- Oh, hello there, young man

or lady.

Let me tell you the story of one of your favorite

websites as I knew it back in my day.

It's story time.

SoYouTube is a phenomenon

that we have all come to love.

For many of us, it's not only a site that we use

to learn things, like how to fix the sink,

but it's also the site where we consume

most of our entertainment.

But even though many of us have made

this website part of our everyday lives,

very few of us know about its origins

or just how big it really is today.

So, today, I'm going to give you some

little-known information about the website

that you've come to love so much.

So, here it is.

10 fascinating facts about YouTube

you didn't know.

Number one is stats and traffic.

There are more than 1 billion unique users

that visit YouTube every month,

so it's no wonder that billions of hours

of video get watched daily,

making YouTube the Internet's largest

video hosting website.

But what really makes YouTube unique

is that many of the same people that are consuming

this insane amount of content

are the same people creating it.

In fact, more than 300 hours of video are uploaded

to YouTube every minute.

To put that into context, the amount of video

uploaded to the website every month is more than

the three major U.S. television networks have created

in the last 60 years.

While YouTube was created and is hosted in the U.S.,

more than 80% of traffic that comes to the website

is from outside of the U.S.,

meaning that all of those views allow people like me

to make a living off of what they love,

which is making videos.

So, thank you for watching no matter

where it is: at home, at work,

on your phone on the toilet.

Some of you are watching this video

right now on the pooper.

I know.

Number two is origins.

YouTube was founded in February of 2005

by three early PayPal employees:

Steven Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.

Hurley joined the other founders

after he read an article about the startup

in Wired magazine.

He emailed them about a job,

after which he was brought on to design

the logo for the company,

which is still used today.

Interestingly, the initial seed money for YouTube

came from when eBay bought PayPal

and provided bonuses to the three guys.

When it started to become popular,

the choice of the name YouTube.com

became a huge problem for a similarly named

website UTube.com.

The site's owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment

filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November of 2006

after being regularly overloaded by people

looking for the site.

Universal Tube has since changed

the name of their website to UTubeOnline.com.

Could you imagine if any of the viral sensations

that happened now occurred back then?

That would be pretty confusing.

"Hey Jimmy, this guy's emailing me

"about a Harlem Shake.

"Do we carry one of those?"

Number three is YouTube as a dating service.

Not many people know that YouTube

actually first started as a video dating service.

Originally called Tune In and Hook Up,

the website was heavily influenced

by the website Hot or Not.

Although it operated in the same fashion,

the three founders decided not to go

with the dating site idea,

but decided to keep the video portion of it.

Then, two important events occurred

that forever shaped what we would come to know

as YouTube.

The first event was when Karim was unable to find

the infamous Janet Jackson

wardrobe malfunction video online.

The second event was when Hurley and Chen

were unable to share a video from a dinner party

with friends due to the email attachment limitations

that still exist today.

These two important events made the founders realize

that there was a huge untapped potential

for video sharing online,

and they decided to fill that need.

I love how honest they are

about how the website started, too.

"Well, I couldn't find the titties I wanted to see

"online, so I started a website that I could use

"to watch them titties."

Number four is humble beginnings.

YouTube offices are known for being cool places

full of free food, drinks,

and awesome facilities for employees,

but the original YouTube office, created in 2005,

was anything but glamorous.

In fact, Chad Hurley's garage was the foundation

for the first-ever YouTube office.

They started off slow,

but eventually in 2006 were able to move

into an office space above a pizzeria

near San Mateo, California.

It was there that they hired the first 20 YouTube employees

all eager to be a part of something

exciting and new.

Surprisingly, and embarassingly,

in an attempt to popularize the site,

the company offered $100 to attractive girls

who posted 10 videos or more on the site.

Yeah, that's kinda creepy.

The advertisement was even placed on Craigslist

but was completely ignored,

leaving YouTube with no responses.

What is it about tech nerds and garages,

inventors and garages,

and bands and garages?

I guess if you need to solve something,

you just go sleep in your garage.

(snap) Boom.

Done.

Number five is now and then.

Before 300 hours of video was being uploaded

to the site every minute,

it all started with just one,

a 19 second clip called "Me at the Zoo."

Shot by Yakov Lapitsky, a friend of Jawed Karim,

it shows Jawed at the San Diego Zoo

in front of an elephant enclosure

talking about how long their trunks are.

Since its upload on April 23, 2005,

it has gained a whopping almost 19 million views.

It's the only video on Jawed's channel,

yet that channel has gained over 70,000 subscribers.

In 2008, Jawed launched a venture fund

called Youniverty Ventures,

which helps current and former university students

realize their business ideas.

However, Jawed still remains interested in YouTube

and even spoke out agains the Google+ integration

in 2013 that requires users to have a Google+ account

in order to comment on videos,

which is something everyone loved so very much.

Well, the first YouTube video may have been basic,

but at least he wasn't twerking or something.

Those were simpler times.

Number six is YouTube's purchase.

Within just one year of being launched,

YouTube became a very popular video sharing site.

This got the attention of Google

who saw the potential that online video had,

and in October of 2006, Google bought YouTube

for $1.6 billion in stock

from the three founders only 18 months

after the site's creation.

This worked out quite well

because the founders were just as interested

in selling the website as Google was interested

in buying it.

At the time, YouTube had been in multiple legal battles

with several media companies

over copyright infringement lawsuits.

Another reason that the founders

were so eager to sell it was that on top of the lawsuits,

despite its popularity, YouTube was losing money

at a rate of $500,000 a month.

Of course, Google doesn't enter any business arrangement

with the intention of losing money,

so they were the ones to introduce

advertising on the platform.

Since that purchase, YouTube has grown

exponentially, year over year,

making it the second biggest search engine

just behind Google.com.

So, in other words, Google has a monopoly

on Internet search.

No Microsoft.

Don't say Bing.

Shut, shut your mouth.

Shut your mouth.

No one uses it.

It's never gonna be a thing.

Just stop.

Number seven is milestones.

You may be curious as to some

of the firsts, or milestones on YouTube,

so here's some notable ones.

The first ever YouTube video to hit

1 million views was Brazilian soccer star

Ronaldinho's Nike ad called "Touch of Gold"

after it went viral in 2005.

In 2006, NBC became the first traditional media company

to strike a deal with YouTube

to put their content on the site.

In 2007, YouTube launched the Partnership Program,

which allowed people to get paid

for the content that they upload

to the site, which of course, changed everything.

In April of 2009, YouTube and Vivendi

teamed up to launch the new music video

service called Vevo.

In November of 2009,

high-definition video was

finally enabled on the site.

In 2010, YouTube began offering movies

for rent on the site.

In 2011, YouTube Live was created to enable

the website to stream everything

from concerts to news coverage.

And of course, as of today, there are thousands

of YouTube partners making a living

off of the site.

It's a good living, as long as you can get past

the troll comments.

I know I'm bald, ok, damn! (loud crying)

Number eight is research.

Over the years, a lot of research has been done

on Youtube, its success, and how it's affected culture.

But, despite all the research collected,

it's still not known what makes a video

go viral, although humor,

genuine emotion, and the human experience

all seem to be the most appealing factors.

In fact, research concluded that "going viral"

is not a strategy, but instead, an outcome.

They also found that the success of YouTube

came down to four key factors.

The service offers video recommendations

via the "related video list."

Next, is that users can easily share videos

and embed videos on popular websites.

The third is that there's a sense of community

and interactivity on the site.

And, finally, of course, the incentive

of the partnership program.

Of course, if there was a fifth,

it would be cat videos.

A staple of any successful video sharing site, my friends.

Number nine is sharing.

YouTube was, in fact, not the first video sharing website.

Started in 1997 by Chase Norlin,

ShareYourWorld.com was the first-ever

video-sharing website.

It was designed to watch and share video

over the Internet.