YouTube is 20 years old: from “lazy Sunday” to “hot”

The video is short – only 19 seconds – and not particularly convincing. A spectator would be forgiven to click before his end.

The granular images, downloaded on April 23, 2005, of a man standing in front of the elephant enclosure to the San Diego zoo – “Very well, so we are in front of the elephants” – does not look like the kind of thing that would approach a video revolution.

And yet, two decades after this little favorable start, YouTube is now a cornerstone of the media ecosystem. This is where people are going for four -hour clips and hotel reviews. It is a platform for rising stars and conspiracy theorists. It is a repository for vintage advertisements and 10 hours of ambient noise. He disrupted traditional television and gave birth to a world of video creators who make content to respond to all the interests of Niche Imaginables.

For each YouTube video you have watched, there are hundreds of millions that you will never see.

Here is an overview of some of the greatest moments in the history of YouTube.

The first video downloaded on YouTube is entitled “Me at the Zoo”, and it shows one of the founders of the platform, Jawed Karim, admiring the elephants of the San Diego zoo. Mr. Karim founded YouTube in February 2005 with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, but left the company in 2006.