General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums14 Years Ago Today; The Very First Video is Uploaded to YouTube
Me at the zoo
Me at the zoo is the first video that was uploaded to YouTube. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 at 20:27:12 PDT (April 24, 2005 at 3:27:12 UTC) by the site's co-founder Jawed Karim, with the username "jawed" and recorded by his high school friend Yakov Lapitsky.
He created a YouTube account on the same day. The nineteen-second video was shot by Yakov at the San Diego Zoo, featuring Karim in front of the elephants in their old exhibit in Elephant Mesa, making note of their lengthy trunks.
All right, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that's, that's cool, and that's pretty much all there is to say.
In 2013, YouTube introduced a new requirement that forced all commenters to use Google+ accounts. In response to this, he updated the description of "Me at the zoo" and added two annotations to the video.
Reception
The Los Angeles Times explains that "as the first video uploaded to YouTube, it played a pivotal role in fundamentally altering how people consumed media and helped usher in a golden era of the 60-second video." The Observer describes its production quality as "poor". As of April 22, 2019, the video is still active on YouTube and has received more than 66 million views, 1.8 million likes, 69 thousand dislikes, and over 2.2 million comments.
And it wasn't a cat video! (Technically, it was a human and elephant video).
P.S. This is the very first video creation I uploaded to YouTube in 2006:
True Dough
(17,338 posts)I wonder if that young man ever received a cent for uploading a video that attracted that many views to the website? I've read YouTube is only lucrative for very few users.
There are billions of YouTube videos viewed daily 14 years later. Yes, billions. Quite the phenomenon.
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)...I'd guess he's doing pretty good now.
True Dough
(17,338 posts)I hope he gives some of his wealth to those elephants. He would be nothing without them!
EDIT: I should have read your article instead of immediately clicking the video and watching it, and then commenting. It would have prevented my silly question.
VIDEO killed the contextual star!
underpants
(182,950 posts)So many lost moments recaptured
Dennis Donovan
(18,770 posts)With YT Red (still the best streaming deal @ $10/mo), zero ads and I choose the content (most of the time, but their "suggestions" are usually spot-on).