Every day, people from all over the world and of all ages watch nearly 5 billion videos on the website YouTube, but when the streaming service started in 2005, the only people it was meant to attract were single adults looking for a date. Those romantic notions were short-lived. Five days into things, the number of people uploading videos introducing themselves to potential partners was zero. Co-founder Steve Chen said it quickly became apparent that YouTube needed to be more than a matchmaker, so he and fellow co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim decided to open things up to any uploads. Things took off quickly from there, and in November 2006, the group sold its video-sharing service to Google for $1.65 billion. In a sense, love is still its thing: People love YouTube so much that they watch 1 billion hours of video every day and upload 500 hours of it every minute.
Looking into YouTube:
- The first video on YouTube was of co-founder Jawed Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo in April 2005.
- Cat videos are hugely popular on YouTube, which includes one of cats "boxing" at Thomas Edison's studio in 1894.
- YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California, includes a huge slide that employees can ride instead of taking the stairs or elevator.