YouTube is turning 20
Twenty years ago today when Jawed Karim uploaded a grainy 19-second clip titled “Me at the Zoo” to his new platform, YouTube, he ushered in a new era in online video.
The video of Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo was the first to appear on YouTube, the video platform founded by him, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. The trio sold the service to Google
in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and in the nearly two decades since, YouTube has evolved from a simple video-sharing site into a global media juggernaut.
If it was a stand-alone business, YouTube would be worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, according to analysts at MoffettNathanson. YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world, according to Similarweb, behind only Google, and more than 20 trillion videos -- including music, Shorts, podcasts and more -- have been uploaded to the site as of April, YouTube said Wednesday.
“This is the streaming winner,” MoffettNathanson founding partner Michael Nathanson told CNBC. “They don’t have to invest in content. They just hope that the creator community comes to them and builds their business.”
YouTube is on track to be the biggest media company by revenue in 2025, beating Disney
, Nathanson said. Nielsen’s latest Media Distributor Gauge put YouTube in first place in total TV viewership by company, taking up 12% of time watched, ahead of Disney, Fox
and Netflix