Welcome
YouTube is a video sharing website that allows users to upload, share, and view videos. It was created in 2005 and has since become one of the largest and most popular websites on the internet. YouTube is available on a wide variety of devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets, and can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Users can watch a wide variety of content on YouTube, including music videos, movie trailers, educational videos, and much more.
History of YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website that was created on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The first video ever posted on YouTube was entitled "Me at the zoo" and was uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005. The video showed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo, standing in front of the elephant exhibit and talking about the elephants.
In the years following its creation, YouTube became a hugely popular platform for users to share and watch videos. In 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. Since then, YouTube has continued to grow in popularity and has become a major source of entertainment, news, and information for people all over the world. In 2021, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion logged-in users on YouTube, and the platform receives over 1 billion hours of daily watch time.
Founders of YouTube
YouTube was founded by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The website was officially launched in February 2005.
Chad Hurley
Chad Hurley is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and former CEO of the video sharing website YouTube. He was born on January 24, 1977, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Hurley studied computer science and fine art at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and later worked as a designer at eBay and PayPal.
In February 2005, Hurley, along with fellow PayPal employees Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, founded YouTube. The website quickly gained popularity and was purchased by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. Hurley served as CEO of YouTube until October 2010, and then served as an advisor to Google until August 2013.
After leaving YouTube, Hurley co-founded the video sharing app MixBit and served as its CEO. He is also an investor and board member for several technology companies. In 2019, Hurley was listed as the 595th wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $400 million.
Steve Chen
Steve Chen is a Taiwanese American internet entrepreneur who is best known as one of the co-founders of the video-sharing website YouTube. He is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of the social media platform AVOS Systems, which he co-founded with Chad Hurley and Vijay Karunamurthy. Before starting YouTube, Chen was an early employee at PayPal, where he worked with Hurley and Karim. Chen received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim is a German-American internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi descent. He is best known as one of the co-founders of the video-sharing website YouTube. Karim was born in East Germany and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a child. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. In 2005, the three co-founded YouTube. Karim is no longer actively involved in the company and has largely stayed out of the public eye since the early days of YouTube.