ave you ever wondered what was the first video ever uploaded on YouTube? Today it is considered the biggest video content publisher on the whole internet and it had been like this for quite some years, but in 2005 not even 1% of this world’s population knew about this platform. One is something that should not be of surprise is that the first video had actually been uploaded by one of the founders, named Jawed Karim.

The first vlogger?

The type of video he uploaded would be categorized as a vlog, 18 seconds of himself at the zoo presenting the elephants behind him, which was uploaded on April 24th, 2005. Before YouTube, we had Vimeo which was released in late 2004 which was and it had quite a lot of success until YouTube became popular. However, if we were to really dig deep we would find that the first platform on the internet for sharing videos was actually ShareYourWorld.com which was started in 1997.

On the channel, it is the only video ever uploaded and since then, the video had accumulated over 220 million views and the channel over 2.7 million subscribers. Funny enough, most of the views had actually been accumulated in the last two years with 130 million views under the belt. The first comment on the video had also accumulated over the years 2.3 million likes, making it the most liked comment on youtube.

Jawed Karim may not be the first blogger, but he is definitely the first viral vlogger and this was before anyone actually knew that within the video was one of the founders of YouTube. To be honest, I didn’t even know when I first saw the video that this was one of the founders, well it is a much younger version of him.

YouTube Explodes

The power of actually being the first on a platform, but actually it’s about the virality of a video behind its importance, in this case, is the first video on one of the biggest websites on the internet. What is interesting is that the uploader (Karim) keeps updating the description on the video and this can be observed by his comments on the policy change of YouTube regarding removing the display of dislikes in November of 2021.

“Watching Matt Koval’s announcement about the removal of dislikes, I thought something was off. The spoken words did not match the eyes. The video reminded me of an interview Admiral Jeremiah Denton gave in 1966. I have never seen a less enthusiastic, more reluctant announcement of something that is supposed to be great. Calling the removal of dislikes a good thing for creators cannot be done without conflict by someone holding the title of “YouTube’s Creator Liaison”. We know this because there exists not a single YouTube Creator who thinks removing dislikes is a good idea — for YouTube or for Creators. Why would YouTube make this universally disliked change? There is a reason, but it’s not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed. Instead, there will be references to various studies. Studies that apparently contradict the common sense of every YouTuber.” (Quote by Jawed Karim)

In 2006 YouTube had blown as millions of people started uploading random videos and trying to understand this side of the internet. This is where Google (as the leader of the internet) had seen the potential within the platform and proposed founders Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley to sell YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion. Google was attracted by a video that had exploded on the platform and showed the monetary potential of the platform.

Probably if the founder knew that their Platform 16 years later would produce $8.6 billion per annual quarter, they would have never sold their platform. The internet had reached a point where some niches are just exhausted, and video platforms will never be able to grow as far as YouTube keeps rising. However, the lesson to learn here is the potential something can have at the beginning, despite whatever it may be.