The first video on YouTube turns 18.  The rapture over elephant trunks has revolutionized the Internet

The first video on YouTube turns 18. The rapture over elephant trunks has revolutionized the Internet

On April 24, 2005, the first video was published on YouTube. The 19-second recording from the San Diego Zoo changed the Internet, went down in its history and still remains one of the most important videos that appeared on the site.

The first idea for it was a dating site where users were supposed to post videos instead of classic photos. In the end, however, a platform was put on that allows you to share any self-recorded recordings and share them with other viewers. A year later, the increasingly successful portal was bought by Google.

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“Me at the zoo”: The first video to be posted on YouTube

Recorded at the San Diego Zoo and featuring Jawed Karim, the platform’s co-creator, the video was posted on April 24, 2005 at 3:31 a.m. (April 23, 2005 at 8:31 p.m. Pacific Time). The then 25-year-old Karim “delights” in a short video about the elephants he met during his visit. “The best thing about them is that they have really, really long, um… trunks. And that’s pretty much all I have to say,” he said. The 19-second clip changed history for good. To date, it has been viewed more than 264 million times. It has been commented on over 11 million times and liked over 13 million times.

“Before YouTube, there was no way anyone would want to watch something that was 30 or 60 seconds long,” Paul Levinson, a media and communications professor at Fordham University, told The Times. The recording changed the internet and showed what the site founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim was really supposed to become. The platform has changed dramatically since 2005.

The most important video in YouTube history. 18 years have passed since its publication

In 2015, he placed “Me at the zoo” at the top of the list of the 10 most important videos in the history of the platform. “In many ways, it’s representative of YouTube,” Brendan Gahan, an expert on the platform, told Business Insider. “It’s something that anyone could create on their own,” he added. For years, the short video from the zoo remained at the forefront of the most popular videos on YouTube. Today, however, the first places on the list of the most watched recordings are dominated by videos for children.

Although Jawed Karim did not become permanently associated with the service, for some time remaining officially only its adviser, since 2005 he has repeatedly criticized the decisions made by YouTube’s bosses, especially after it was bought by Google. One of the places where negative feedback often appeared was the description of the first video on the site. There he criticized the requirement to have a Google+ account to comment, and recently protested against the removal of “thumbs down”.

Source: Gazeta

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