If you’re reading this, then you’re no doubt already familiar with the hugely successful video sharing site YouTube.com. If you’re not, then you’re missing out on a massive library of clips from television, movies, short films, to user-created content. YouTube is widely recognized as one of the internet’s fastest growing internet phenomena, but it all started with three guys in a garage. Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen were three PayPal employees with a common dream. They realized that while internet users were able to easily send and receive text, pictures, and music, there was an untapped market for video. The three banded together in 2005, investing their money from PayPal along with venture capital from Sequoia Capital into creating a place where internet users could share videos with the ease of sending an e-mail. They set up shop in a garage and began building the site. YouTube started out with various clips from popular media, but as it rapidly gained attention throughout 2006, users began submitting their own content. This gave birth to a new form of celebrity: the common internet user, filming from home with their consumer camcorder, racking up views from other users while they shared these videos with each other. Also known as “viral videos,” these low-rent productions became a new form of online entertainment, with users creating short films, video blogs, and dialogues with each other. Karim, Hurley, and Chen were overnight successes. With an estimated database of over 72,900,000 videos and over a half a million user accounts, YouTube has since spawned several copycat sites with the same premise. They currently receive most of their revenue from advertising, and have become an integral part of the 2008 Presidential debates in cooperation with CNN, allowing the average internet voter to submit video questions to the candidates. |
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