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YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, when they worked for PayPal. April 23, 2005, YouTube was launched and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted the very first video to YouTube called "Me at the Zoo." It was only a 19 second video of him talking about the Elephant's trunks
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The first video to get one million views was a Nike ad that had Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho. Nike was also one of the first major companies to embrace YouTube's promotional potential.
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October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock. At the time, YouTube only had roughly 65 employees
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YouTube launched its Partner Program to let people get paid for their viral videos. They could actually turn their hobbies into a business. Some people quite their jobs to do YouTube because they got paid more than their actual jobs.
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A 56 second video of a baby biting his brother's finger is one of the most viewed video on YouTube ever. As of February 2012 the family who made the video got more than $150,000.
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The first advertisements were semi-transparent banners that popped up on the lower part of videos. The overlaid ads would appear about 10 to 15 seconds into the video. It was Google's first response to questions about how the search giant would make money from its video site.
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This was YouTube's first move to fix its relationship with music companies, which had complained about piracy and unfair licensing term. Part of YouTube and Vevo's agreement was Vevo is free to distribute its music videos on YouTube and YouTube is able to keep showing music videos from big labels.
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Usher announced that Justin Bieber signed a recording contract with Island Def Jam records. Justin Bieber's Baby is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube, it has 820 million views. That month, YouTube also won a Peabody Award for its achievements in electronic media
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YouTube officially released YouTube live which allows the site to stream everything from concerts to news coverage to the royal wedding to the Olympics
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In a little over 5 months, Gangnam Style hit 1 billion views in December 2012
