A brief history of YouTube
February 14, 2005
PayPal alums Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim begin work on a "Flickr or HotorNot for video." They register youtube.com the next day.
April 23, 2005
"Me at the Zoo" — 19 seconds of Karim in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo — is the first video posted to the site.
October 21, 2005
Nike is the first major company to embrace YouTube's promotional potential. A video of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho dancing the samba with a ball is an early viral hit.
December 15, 2005
YouTube officially debuts. Two days later, Saturday Night Live airs "Lazy Sunday." The digital short attracts nearly 2 million views in a week and makes creator Andy Samberg a star. Two months later, NBC asks YouTube to remove the clip; it complies.
April 5, 2006
A day after Sequoia injects $8 million in funding, Judson Laipply uploads "The Evolution of Dance," a six-minute mashup of 50 years of dance crazes. It becomes the most popular clip in YouTube history, with 131 million — plus views.
October 9, 2006
Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion.
July 23, 2007
YouTube and CNN host their first presidential debate, featuring citizen-submitted video questions. In the 2008 election cycle, 7 of the 16 presidential candidates announced their campaigns via YouTube.
April 11, 2009
Susan Boyle becomes a global celebrity after her audition on a British TV talent show is uploaded and viewed 80 million times. In December, her first album became the best-selling debut ever for a female artist.
October 12, 2009
YouTube passes 1 billion videos a day but remains unprofitable. Analysts estimated 2009 revenue of $240 million, but YouTube spent more than $700 million storing and serving all that video.
January 2010
YouTube introduced an online film rentals service, which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK. The service offers over 6,000 films.
March 2010
YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.
March 31, 2010
The YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site.
November 2011
The Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface.
December 2011
YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of social networking sites. At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was introduced with a darker shade of red, the first change in design since October 2006.
Starting in 2010 and continuing to the present, Alexa ranked YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook.
In October 2012, for the first-time ever, YouTube offered a live stream of the U.S. presidential debate and partnered with ABC News to do so.
December 4, 2012
YouTube relaunched its design and layout which is very similar to the mobile and tablet app version of the site.
December 21, 2012
Gangnam Style became the first YouTube video to surpass one billion views.
March 21, 2013
the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion.
In 2013, YouTube continued to reach out to mainstream media, launching YouTube Comedy Week and the YouTube Music Awards. Both events were met with negative to mixed reception.
VOCABULARY
- citizen-submitted - гражданский представитель