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The story of YouTube: how stars like Justin Bieber and PewDiePie, funny clips, and smart business helped it become the king of online video – but not without controversies

  • Google-owned YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users who watch 5 billion videos every day
  • We track the platform’s milestones and many controversies since it launched as a dating site in 2005

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YouTube is “the undisputed king of online video” – but it hasn’t always been this way. Photo: Shutterstock
Business Insider

In its 15-year history, YouTube has become the undisputed king of online video.

It has more than 2 billion monthly users who watch 5 billion videos every day. But many people don’t know how YouTube got its start.

The company rose like a rocket ship after its founding in 2005, and was bought by Google scarcely a year later. Under Google, YouTube went from being a repository of amateur video to a powerhouse of original content, not to mention a launching pad for its own new brand of superstar, such as PewDiePie and the Smosh Brothers.

Here is how YouTube got its explosive start, and maintained that momentum to become the biggest force in online video.

YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users. Photo: Shutterstock
YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly users. Photo: Shutterstock

February 2005: Three early employees at e-payment start-up PayPal – Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim – start working on a free video-sharing site called YouTube. Hurley registers the trademark, logo and domain for YouTube on Valentine’s Day while sitting in YouTube’s first headquarters above a pizzeria in California. Hurley becomes YouTube’s first CEO.

February 2005: The co-founders initially think of YouTube as “a new kind of dating site”, with the slogan “Tune in, Hook up”. However, YouTube-as-a-dating-site attracts few users, and the co-founders are forced to take out ads to offer women US$20 to upload “dating videos” onto YouTube. “Our users were one step ahead of us,” Jawed Karim later says. “They began using YouTube to share videos of all kinds.”

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