When was created "YouTube" (YouTube). Founding date, creators

In 2005, when "Youtube" was created, its owners did not even expect that they would eventually become the owners of the largest network video service in the world. It all started as an innocent venture of three friends. None of them thought that they would change the entire world web.

Site appearance

Today, the separate term "video scoring" has already been formed, which means the rapid distribution of video on the Internet among users from anywhere in the world. "Youtube" is also called hosting, since it is on its servers that millions of user files accessible through the site are stored.

It all started in 2005. On the eve of the three friends (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Javid Kerim), who worked at PayPal, decided to develop their own service. Around the appearance of "Youtube" there are several journalistic legends and inventions. One of them says that the idea of creating a service for distributing video came to Steve Chen's head after two friends were at a PayPal party. The third comrade did not have time for the corporate. Friends then suffered a long time to transmit video from the holiday. When "Youtube" was created, and it became a notable phenomenon of the Internet environment, the media replicated this story as an example of "illumination", typical for the emergence of unique and profitable start-ups. The creators of the service myth about the party in PayPal refuted, but in the mass consciousness it was fixed reliably.

Original format

It is interesting that when "Youtube" was created, in its functions it was somewhat different from today's format, which brought him fame. Then (in 2005) Chad Hurley was guided by the already existing sites that were intended for spreading media files. First of all, the new project took over the features of the successful HotOrNot service. On this site, users after registration could share their own photos. The main tool on the site was evaluation technology. Users could vote for their favorite pictures, thus making them more popular in the overall rating.

What was HotOrNot different from "Youtube"? Video hosting by its concept was guided by video. Three friends-creators of the service took the interface HotOrNot for the basis of the interface of their brainchild. Later, with the advent of popularity, they were accused of partial plagiarism. However, "Youtube" in its functionally noticeably different from the sites-prototypes. In addition, on the Internet, any start-up could become a rethinking of already existing resources. For example, in the same months, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also created his social network as a photohost and only then significantly changed its format.

Ambitious start-up

Chad Hurley, who owned the concept of a new service, was a designer by profession. By the way, it was he who created the famous logo of the PayPal payment system. Hurley owned the idea, but he could not realize it technically. He asked for help from two of his friends, who worked as engineering engineers. Chen and Karim appreciated the idea and started preparing a new site.

By February 14, 2005, when the service was finally launched, three friends had already resigned from PayPal and were only engaged in their own start-up. In such a case, there is always a share of the risk. The idea could not work, and then the developers would lose their own money and time. But the trio from PayPal has not lost.

Beta testing

At first the project was conceived as a dating site with a unique section with video content. Therefore, the developers registered his domain on February 14 - Valentine's Day. The next month left for that to finish "polishing" the site code.

The first video was posted on the service on April 23, 2005. The creator of "Youtube" Javid Kerim recorded a clip in which he stood on a background of cells with elephants from the zoo in San Diego. The video lasted 18 seconds and was not anything remarkable. However, it was the beginning of public beta testing of the site. The developers wanted to test all the functions of their offspring. Since the project was a pilot, no one knew what interest would be to him and whether the site cope with the influx of new visitors.

Change of concept

Later, the creator of "Youtube" Javid Kerim admitted that he started advertising his own website with the help of mailing to friends. The founders of the project did not have a large budget. Information about their video sharing was distributed with the help of word of mouth and rumors. But very soon the site began to receive more and more new visitors.

Users, however, did not pay attention to the original concept of the site. When the "Youtube" was created, the founders planned to make from him a platform for dating on the Internet. But the new registered users downloaded completely heterogeneous content. These were not only personal videos, with which you could get to know a person closer, but also various videos or even music videos. It soon became clear that "Youtube" could become a platform for storing content of any orientation. Then the founders of the service began to rewrite the source code of the site. Already in May 2005, video hosting experienced the first major update in its functionality and interface. The Trinity finally abandoned the idea of a dating site.

Fighting against competitors

What was the success of the new video service, which allowed it to become one of the fastest growing sites of the US Internet segment in the first months of its existence? The history of "Youtube" began with the idea of creating a project, through which it would be possible to quickly share content with friends. All sites that existed in this niche in 2005 did not have such convenient functionality and interactive.

For example, it was Google Video and VIMEO. To view the video on these services, users had to go through the registration process. Already this alone made these projects more inconvenient and slower than the new idea of three friends from PayPal. In addition, competitors had noticeable restrictions on the duration and amount of content being downloaded. The history of "Youtube" showed that the owners of Google and VIMEO went on the wrong path, while Hurley, Chen and Karim guessed the expectations of most of the Internet audience.

Advantages of hosting

YouTube's competitors made it possible to watch the video only after the user downloaded it to the hard drive. In addition, to play the file you needed a special player, since some programs did not read the proposed format or did not have the necessary codecs. So it turned out that the procedure for viewing the video turned into a long puzzle, especially for those people who were on the World Wide Web for the first time.

"Youtube" (video hosting) offered its visitors quick solutions and user-friendly interface. All you had to do was go through the link and click the "start" button, after which the video was already playing on the computer screen. From the very beginning, developers have been concerned about the speed of the service. For him, only the best and best quality servers were selected, providing instant content loading. Of course, the site could also slow down, but in that case the cause of the problem was hidden in a bad internet connection of a particular user.

Growing your audience

The one who came up with "Youtube", was not wasting his time. The founders of the project provided their offspring with many new functions. For example, the site offered a high-quality systematization of content. There were rubrics on which the video was divided. This was helped by tags - tags that users put their own videos.

Around YouTube began to form a community. Very soon the service began to go not only to look at the channels of friends, but also then to find a certain video on the Internet. For example, it could be a clip of a popular music band or artist. In addition, the site system offered users links to related videos. So the guest of service could get stuck on it for a few hours.

Investments

The owners of the site developed a system of advertising and marketing on the Internet, which every day brought them thousands of new visitors. In social networks and on themed sites, widgets appeared with links to YouTube. So there were users who did not even hear about the service at all. In the first months of the project's existence, the interaction of the site with MySpace was especially productive.

Soon rich investors attracted attention to YouTube. The company received money from venture funds interested in the development of the project and its own profit thanks to an ambitious service. In the summer of 2006, video hosting was already the tenth most visited site in the US. Site owners signed contracts for exclusive content placement with key labels and studios on the US media market.

International success

In November 2006, "Youtube" was bought by Google, most famous for its universal Internet search engine. The deal amounted to 1.6 billion dollars, which was unheard of for start-ups of that time. Anyway, but Google has not lost it.

In 2007, when "Youtube" appeared in Russia, it was already one of the most famous sites on the Internet, regardless of the country. Domestic localization was also successful. Soon the site was flooded with Russian-speaking users who created one of the largest communities inside video hosting.

Today, the most popular on the site are music videos, humorous shows, news and trailers. On "Youtube" a new genre has appeared - the so-called video blogs. Users create their own channels and download thematic videos intended for a wide audience. The most successful video blogs monetize and bring profit to their owners. YouTube has often been censored. Since recently, hosting is banned in China and a number of other countries. Despite this, today the site is the third largest in the world by the size of its audience and the number of clicks.