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Youtube Is Five Today

Five years ago to this day, 26-year-old Jawed Karim uploaded a video called ‘Me at the zoo’ to Youtube.com, a website he had just co-founded. Karim probably didn’t know that the video, which featured him making trite innuendos about elephants, would be the first of 120 million on a website that today boasts around 2 billion hits per day.

Even by the end of its first year, Youtube’s viewing statistics were impressive. After only seven months online, it was the host of 8 million video views per day. In January 2008 it was revealed that approximately ten hours of video were uploaded every single minute, which has risen to 24 hours per minute this year. Youtube’s growth led to web giant Google Inc. purchasing it for a whopping $1.65bn in stock.

Although Youtube has come under fire for perceived weakness when it comes to protecting copyrighted material, the website has also had an enormous social impact, and in 2008 it was awarded a George Foster Peabody Award for being a "a 'Speakers' Corner,' where Internet users can upload, view and share clips, is an ever-expanding archive/bulletin board that both embodies and promotes democracy."