youtube-video.com Other News
How It Started
Dec 29, 2007 19:09:54
It began in a garage in Menlo Park, California. Three twentysomethings were hanging out, chatting about a party they'd gone to the night before. They'd taken some video footage at the party and were hoping to share it with friends but couldn't figure out how to get it online. So they set out to find a way to do just that.
On Monday, October 9, Google announced that it had paid $1.65 billion in stock for the purchase of YouTube, the online video sharing service started by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. In just over a year and a half, the three partners turned a simple concept into an astoundingly popular site, one that serves more than 100 million videos per day, with more than 65,000 videos being uploaded daily. According to site tracking firm Hitwise, 60 percent of all videos watched online are clips from YouTube. Not bad for a 19-month-old company.
So just how did YouTube become an online sensation? This online video service incorporates a heavy dose of social networking that turns users into fanatics. Users upload their own clips (with many being snatched from TV and other media), and the site allows others to post comments and rate the clips, as well as embed the videos on their own blogs. The site has created YouTube celebrities, like lonelygirl15, and allowed buzzed-about TV clips -- like the notorious recent Fox News interview with former president Bill Clinton -- to spread like wildfire. And like other popular Web 2.0 services, it's intuitive and easy to use.
While this deal is an amazing coup for the three founders, the future success of this venture isn't guaranteed. Copyright concerns and an unproven business model raise some question as to just how much money and effort Google will have to invest in this business to keep the momentum going.
Back to the BeginningExactly how did these three former PayPal employees create Web 2.0's biggest success so far? After registering the domain on February 15, 2005, the partners spent a few months on site development and released a test version of YouTube to the public in May 2005. This initial beta version primarily featured videos of Chen's cat, PJ.
To get their website some buzz beyond their inner circle of friends, the partners came up with a contest that awarded an iPod Nano to a random YouTube member every day for two months. They used a point-based system -- for example, giving users one point for signing up, one for inviting others to join and one for submitting a video. The more points you gained, the better your chance of winning the iPod. This contest generated the traffic YouTube needed to make it one of the fastest-growing sites around: By September 2005, users were viewing YouTube videos more than a million times a day.
But sites can't run on visitor views alone. And that's where the partners' PayPal connections came into play. After former PayPal CFO Roelof Botha ran into Chen at a party in 2005, he decided to put some clips from his Italian honeymoon on YouTube. As the number of visitors skyrocketed, Botha, now a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital (known for backing Google, Apple and Yahoo!), started looking at the site from an investor's perspective.
With Chen's credit card maxed out on business expenses, the partners knew they needed an influx of cash. Botha convinced Sequoia Capital to invest, and the VC firm stepped up in November 2005 with $3.5 million in funding. With serious capital in place, the partners officially launched the site to the public in December that year. The number of views soon reached three million a day.
In April of 2006, YouTube received an additional $8 million in a second round of funding from Sequoia Capital. Since then, the site's continued to pick up steam, quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations on the net.
Related News
If you like women, girls and what they represent make me a friend and drool over lovely pictures and videos! Read More
March 21 - June 19 From work to play,
Guildford Town Centre is getting Spring started.
Discover valuable tips for better living at our
Health at Home Event, with special guest HGTV's
Healthy Home host Tamara Stanners.
Get the little sprouts started on their own gardens.
Trade in their old toys for a new adventure. We'... Read More
I've started a new server in this game Tibia. If you would like to have some help getting started. Make a character on the server "Saphira".And message my character named Aerho Typhon. You message people by typing: "*Name* text." then press enter. Example:"*Aerho Typhon*hello, I read about this game and saw... Read More
|
