This was the first ever video uploaded on YouTube

Indeed, YouTube has emerged to be a household thing amongst us. In addition to being the most significant video streaming platform in the world, YouTube is a place where people enjoy music and earn new stuff. That said, have you ever wondered what the first ever video uploaded on YouTube was? Well, here it is.

For starters, the American video-sharing website was created back in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees- Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. After realizing the prospect of the undertaking, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion in November 2006. Since then, YouTube has been home to billions of videos. However, uploaded 14 years ago, the first ever upload still holds its significance on YouTube.

First Video uploaded on YouTube

Yes, you heard it right. The first YouTube video was uploaded on April 23, 2005 (Saturday) at 20:27:12 (PDT) by one of the co-founders- Jawed Karim. The same day, Karim created his YouTube channel with the username “jawed.” The low-quality video was posted on YouTube a month before YouTube’s public beta launch in May 2005. That said, YouTube was officially launched on December 15, 2005.

Notably, the 19-second long video was recorded by his high school friend Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo, California. The clip featured Karim in front of the elephants in their old exhibit in Elephant Mesa, making a note of their long trunks. The video was titled “Me at the zoo” and still sits proudly on YouTube with over 68 Million views and more than 2 million comments. You can have a look at it below:

In the video, Karim says “All right, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants, and the cool thing about these guys is that…..is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that’s, that’s cool, and that’s pretty much all there is to say“.

As of now, YouTube has over 1.9 billion monthly active users and over 30 million daily active users.

Moreover, YouTube is the 2nd most-visited website in existence, according to Alexa. It has local versions in 91 different countries, meaning it reaches 95 percent of the internet, worldwide. YouTube has become so popular that on average, people spend eight minutes and 41 seconds each day on YouTube.

With all these achievements and statistics in tow, the first ever uploaded video “Me at the Zoo” has undoubtedly played a crucial role in radically changing how people consumed media and helped guide in a golden era of the 60-second video.

About the author

Ritik Singh

Being a tech aficionado, Ritik is highly fanatic about smartphones and computers since childhood. He has good experience in reviewing gadgets and loves shooting random videos. Above all, he believes in continuous learning and is ardent about writing on tech.