YouTube

YouTube is a video hosting service created by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005. It was acquired by Google in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion and continues to operate as one of Google's subsidiaries. The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to favorites, report, and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.265/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and media videos. Available content includes but is not limited to video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers, video blogs (vlogs), short original videos, and educational videos.

Most content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations such as CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, but are encouraged to register in order to upload and add comments to videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users who are at least 18 years old.

YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. The vast majority of its videos are free to view, but there are exceptions, including subscription-based premium channels, film rentals, as well as YouTube Red, a subscription service offering ad-free access to the website and access to exclusive content made in partnership with existing users. As of February 2017, there are more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each minute, and one billion hours of content is watched on YouTube every day. As of April 2017, the website is ranked as the second most popular site in the world by Alexa Internet, a web traffic analysis company.

Founding (2005)
YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The domain  was activated on 14 February 2005 at midnight Eastern Time, with video upload options being integrated on 23 April 2005. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, was uploaded on 23 April 2005, and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.

Prior to working for PayPal, Hurley studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. YouTube's initial headquarters was above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.

Growth and Purchase by Google (2006)
During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing sites on the Web, hosting more than 65,000 new video uploads. The site delivered an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006.

In June 2006, YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC.

On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock, which was completed on November 13 later that year.

TIME Person of the Year
In 2006, Time Magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large mirror as its annual 'Person of the Year', citing user-created media such as that posted on the site and featured the site's originators along with several content creators.

Continued Growth (2007-present)
It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.

In 2007, YouTube launched the YouTube Awards, an annual competition in which users voted on the best user-generated videos of the year. The awards were presented twice, in 2007 and 2008.

On July 23, 2007 and November 28, 2007, CNN and YouTube produced televised presidential debates in which Democratic and Republican US presidential hopefuls fielded questions submitted through YouTube.

In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney.

YouTube was awarded a 2008 Peabody Award and cited as being "a 'Speakers' Corner' that both embodies and promotes democracy".

In early 2009, YouTube registered the domain www.youtube-nocookie.com for videos embedded on United States federal government websites. In November of the same year, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners.

In June 2009, YouTube XL was launched. It was a front-end for viewing and browsing on television sets, and as such, for use on stationary game consoles with web browser, such as the Nintendo Wii. Its appearance varied depending on device.Entertainment Weekly placed YouTube on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list In December 2009, describing it as: "Providing a safe home for piano-playing cats, celeb goof-ups, and overzealous lip-synchers since 2005."

In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK. The service offers over 6,000 films. In March 2010 YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.

On March 31, 2010, YouTube launched a new design with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented: "We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter." In May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, which was "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined". In May 2011, YouTube reported on the company blog that the site was receiving more than three billion views per day. In January 2012, YouTube stated that the figure had increased to four billion videos streamed per day.

According to May 2010 data published by market research company comScore, YouTube was the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of roughly 43 percent and more than 14 billion videos viewed during May.

Around June 2010, YouTube announced an ability for people to edit videos with its own video editor.

In October 2010, Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as the chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role, with Salar Kamangar taking over as the head of the company.

James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed in April 2011 that 30 percent of videos accounted for 99 percent of views on the site.

During November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface. In December 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of social networking sites. At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was introduced with a darker shade of red, which was the first change in design since October 2006.

In 2012, YouTube said that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three-quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S. The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.

Starting from 2010 and continuing to the present, Alexa ranked YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet after Google and Facebook.

In late 2011 and early 2012, YouTube launched over 100 "premium" or "original" channels. It was reported the initiative cost $100 million. Two years later, in November 2013, it was documented that the landing page of the original channels became a 404 error page. Despite this, original channels such as SourceFed and Crash Course were able to become successful.

An algorithm change was made in 2012 that replaced the view-based system for a watch time-based one that is credited for causing a surge in the popularity of gaming channels.

In October 2012, for the first-time ever, YouTube offered a live stream of the U.S. presidential debate and partnered with ABC News to do so.

On October 25, 2012, The YouTube slogan (Broadcast Yourself) was taken down due to the live stream of the U.S. presidential debate.

YouTube relaunched its design and layout on December 4, 2012 to be very similar to the mobile and tablet app version of the site. On December 21, 2012, Gangnam Style became the first YouTube video to surpass one billion views.

In March 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion. In the same year, YouTube continued to reach out to mainstream media, launching YouTube Comedy Week and the YouTube Music Awards. Both events were met with negative to mixed reception. In November 2013, YouTube's own YouTube channel had surpassed Felix Kjellberg's PewDiePie channel to become the most subscribed channel on the website. This was due to auto-suggesting new users to subscribe to the channel upon registration.

On April 3, 2018, a shooting took place at YouTube headquarters.

In November 2019, YouTube has announced that the service would discontinue the classic version of YouTube Studio to all YouTube creators by the spring of 2020. It was available and accessible to some YouTube creators by the end of March 2020.

In June 2020, YouTube discontinued the ability to use categories.

YouTube Premium
Formerly known as YouTube Red, YouTube Premium is a subscription service offered by YouTube which provides add-free access to content across the service, access to premium YouTube Originals programming produced in collaboration with the site's creators, downloading videos and background playback of videos on mobile devices, and access to the YouTube Music music streaming service.

YouTube Go
YouTube Go is an Android app aimed at making YouTube easier to access on mobile devices in emerging markets. Unlike the main Android app, YouTube Go allows videos to be previewed, downloaded, and shared with other users through Bluetooth, and offers more options for mobile data control and video resolution. It was first launched in February 2017 and is currently available in countries such as India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Iraq to around 60% of the world's population.

YouTube Gaming
Launched on August 26, 2015, YouTube Gaming is a video-gaming oriented vertical and app for videos and live-streaming, currently competing with Amazon.com-owned Twitch. It's discontinued in September 2018 for gaming.youtube.com site.

YouTube Movies
YouTube Movies is a service by YouTube that shows movies via its website. Many of the movies are free to view, with ads.

YouTube Shorts
In September 2020, YouTube announced that it would be launching a beta version of a new platform of 15-second videos, similar to TikTok, called YouTube Shorts. The platform was first tested in India and as of March 2021 has expanded to other countries including the United States with videos now able to be up to one minute long. It is not a standalone app, but is integrated into the main YouTube app. Like TikTok, it gives users access to built-in creative tools, including the possibility of adding licensed music to their videos.

YouTube Kids
YouTube Kids is a video app developed for children, with curated selections of content, parental control features, and filtering of videos not deemed appropriate to the target audience. It was first released as an Android and iOS app, it has since been made available for LG, Samsung, and Sony smart TVs, as well for Android TVs; it is currently available in 37 countries.

YouTube Music
YouTube Music was launched on May 22, 2018, and competes with Spotify and Apple Music.

YouTube Stories
In 2018, YouTube started testing a new feature initially called "YouTube Reels". The feature is nearly identical to Instagram Stories and Snapchat Stories. YouTube later renamed the feature "YouTube Stories". It is only available to creators who have more than 10,000 subscribers and can only be posted/seen in the YouTube mobile app.

YouTube Studio
YouTube Studio lets users manage their videos and channels and view analytics.

YouTube TV
YouTube TV, an over-the-top streaming television service, was launched in February 2017. It offers live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based DVR from more than 85 television networks.

Categories
You used to be able to add categories in your videos, this was discontinued in June 2020.

Video Editor
In June 15, 2010, YouTube released its own video editor for people to edit videos.

2010
It was the year that the video editor was released, and it was different. The editor used to have a gradient color in the parts of the video editor, its video viewer was on the right side, and you used to only use the feature of adding videos or audios, which they are called My Videos and Audio.

2011
The video viewer lost its borders, making the name and publish interactives no longer attached on them. The transitions feature was added, and the My Videos and Audio texts were removed. The in and out iris used to be named as masks at the time, and there used to be a Pumpkin in and out iris transition.

2012
The creative commons & text features were added, and the video editor is now accessible in the videos corner. Most of the background is now colored black at the time.

2013
All the feature logos became texts, and the name and publish interactives are now separated from each other. The video editor is now accessible to people without a YouTube account.

2014
The video editor had several changes, the bottom is back to white, the background no longer has a gradient color, the video viewer is now at the left side, the feature you are now represents in a red underline instead of brighten, and all the feature texts became back to logos.

2015
The publish button is now called the Create video button.

2016
The video editor is now only accessible to people with a YouTube account.

2017 (Final Year)
In June 2017, the creators of the site have announced that its video editor, along with slideshow maker, will be discontinued in September 20, 2017.