It’s amazing to think that the global platform where creators perform daring stunts and attract more viewers than many TV channels began 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 site launched in 2005.
This 19-second video, titled ‘Me at the Zoo,’ has amassed over 323 million views in the past 19 years.
While many speculate about the earnings from this video due to YouTube’s ad-based revenue model, the exact amount remains unknown.
Interestingly, the young man in the video is Jawed Karim, a co-founder of YouTube, and this is the only video on his channel.
Karim ended the brief video with, “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
Today’s YouTube stars often end their videos with calls to action like “like and subscribe,” marking a stark difference from the platform’s humble beginnings.
When Karim, then 25, posted this first-ever vlog at the San Diego Zoo, it quickly went viral. Today, YouTube receives nearly five billion visits per month from active users.
Alongside Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, who were his colleagues at PayPal, Karim co-founded YouTube.
The trio initially planned to launch a dating site but shifted their focus to creating a platform for sharing home videos online.
A year after posting his now-iconic zoo video, Karim sold his stake in YouTube to Google for an impressive $64 million.
He is now an internet entrepreneur and software engineer, with investments in Reddit, Eventbrite, and other businesses.
Karim boasts an impressive net worth of approximately $350 million and was one of the early investors in Airbnb in 2009.
Over the past 20 years, YouTube has evolved significantly from its original purpose of sharing home movies.
Today, YouTubers are considered celebrities in their own right. Recently, MrBeast surpassed all other channels, reaching 275 million subscribers.
We now watch live-streamed life events, record-breaking achievements, and even political debates on the site, but it all started with one young man at the zoo.
