Post #8

Social Media Growth: YouTube

In 2005, three PayPal employees, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen, released a video sharing website that we know today as YouTube. It all began when Karim tried to search for the video of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl Half-Time Show and realized how difficult it was. The website launched on February 14, 2005, with its first video posted just two months later  on April 23 by co-founder Jawed Karim.

The site was released to the a test group in May 2005, with little to no major activity (unlike what we are used to today). Originally planning for the website to be a dating service, founders decided to change the plans for any video upload when they found it difficult to locate people willing to be exposed to that extent. To further expand their image, YouTube began to include partnerships and ads to their website, making the first video to hit one million views a Nike advertisement featuring Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho Gaúcho in November 2005. 



YouTube was officially released to the public on December 15, 2005 getting visits roughly 8 million times a day. And by July 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being shared daily, with 100 million visits daily. In 2006, Google released a statement saying that they had acquired the video sharing site for $1.65 billion in Google stock, increasing its market value and recognition immensely. This also led to a sudden spike in posted content and visits. According to Reuters.com, 400 billion videos were posted a day by 2012, jumping to 5 billion as of last year. It isn't news that social media has been completely immersed into our culture and identity as people in the 21st century. As of January 2018, YouTube has become the most used social media platform, visited by 73% of United States adults ranging from ages 18-29(Pew Research Center).  

 

To truly see the impact and influence YouTube has every second (along with the many social media and entertainment websites we use daily), I highly recommend checking out the link/website Every Second. It shows you a current second by second tracker of all of the impressions made, including videos posted, watched, shared, and searched.