YouTube turns 20 years old today

Twenty years ago, three former PayPal employees launched YouTube.com, originally intended as a dating website with the slogan “Tune In, Hook Up.”

The co-founders—Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim—struggled to attract users, so they created YouTube’s first video themselves. The clip, titled “Me at the zoo,” featured Karim at the San Diego Zoo.

In doing so, they built a platform where anyone with an internet connection could upload and watch videos.

What did people do with this newfound power?

What they’re still doing today: Flooding the internet with clips from Saturday Night Live—like “Lazy Sunday,” one of the early viral videos.

Swiftly removed at NBC’s request but later restored on YouTube, the video highlighted a key tension in YouTube’s rise. For some, it was a bedlam of copyright infringement; for others, nothing short of democracy in short-form video. The following year, Google bought YouTube for more than $1.6 billion.

In October 2006, Karim shared with students at his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, what it all meant to him: “If you have a good idea, and you just go out there and you make a video, you can — you can get an audience of millions almost instantly for free,” he said.

Over the years, YouTube has faced controversies—over data collection, toxic content and radicalizing algorithms.

But “Me at the zoo” is still there, reminding viewers of a more innocent time. With 348 million views, it’s a far cry from the most-watched video: “Baby Shark”