YouTube has become an integral part of daily life for millions of people. It’s one of the few early digital platforms that has stuck around and shows no sign of going anywhere.
Other platforms like Napster and Myspace have long since fallen away to better options, but video streaming is still dominated by YouTube. It didn’t have to be that way, though, and some of the fun facts about YouTube we’ll explore today can attest to that.
We’re going to take a look at some interesting things about YouTube that you might not have known. Let’s get started:
Little-Known Fun Facts about YouTube
It turns out that YouTube was created by a few Paypal employees who had some trouble with an email chain. Before the days of streamlined social media experiences, email chains were the way to communicate with your friends and family online.
You might have a chain of dozens of people, all exchanging information, and really enjoying the whole process. The funny thing is that those email chains weren’t embellished with graphics or a great user interface; they might as well have been mostly HTML code.
Apparently, though, one of those chains had some difficulty with the compatibility of a video it contained. YouTube’s founders saw a gap in the functionality of video sharing and started YouTube with the money they got as bonuses when eBay bought Paypal.
YouTube’s Startling Rise
YouTube started out in early 2005. Its value quickly became apparent, and the already-massive company Google bought YouTube only a year later for 1.65 billion dollars.
From there on, the rest is history and has been controlled by user contributions and popular interest. Without YouTube, we wouldn’t have all of the classic viral videos that we’ve come to know and love. The “Charlie bit my fingers” and “Chocolate Rains” of the world wouldn’t have had quite the same impact.
Also Read: How to Get More Subscribers on Youtube?
YouTube Founders Started “Rick-Rolling”
If you were alive any time from 2008 to 2013, you know what Rick-rolling is. Essentially, it’s whenever an otherwise-rivetting video is interrupted by Rick Astley’s video to “Never Gonna Give You Up,” an overwhelmingly cheesy song that has an indescribable hilarious quality to it.
YouTube started this prank by rerouting every video link to this music video on April fools. They followed up the next few years with pranks like turning the entire page layout upside down or letting news outlets think that the entire platform would be shutting down 24 hours later.
Not all billionaire tech moguls, it turns out, are void of a sense of humor.
The Founders aren’t The Only Ones Making Bank
YouTube has emerged as a way for hundreds of thousands of content creators to make a significant income. In many cases, individuals make massive fortunes through their content.
The richest YouTube start to-date is Jeffree Star, who is a fashion icon and makeup mogul as a result of his content on YouTube. Many people enhance their existing fame through YouTube, but Star is an example of one who rose the ranks purely through YouTube.
His content has earned him a cozy net worth of around 75 million dollars. Many other content creators like Jake and Logan Paul have amassed fortunes in the dozens of millions of dollars.
A lot of that money comes from YouTube itself, which pays popular creators for videos that reach a certain amount of views, but individuals also make money through sponsorships paid out for product placement of items from large companies.
Global Appeal
Somewhere around 2 billion individuals look at YouTube every single day. The numbers from 2019 suggest that around 4.5 billion people are active on the internet. That’s well over half of the world’s human population.
That means that around one-quarter of humans on the planet watch a YouTube video every month.
Amount of Content
As things stand right now, it would take a person an extremely long time to watch all of the videos that exist on YouTube. As you read this article, thousands of videos are being added to the archives, and it seems that more and more people are posting religiously as content creation proves itself to be a sustainable way to make income.
It would take a person roughly 100,000 years to watch all of the videos on YouTube as things currently stand. That said, that number would rise exponentially if YouTube continued its current trajectory, so it’s safe to say that, all things equal, you could never watch all of the content on YouTube.
If you want to start accumulating some of your favorite videos to watch even if they get taken down, take a look at a YouTube video downloader to lock that content into your storage.
YouTube is the Second-Largest Search Engine
Interestingly, YouTube ranks as a search engine. Its database is massive and has a wealth of knowledge comparable to that of any other search engine in the world.
It turns out that YouTube is second only to Google as the largest search engine in the world. That means it’s bigger than the other giants like Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.
In fact, it’s bigger than all of those search engines put together. The fact that Google owns YouTube puts it in the position to have the largest accumulation of human data ever.
Not Just an Entertainment Platform
It’s easy to think of large social platforms and content sites as mindless and harmful features of modern society. It’s important to remember that these platforms do provide very useful functions, though.
Some social media platforms are harder to find useful in everyday life, but YouTube is an encyclopedic archive of how-tos and educational information for people.
It’s safe to say that if humans had YouTube 5,000 years ago, our civilization would be far more advanced than we can currently imagine. The ability to have clear examples of how to perform new tasks, learn skills, and understand different cultures is an incredibly important factor in our modern world.
Want to Learn More Interesting Tech Facts?
Hopefully, our facts about YouTube gave you a deeper appreciation of the platform and how it came to be. There’s a whole lot more out there about how the internet came to be, how to use it well, and where it’s going. We’re here to talk about it with you.
Explore our site for more insight into the world of technology and how to engage with it meaningfully.
