jump on YouTube now, we're most likely to be greeted with popular creators like MrBeast, tonnes of pranks, podcasts and don't forget, endless meme clips.
It’s hard to believe that when the platform was first introduced in 2005, the first video was simply a man at the zoo.
“Alright, so here we are, in front of the elephants,” were the first words ever spoken on YouTube back on April 23 2005.
The 19-second video titled, ‘Me at the zoo’, has amassed over 330 million views 19 years later.
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Funnily enough, the video wasn't posted by a random zoo visitor but the man in the video is actually YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.
And to this day, it is the only video on his channel.
People have speculated how much money Karim has made from the video, as ads are the main source of revenue for YouTube but the fact is no one knows.
Ending the short clip, Karim signed off with, “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
It's quite refreshing from the bombardment of 'like and subscribe to my channel' that we're met with in almost every YouTube video. At the time he uploaded the video, Karim was just 25, standing in front of the elephant exhibit at San Diego Zoo. He co-founded the video-sharing platform with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley after they all met while working at PayPal.
Originally, they had plans for a dating site but decided to create a platform for sharing home videos instead.
Probably lucky they did as the platform now sees five billion active users every month. Not to mention, a year after Karim uploaded his zoo video, YouTube was sold to Google and he made a staggering $64 million for his stake in the company.
Now, Karim is a software engineer and internet entrepreneur, with investments in companies like Reddit and Eventbrite.
He was also an early investor in Airbnb back in 2009, and today his net worth stands at around $350 million.
YouTube has changed dramatically since its early days, starting with helping ordinary people share their home movies online to a globally accessible hub of diverse content.
But there's nothing like seeing the early days of a popular platform, almost like seeing photos of celebrities before they were famous.
From live-streamed events to political battles, it all traces back to that one young man at the zoo.
