YouTube is now a household name, but it wasn’t always so ubiquitous. The video sharing platform was founded on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The social networking site was created with the idea of making it easy for people to upload, share, and view videos online. It wasn’t long before YouTube became the go-to platform for online video content.

The first YouTube video ever uploaded was titled “Me at the zoo” and was posted by Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube. The 19-second video showed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, talking about their long trunks. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and has since amassed over 160 million views.

The video was simple and unremarkable, but it marked the beginning of a new era in online video content. Up until then, video sharing was a complicated process, with file sizes often too large to upload and websites that were difficult to navigate. YouTube changed that, making it easy for anyone with an internet connection to upload a video and share it with the world.

Since then, YouTube has grown exponentially, with over 2 billion monthly active users and over a billion hours of video watched daily. The platform has become a hub for influencers and content creators, with millions of channels dedicated to everything from beauty and fashion to gaming and cooking.

In addition to its vast collection of user-generated content, YouTube also offers movies, TV shows, and music videos. It has also become a major source of news and information, with many journalists and news outlets using the platform to share breaking news stories and analysis.