Featured Image Credit: YouTube/jawed
Topics: YouTube, Social Media, Business, History, Google
Joshua Nair
Topics: YouTube, Social Media, Business, History, Google
We live in the age of content creation, where anyone can make money from posting videos on the internet for others to watch.
It's a concept that would have seemed alien to many 20 years ago, but in that same time period, aspects like social media have also caught on - the internet is very different nowadays.
One of the most popular platforms out there is YouTube, founded on 14 February 2005, where the likes of KSI, Pewdiepie and MrBeast made a name for themselves.
Advert
But none of these household names were behind the platform's first video.
Titled 'Me at the zoo', the video was uploaded on 23 April, 2005 and featured a man named Jawed Karim talking in front of an elephant enclosure.
He said: "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 cool.
"And that's pretty much all there is to say."
Advert
Karim was actually one of the co-founders of YouTube, along with fellow American software engineers Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, all of whom worked for PayPal beforehand.
Though he would never upload another video again, he has accumulated over 348 million views on the clip (at the time of writing) as well as over 5.2 million subscribers.
Known as being the second-most visited website in the world after Google, nobody could have predicted the success that YouTube would go on to have.
While Hurley and Chen were majority shareholders in the site, Karim started out as an advisor while holding a much lower share in the company.
Advert
This didn't stop him from benefitting from the site's sale to Google in October 2006, as they acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, earning Karim around $64 million (£51.6 million) in shares. Not too bad.
All of that money was made without Karim ever taking a 'salary, benefits or even a formal title' from YouTube, according to the New York Times.
After selling the site, Karim invested in two other mega-successful ventures, being one of Airbnb's first investors.
Karim started investment venture YVentures with partners Keith Rabois and Kevin Hartz in 2009.
Advert
The video seems simple and uneventful, but it would lay the foundation for future creators, in sharing aspects of their lives with their audience.
While Karim never uploaded on the channel again, he has edited the description and title of the original video to send messages across.
When Google tried to make YouTube users create Google+ accounts so that they could leave comments, he wrote: "Why the f*** do i need a Google+ account to comment on a video?"
Along with the rest of the YouTube community, they forced Google to go back on their decision, even shutting Google+ down for good in 2019.
When the site removed dislike counts, Karim wrote in the video's description: "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube."
Advert
But while Karim cares deeply about the site after all these years, he has managed to stay out of the limelight and live his life.