YouTube: The History & Its Impact

    YouTube is a popular app that everyone uses to watch videos of all calibers. This algorithm has been in use for almost two decades now and has kept many of us entertained for hours on end. What if I were to tell you that YouTube's original reasoning for existing was for a meet-and-greet site?

    Everything starts with an idea from someone, and this particular platform was created through a group effort. Youtube has three founders. Their names are Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim and at this given time they were all working under the same company, Paypal. Since this was not well received, they changed their pivot to sharing videos.

    On February 14, 2005, Chad Hurley would register the “YouTube” trademark, logo, and domain on Valentine’s Day. In April of that same year, the first-ever video was uploaded. Karim was the first person to post a video which was titled “Me at the Zoo”. The site would later be officially launched in December. By January of that following year, YouTube had more than 25 million views.

    Ever since then, Youtube has grown on an exponential level. The most recent statistics from YouTube are higher than ever. More than 2.6 billion people are actively using YouTube as of 2023. Youtube is the second biggest search engine. It is also the largest video-sharing platform as well as the second-largest social media platform.

    This platform was created for the freedom to post videos without "restriction".  Even though they say that there are no restrictions, there are some. Under the guidelines that YouTube has you can not post certain things. If you do violate those guidelines, then the video will be taken down, and/or your page will be terminated. Throughout the years of YouTube, there have been many pros and cons.

Some of the positives within this app/site are that it helps with improved career, and saves money. This is a very good thing. People who want to post videos of things for free with "no restriction" can do so using YouTube. Posting videos on YouTube can help with many different things. They can teach you how to use or do many things. YouTube can be used to post things for your portfolio and to show off your work. Since this is a free platform that is accessible to everyone, most people lean toward using it because it costs nothing to use.

With all of these positives, there are negatives as well. Some negatives are that this might cause misinformation and kill productivity. With the power to post things on the internet, you can technically say whatever you want within that video until YouTube takes it down. So within these videos, a lot of misinformation can be spread and anyone watching the video would not know until they fact-check. Another thing is that sometimes you can be sucked into watching videos and videos on end due to the recommendations you receive.