Top 10 Unknown Facts about YouTube - OMG😱

Top 10 Unknown Facts about YouTube - OMG😱

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Today in this article, I am gonna tell you Top 10 Unknown facts about YouTube.

Also see:Unknown Facts about technology

Let me tell you the story of one of your favorite websites as I knew it back in my day. 

It's story time. So YouTube is a phenomenon that we have all come to love. For many of us, it's not only a site that we use to learn things, like how to fix the sink, but it's also the site where we consume most of our entertainment. But even now mostly all of us have made this website part of our everyday lives, very few of us know about its origins or just how big it really is today. 

So, today, I'm going to give you some little-known information about the website that you've come to love so much. 

So, here it is Top 10 Unknown Facts about YouTube. 

Number one 

Stats and Traffic. 

There are more than 2 billion unique users that visit YouTube every month, so it's no wonder that billions of hours of video get watched daily, making YouTube the Internet's largest video hosting website. But what really makes YouTube an unique website is that many of the same people that are consuming this insane amount of content are the same people creating it. 

In fact, more than 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. To put that into context, the amount of videos uploaded on YouTube every month is more than the three major U.S. television networks have created in the last 60 years. While YouTube was founded and is hosted in the U.S., almost more than 80% of traffic that comes to the website is from outside of the U.S., meaning that all of those views allow people like Youtubers to make a living off of what they love, which is making videos. 

Number two

Origins. 

First time YouTube was founded in February of 2005 by three early PayPal employees: Steven Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. 

Hurley joined the other founders after he read an article about the startup in Wired magazine. He emailed them about a job, after which he was brought on to design the logo for the company, which is still used today. Interestingly, the initial startup money for YouTube came from when eBay bought PayPal and provided bonuses to the three guys. When it started to become popular and liked by people, the choice of the name YouTube.com became a huge problem for a similarly named website UTube.com. The site owner of, UTube.com filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November of 2006 after being regularly over loaded by people looking for the site. Universal Tube changed the name of their website to Utubeonline.com. 

Number three

Change in Idea

YouTube as a dating service. Not many people or users of YouTube know that YouTube actually first started asa video dating service known as Tune In and Hook Up, the website was heavily influenced by the website Hot or Not. Although it was also operated in the same fashion, the three founders decided not to go with the dating site idea, but decided to keep the video portion of it. 

Then, two very important events occurred that forever shaped what we would come to know as YouTube. 

The first event was when Karim was unable to find the in famous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction video online. 

The second event was when Chad Hurley and Steven Chen were unable to share a video from a dinner party with friends due to the email attachment limitations that still exist today. These two important events made the founders realize that there was a huge potential for video sharing online, and they decided to fill that need by making website. I love how the founders were honest they are about how the website started.

Number four 

Humble Beginnings

YouTube offices are known for being cool places full of free food, drinks, and awesome facilities for employees, but the original YouTube office, created in 2005, was anything but glamorous. 

In fact, Chad Hurley's garage was the foundation or place for the first-ever YouTube office. They started off  very slow, but eventually in 2006 they were able to move into an office space above a pizzeria near San Mateo, California. It was there that they hired the first 20 YouTube employees all eager to be a part of something exciting and new. Amazingly, and embarassingly in an attempt to popularize the YouTube site, the company offered $100 to attractive girls who posted 10 videos or more on the site. 

Yeah, that's kinda creepy. The advertisement was even placed on Craigs list but was completely ignored, leaving YouTube with no responses. What is it about tech nerds and garages, inventors and garages, and bands and garages? I guess if you need to solve something, you just go sleep in your garage.

Number five 

Now and Then. 

Before 3 hundred hours of video was being uploaded to the site every minute, it all started with just one, a 19 second clip called "Me at the Zoo." Shot by Yakov Lapitsky, a friend of Jawed Karim - the co founderof YouTube, it shows Jawed at the San Diego Zoo in front of an elephant enclosure talking about how long their trunks are. Since its upload on April 23, 2005, it has gained a whopping almost 100 million views. It's the only video on Jawed's channel, yet that channel has gained over 9 lakh subscribers. 

In 2008, Jawed Karim launched a venture fund called Youniverty Ventures, which helps current and former university students realize their business ideas. However, Jawed still remains interested in YouTube and even spoke out against the Google+ integration in 2013 that requires users to have a Google+ account in order to comment on videos, which is something every one loved so very much. Well, the first ever YouTube video may have been basic, but at least he wasn't twerking or something. Those were simpler times. 

Number six 

YouTube's Purchase 

Within just one year of being launched, YouTube became a very popular video sharing site. This got the attention of Google who saw the potential that online video had, and in October of 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion in stock from the three founders only 18 months after the site's creation. This came to be worked out quite well because the founders were just as interested in selling the website as Google was interested in buying it. 

At the time, YouTube had been in multiple legal battles with different media companies and corporates over copyright infringement lawsuits. Another reason is that the founders were so eager and to sell it was that of on top of the lawsuits, despite its popularity, YouTube was losing money at a rate of $500,000 a month. Of course, company like Google doesn't enter in any business arrangement with the intention of losing money, so they were the ones to introduce advertising on the platform. 

Since that purchase, YouTube has grown exponentially, year over year, making it the second biggest search engine just behind Google.com. So, in other words, Google has a monopoly on Internet search. No Microsoft. Don't say Bing. Shut, shut your mouth. Shut your mouth. No one uses it. It's never gonna be a thing.

Number seven 

Milestones

You may be curious as to some of the firsts, milestones on YouTube, so here's some notable ones. 

The first ever YouTube video to hit 1 million views was Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho's Nike ad called "Touch of Gold" after it went viral in 2005. 

In the year 2006, NBC was the one which became the first traditional media company to strike a deal with YouTube to put their content on the site. 

In 2007, YouTube launched the Partnership Program, which allowed people to get paid for the content that they upload to the site, which of course, changed everything. In April of 2009, YouTube and Vivendi teamed up to launch the new music video service called Vevo. 

In month of November of year 2009, high-definition video was finally enabled on the site. 

In the year of 2010, YouTube began offering movies for rent on the site. 

In the year of 2011, YouTube Live was created to enable the website to stream everything from concerts to news coverage. And of course it is true, as of today, there are thousands of YouTube partners making a living off of the site. It's a good way of living,

Number eight 

Research.

Over the years, a lot of research has been done on Youtube, its success, and how it's affected culture. But, despite of all the research collected, it's still not known what makes a video go viral, although humor, genuine emotion, and the human experience all seem to be the most appealing factors. In fact, the researches concluded that "going viral" is not a strategy, but instead, an outcome. They also founded that the huge success of YouTube came down to four major key factors. 

The service offers video recommendations via the "related video list." Next, is that users can easily share videos and embed videos on popular websites. The third is that there's a sense of community and interactivity on the site. And, finally, of course, the incentive of the partnership program.

Number nine 

Sharing. 

YouTube was, in fact, not the first video sharing website. Started in 1997 by Chase Norlin, ShareYourWorld.com was the first-ever video-sharing website. It was designed and customized to watch and share video over the Internet. The idea was that most people at the time were able to get their hands on digital camera equipment and produce their own work, so they needed a place to share it. However, as the Internet was still in its infancy at the time, the technology was unable to do much of what YouTube would later be able to do with efficient video transcoding and high bandwidth. The startup ended up dying in 2001, just four years before YouTube, opening up an opportunity for video sharing on the Internet. 

Number 10 

Easter eggs. 

One of the least known features on YouTube ever, but a favorite to those who know of it, are hidden Easter eggs on the site. If you search the term or keyword "Beam me up Scotty," you'll find the search results beam on to the screen vertically. If you search the term or keyword "Use the force, Luke," the page will shift around and can only be controlled by your mouse. If a video begins or start to buffering, and you don't feel like waiting for it, if you hit the left arrow, the buffering icon will magically become a game of snake. And one of the most recent Easter eggs is that if you search the term "Do the Harlem Shake," the search results will start dancing to the music, and all of a sudden go crazy doing the actual Harlem Shake. 

So that's all for today.

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