On April 23, 2005, the very first YouTube video was uploaded by the channel “jawed”. YouTube has since skyrocketed in its’ video-sharing platform that gave rise to countless of channels with various aesthetics. However, on this special occasion, I think it’s time to remember the first steps of this ever-growing video platform.
Jawed Karim, YouTube channel “jawed”, uploaded his 18 second video titled, “Me at the zoo” with the help of his friend Yakov Lapitsky. Although the clip is quite short, to this day it has more than 90 million views! This momentous video took place at the San Diego Zoo with Jawed front and center. Here is the video in all of its’ glory, along with a transcript:
“All right, so here we are in front of the elephants, the cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks, and that’s, that’s cool. And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
Wise words, Jawed, wise words. The description box said he would update when he hit 10 million subscribers, unfortunately, his channel is sitting at about 799K subscribers. As much as we were all sitting at the edge of our seats for an update, it seems his next upload is shrouded in mystery.
So, whatever happened to him, you may ask? Turns out, Jawed Karim was actually one of the cofounders, alongside Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, of YouTube. On October 9, 2006, a year and a half after the first upload, the trio sold YouTube to (guess who?) Google for a pretty penny – $1.65 million. Karim received 137, 443 shares of stock from this transaction then took on different business ventures and investments.
YouTube has flourished since the very first video from “jawed” and has seen its’ fair share of different content creators. If we go back a little over 10 years ago, YouTube saw the rise of comedian Lucas Cruikshank’s character Fred Figglehorn. The soaring popularity of this channel even made its’ way into the film industry with 3 movies.
If we go back in as little as 1-5 years, we see this pattern of popular YouTubers moving to other ventures. Previous YouTuber Troye Sivan has paved his way into the music industry as well as acting in film, a recent movie being 2018’s Boy Erased. Beauty Youtubers such as Jackie Aina, Nikkietutorials, and many more have ventured into the makeup industry where they partner with household name and growing makeup brands such as Maybelline and NYX.
Aside from the huge successes that Youtube has shown is possible, the heart of this success lies with the subscribers. YouTubers often interact with their subscribers by asking what content they should make, replying to comments, hosting meetups, and other ways to have more of a connection. Jawed even said he would upload again if he hit a certain number of subscribers!
Conventions such as VidCon, Playlist Live, BeautyCon, and more are for the purpose of creators and subscribers to meet. This goes to show that YouTube isn’t just about uploading videos, it’s also about the creator-viewer connection through similar interests.
Who knew that Jawed’s 18-second video would pave the way for the endless amount of content that we see on YouTube today – especially thrilling, nail-biting videos like this. All in all, YouTube has come a long way since its’ very first upload 15 years ago from “jawed” and it doesn’t seem to be stopping its’ growth anytime soon. In the words of Jawed Karim, and that’s pretty much all there is to say.
