News: The Chicago Tribune’s David Greising has an excellent recounting of YouTube, starting with its founding. The story is already well known: the three founders were searching for a way to share video taken at a party of fellow Pay Pal employees. The Utube Blog discussed it here. But the Tribune article is well worth reading:
“In February 2005, Chen hosted the dinner party that would change his life and also make Internet history. Chen and his friends spent much of the party shooting videos and digital photos of each other. They easily uploaded the photos to the Web. But the videos? Not a chance.
“Chen, Hurley and Karim had stumbled across a crying need. And between them, they had the means to address it. Chen and Karim were exceptional code writers, and Hurley’s gift for design could give a new Web site a compelling look.
“Hurley, who had left PayPal, turned over his Menlo Park garage to Chen and Karim, who worked there during breaks from their PayPal jobs. By May, they had solved a vexing problem: How to let computer users view videos from their Web browsers without downloading special software.
“In the first YouTube video, an 18-second clip posted April 23, 2005, Karim stood before elephants at a zoo. ‘The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks,’ Karim says. ‘And that’s cool. And that’s pretty much all.’
“With that breakthrough, YouTube was born.”
First YouTube video
How much did it cost to start?
My people think you work for the government.