It’s crazy to think that the platform where creators perform hair-raising stunts and rake in more views than many TV channels all started with a simple clip of one man at the zoo.
“Alright, so here we are, in front of the elephants,” were the first words ever spoken on YouTube when the website launched back in 2005.
The 19-second video was titled, ‘Me at the zoo’, and now has over 323 million views 19 years later.
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People have speculated how much money the man has made from the video, as ads are the main source of revenue for YouTube but the fact is no one knows.
Not that he would need the money… What many might not realize is that the young man talking in this clip is in fact YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim and to this day, it is the only video on his channel.
Ending the short clip, Karim signed off with, “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
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It is very different to the seasoned pros on the site these days with signature sign-offs from creators often reminding their viewers to ‘like and subscribe’ to their channel.
Karim was 25 years old when he unknowingly uploaded the world’s first vlog of him standing in front of the elephant exhibit at San Diego Zoo onto the website which now has nearly five billion active users visit each month.
He co-founded the video sharing platform with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, who had all met while working together for PayPal.
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The trio had initially planned to start a dating site but turned their attention to creating a place for people to share their home videos online.
A year after Karim uploaded his now-famous zoo video, YouTube was sold to Google and he cashed in a whopping $64 million for his share of the company.
Now, he is a software engineer and internet entrepreneur and has since invested in other companies including Reddit and Eventbrite.
Karim was also one of Airbnb’s first investors in 2009, and now has an incredible net worth of around $350 million dollars.
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The website he co-founded to initially help ordinary people share their home movies on the internet has changed exponentially in the last two decades.
YouTubers are now celebrities in their own right and this month MrBeast became the most subscribed channel with 273 million subscribers.
We see life changing events live streamed on the site, witness world records being beaten and even watch politicians battle out elections, but it all started with one young man at the zoo.