The first YouTube video used to be uploaded two decades in the past lately!

On April 23, 2005, precisely two decades in the past lately, a low-resolution, 18-second video titled “Me on the zoo” quietly went up and introduced what would turn into the largest video platform on this planet — YouTube. Uploaded on April 23, 2005, the tiny clip options Jawed Karim, certainly one of YouTube’s co-founders, casually speaking about elephants on the San Diego Zoo.

By lately’s requirements of YouTube movies, “Me on the zoo” is rather an underwhelming watch. There’s no manufacturing high quality, no audio mastering, not anything however a 25-year-old instrument engineer pointing to elephants at the back of him and pronouncing, “The cool factor about those guys is that they’ve actually, actually, actually lengthy trunks.”

Unknowingly, despite the fact that, Karim used to be making web historical past. The video, which now has over 355 million perspectives, is an emblem of YouTube’s beginnings and the beginning of the generation of video content material.

Two many years after Jawed uploaded the primary YouTube video, the platform stays an ever-evolving beast. What began with one guy and a few elephants now quantities to over 500 hours of content material uploaded each and every minute! Actually, we’re lovely certain the quantity is upper, and YouTube simply hasn’t up to date its stats shortly. In 2025, content material on YouTube comprises the entirety from non-public vlogs to billion-view tune movies, are living streams, podcasts, documentaries, Shorts, and now, even AI-generated movies! A 25-year-old Jawed would on no account have imagined this!

To mark the anniversary of “Me on the zoo,” YouTube has even added a tiny cake slider to the video, at the side of an elephant icon that takes you to Jawed’s YouTube channel. He simplest has this one video up, by way of the way in which, and 5.34 million subscribers! In February this yr, he modified the video’s description to attract consideration to the hazards of microplastics.

In some ways, lately’s YouTube is a large zoo in its personal proper. It’s a chaotic, colourful, and regularly overwhelming house stuffed with content material, each just right and completely horrible. But that’s the wonderful thing about YouTube. It’s algorithm-driven insanity and a need on the identical time.

Over the years, YouTube has branched out a ways past its authentic idea of a video streaming platform. It has turn into one of the most cornerstones of web tradition, with the release of sub-platforms and products and services like YouTube Music, YouTube Kids, YouTube TV, and YouTube Premium.

Can you believe — again in 2005, gazing YouTube movies in 240p or 360p used to be the norm! Fast-forward to 2025, and the platform now helps 4K, 8K, HDR, or even VR movies.

And whilst YouTube faces expanding grievance over the ad-serving large it has turn into, it stays probably the most influential and culture-defining platforms within the historical past of the web. Twenty years in, and YouTube doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It might not be evolving to everybody’s liking, however it’s indisputably having a second due to the upward thrust of the fast video structure. Come to think about it, “Me on the zoo” is a YouTube Short in spirit, and a reminder that anybody, any place on this planet, can add one thing that might trade the sector.