YouTube Turns 5 – 17 May 2010

Today is the fifth birthday of YouTube (the popular video sharing site). Happy Birthday YouTube! What better way to celebrate than this Google Doodle? But why a Google Doodle?

Founded by early PayPal employees; Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, YouTube.com was activated in mid-February 2005, and the site was grown and developed over the following months. It became the world’s fastest growing website during Summer 06. By the week ending 16th July, it had grown in popularity by 75%, with 12.8 million unique visitors.

But why a Google Doodle? Google realised the threat of YouTube to its Google Video site, and became interested in buying the site in that year (2006). Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. They promised though, that YouTube would remain separate of Google Video, keeping the appeal of both sites.

These days, everyone’s got YouTube, from myself to Her Majesty The Queen, the BBC, and Barack Obama. YouTube videos have a ten-minute cap on their length to avoid feature films and TV shows being illegally pirated on the site. However, around Christmas 2009, official channels were able to put full length TV shows up on the site, for free viewing by ‘TubeSurfers’.

Today, YouTube announced that they hit 2billion hits a day. That’s a staggering figure.

May YouTube continue for at least the next five years. Long live YouTube!