YouTube was created in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in order to have a place where people all over the world could easily share videos with each other. Chen stated that the inspiration for a video sharing website came after they had trouble sharing videos from a dinner party, but Karim says the inspiration came from him not being able to easily find videos of Janet Jackson's breast being exposed at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, so creating a video sharing platform would be a perfect place to access a video of it. Obviously, that was just inspiration for the very lucrative business idea, but it was definitely kind of a shock to learn the backstory.
In 2021, YouTube is the second-most viewed website in the world behind Google, its parent company. Besides just being a giant hub to share videos, it plays an important role for many people. Many content creators have made a fortune for posting their videos, as well as becoming major celebrities.
One example of a creator who has reached high status from YouTube is Olajide "JJ" Olatunji, known as "KSI". In 2019, he was listed as the second-most influential person in the United Kingdom by The Sunday Times. His main channel, KSI, has over 23.6 million subscribers, where he currently posts mostly music videos, but he used to frequently post videos of him doing funny things in public or with his family and friends.
A little over a month ago, he met the royal family, where he posted a video of him asking Princess Kate Middleton if she would ever make a TikTok video, where she said she "probably would not". His fame on YouTube led him down a path to where he could be in such a high level of status that he go to meet the royal family, some of the most prestigious people on Earth.
Besides entertainment, people go on YouTube to research how to do things such as changing a tire, cooking, playing chess - the list is endless. If you need to figure out how to do anything, there is a good chance that a YouTube video exists that can help you.
Many companies pay for advertisements to be shown at the beginning and ends of YouTube videos hoping to generate more leads for their own businesses. From 2017-2020, YouTube made about $34.4 billion from advertisements. With this money, YouTube can afford to continue providing an excellent website for billions of people around the world.
On top of becoming the biggest video sharing hub in the world, YouTube also became a source of music, news, and movies. In terms of changing communication, YouTube has become kind of a "catch-all" place for entertainment. People no longer have to go to many different sites just to access all of these forms of entertainment when YouTube provides all of it in one place. It really has transformed into a one-of-a-kind website that will probably stand alone at the top of content sharing for the foreseeable future.
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