YouTube celebrates five years

YouTube, the world's third-biggest website, is celebrating its five-year anniversary.

Since the first video was uploaded in 2005, showing founder Jawed Karim in San Diego Zoo looking at the elephants, the range and amount of material available on the site has expanded exponentially.


Users currently upload close to 1m videos per day and these include everything from clips of serious news broadcasts from around the world to very unique weddings, 'Charlie Bit my Finger' (see link below) to current Irish Youtube sensation Crystal Swing on the Ellen Degeneres Show.


YouTube's creators Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen decided to start the site as a platform for users to upload and share videos after they found it difficult to find individual online clips of Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' during the Super Bowl in 2004, which saw her accidentally show her breast during a performance.



The world was slow to embrace the new site which was not even mentioned in the British press until November 2005, seven months after the first video was uploaded. That November, 2m videos were being shown per day on the site, growing to 25m two months later.


YouTube's popularity as a social media hot-spot attracted the attention of Google, who bought the site in October 2006 for $1.65bn. YouTube videos take up an estimated 45 terabytes of storage, the equivalent of about 5,000 home computers' worth.


In April 2009, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called 'Shows'. The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney.


In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of 'Shows' available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners.


Starting in March 2010, YouTube started streaming all 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League worldwide for free, which YouTube claims is the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.


YouTube has had its fair share of setbacks as well as success, with controversy over movie and sports rights, including legal challenges from the English Premier League and Viacom.


Many people are critical of the comments that are posted under videos by the public, which can often be hurtful and disparaging. Yet despite these growing pains during its first five years online, Youtube remains a massively popular site in general and the number one site for internet videos.


Currently there are well over 1bn videos being shown every day on the site. Singers such as Justin Bieber have been 'discovered' on YouTube and the site is a powerful marketing tool, even helping to sell houses in New Hampshire.


Some of our favourite YouTube videos:

Charlie Bit My Finger showing two young brothers has received close to 5m views


Taiwanese Man singing Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' features an incredible singer taking part in a television talent contest in Taiwan


Susan Boyle rocketed to YouTube fame in April 2009 when the video of her 'Britain's Got Talent' audition was posted and received over 120m hits.


Guy slips on ice which featured on the RTÉ News in January 2010 received over 200,000 views.


Groovy Dancing Girl showing Sophie Merry from Dublin dancing to Daft Punk's 'Harder Better Faster Stronger' has received almost 5m hits.


This four-year old classic shows two Chinese boys miming along to the Backstreet Boys' 'I want it that way'


Evolution of Dance gives you a highly entertaining six-minutes and has been viewed more than 141m times.


Sneezing Baby Panda is self explanatory.


Laughing quadruplets Daddy really did make them laugh.


Breakdancing Baby has had more than 27m hits.


Prison inmates dancing to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' shows hundreds of inmates in a prison in the Philippines pay unique tribute to the King of Pop.

excellent noely, we will probably have the same problem around here soon

Fantastic.....hard to imagine before you tube.....searching thru untold number or sites for videos......now, most are in one location.

This one here is one of my favorites....as I remember playing countless hours of Super Mario Bothers on the Nintendo NES console.....the original console.

my son watches the likes of mario bros and sonic vids on youtube all day lots of people show you cheats etc on there! its a wonderful site!!