Chapter 1: What Is YouTube? / YouTube Traffic

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Chapter 1: What Is YouTube.

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YouTube is a free online video sharing website where any visitor can upload, watch, and share

video clips. The site has several ways to show the popularity and quality of the videos such as

a 1-5 star rating system, the ability to leave comments, and a running count of how many times

each video has been viewed.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube, Inc. on February 14, 2005. The

founders were former employees of PayPal, another huge success. The domain name

“YouTube.com" was activated on February 15, 2005, with the website launching shortly

thereafter.

If you are interested to see what the founders look like, you can see a video message from

Chad and Steve the founders at

http://www.youtube.com/watch.v=QCVxQ_3Ejkg

. It is

interesting to note the relaxed and informal atmosphere of this video, and it tells you a lot

about what the vision of YouTube is.

In fact, YouTube’s informality and confidence which has led to wonderful success. Informal,

almost amateur videos of people clowning around ad-lib (like the founders in the video) are

part of the major driving force behind YouTube.

In November 2005, just 10 months after its founding, , YouTube received funding from

Sequoia Capital and the service was officially launched in December 2005. In the time since,

YouTube has had a sensational and meteoric rise to very top the entire internet, and is

currently (as of writing this) in the top 5 most visited sites online.

YouTube Information:

• YouTube went from zero to over 4 million monthly visitors to their site within 3 months

and is still growing by leaps and bounds.

• The startup company was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 Billion! (Only

20 months after the company was started!), thus combining the biggest force in search

and internet advertising with the biggest force in online video.

• YouTube has changed the entire landscape of TV advertising, and rivals network

television in viewing.

• In 2006, YouTube won TIME magazine's "Invention of the Year".