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Published: April 23, 2020, 11 a.m.

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Hello! And welcome to a very special edition of Inside The Newsroom where we\\u2019ll celebrate the 15th anniversary of YouTube, and go through the ups and downs of the world\\u2019s largest video sharing platform with today\\u2019s guest Ryan Broderick of BuzzFeed News. Ryan has covered technology for the past decade and has been with BuzzFeed since 2011, and has a charming newsletter called Garbage Day which features all the fun stuff on the internet from the past week. It\\u2019s hard to find the words to describe YouTube\\u2019s impact on society and how much it\\u2019s shaped our lives, but Ryan does so in a way far better than anyone, so please please please listen to the podcast up top. I\\u2019ve tried to cover everything in detail below, but there\\u2019s just so much I couldn\\u2019t include it all. Enjoy \\U0001f913

Picks of the Week

* Deepwater Horizon \\u2014 The worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history happened 10 years ago this week

* Earth Day \\u2014 Yesterday was Earth Day and Greta Thunberg has called for a new path once the pandemic is over

* Beach Erosion \\u2014 A new study forecasts dramatic beach erosion along the U.S. coastline

Today\\u2019s Episode

Today\\u2019s episode took more than 12 hours to put together, so please consider liking this post by clicking the little heart at the very top of the page, and also sharing with your friends on social media. I\\u2019ll be eternally grateful.

Ryan \\U0001f447

April 23, 2005: YouTube Is Born\\u2026 At San Diego Zoo

Fifteen years ago today, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the very first video to the platform that would go onto shape the world we live in. But don\\u2019t get too excited. The 19-second video taken at San Diego Zoo features Karim describing how long elephant trunks are. Yeah, not much of an improvisor, but to be fair to the bloke, he did start YouTube. If you still want to view the first video after that awesome description, have at it\\u2026

Karim met fellow co-founders Chad Hurley (no not the guy behind the surfing brand) and Steve Chen at PayPal, where each had significant roles in the design and direction of one of the world\\u2019s largest payment platforms. Now more than a billion hours of video content are watched on YouTube every day, and more than 2 billion people use the platform every month. But what most people don\\u2019t know is that YouTube was originally a dating site, where users uploaded videos of themselves to try and attract other men and women. Karim, Hurley and Chen even registered the YouTube.com domain on Valentines Day two months before. Like Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook, or rather Facemash, the three YouTubers realized their new platform had the potential to be so much more.

YouTube\\u2019s original homepage \\U0001f447\\U0001f637 | Credit: Web Archive

What are the Founders Doing Now?

Chad Hurley served as YouTube\\u2019s first CEO and went onto launch a smartphone video editing company along with Chen called MixBit, similar to other video sharing apps such as Vine (RIP), Snapchat and TikTok. Hurley\\u2019s now a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Football Club.

Steve Chen served as YouTube\\u2019s CTO and went onto launch MixBit with Hurley, which was eventually sold to BlueJeans in 2018. Chen is currently an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures.

Despite uploading the first video, Jawed Karim actually had the smallest role of the three. After the launch, Karim enrolled at Stanford University to obtain a master\\u2019s in computer science while also serving as an advisor to YouTube. He went onto co-found a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures (clever) that was one of Airbnb\\u2019s first investors.

What Was Video Like Before YouTube?

Good question. The biggest reason YouTube is what is today is because there wasn\\u2019t a central hub to seamlessly upload videos in a range of formats in 2005. Of course, videos existed on the internet before YouTube, but it was such a hassle to watch anything. I\\u2019m not sure how proud I am to tell you that I had to download the iconic peer-to-peer sharing platforms LimeWire and BitTorrent, whereby users uploaded video files to the internet for the rest of us to download with accute anxiety over whether we were breaking the law or not. From there, I waited two to three minutes for the video to load in Windows Media Player, and voila! I could watch a whole minute of video! I\\u2019m sure there were other ways, but this is what I and many others had to do to watch a single video. And I know what you\\u2019re thinking, Pornhub came in 2007 (pun intended), so this was the ritual for porn users as well. Oh, you weren\\u2019t thinking that\\u2026 \\U0001f422

November 13, 2006: YouTube Acquired By Google For $1.65 billion

A year and half after Karim uploaded that video at the zoo, YouTube was the world\\u2019s fastest growing website and everyone had their eyes on Silicon Valley\\u2019s hottest startup. Even with its meteoric rise, nobody could have imagined that Google would buy YouTube for $1.65 billion \\u2014 $2.1 billion (\\xa31.75 billion) in today\\u2019s money. Google\\u2019s acquisition is a piece of history in itself and was ridiculed for paying so much. Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban called the move \\u201ccrazy\\u201d, and even Google later acknowledged they probably paid a billion too much. But YouTube now generates $15 billion in annual revenue, and it would take no less than 12 figures for Google to let go of it. Put simply, it might be the greatest tech acquisition of all time.

Google is the very reason why YouTube is so popular and profitable. The search engine giant was already gobbling up the majority of the advertising market, and its AdSense model opened YouTube up to content creators which accelerated its popularity and revenue even further. Google also redesigned YouTube\\u2019s clunky interface with its trademark clean and sleek design, making the platform perfect for travelling down multiple rabbit holes to consume even more content. Perhaps only Facebook\\u2019s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion (\\xa3629 million) in 2012 can rival as the best tech buys in history.

YouTubers and Their Millions

YouTube wouldn\\u2019t be what it is without its thousands of content creators, many of whom use the platform to make a living. The way it works is users must enable AdSense for their YouTube account, which allows clever algorithms to generate adverts on videos automatically. The more views, the more revenue \\u2014 around $8 per 1,000 views. YouTube then takes 45 percent of that revenue, leaving most creators with the remaining 55, though there are higher rates for creators with the highest views.

The highest-paid Youtuber of 2019 was eight-year-old Ryan Kaji, who started out reviewing toys on camera, and has since matured to conducting science experiments. Last year Kaji earned an estimated $26 million. But don\\u2019t be fooled. The entirety of that money didn\\u2019t come from YouTube. Kaji has launched a line of more than 100 toys and clothing items, has a show on Nickelodeon, and has deals with Roku and Walmart. He\\u2019s part of the growing number of YouTube stars who are becoming less reliant on the platform, with some leaving YouTube altogether. If Google wants to stop the growing trend of its users turning to other platforms to make money, it\\u2019ll have no option other than to change its revenue rates.

The Dark Side of YouTube

While YouTube has been a vehicle for thousands of people to make a living and hundreds to become millionaires, there\\u2019s been several missteps that have led to the spread of extremism and fake information. Chen, Hurley and Karim could never have imagined that their innocent video sharing platform would be used to disseminate far-right hate and white supremacism, but that\\u2019s the reality of what tech entrepreneurs of today must have at the top of their priority list, above aesthetics, above share-ability, and certainly above profitability.

That\\u2019s where YouTube has failed the most, to protect society from the vitriol and divisiveness that\\u2019s running through our communities\\u2019 bloodstreams. YouTube not only has not done enough, it\\u2019s among the most pervasive platforms over the past 15 years. Now, you might ask why Google executives have been so inactive in removing fake news and hate speech. You might also catch yourself feeling sympathetic toward them because of the difficulty to find and remove all hateful content. Don\\u2019t be. Don\\u2019t be fooled by the carefully constructed PR talk telling us that they\\u2019re doing everything they can to remove hateful videos that violate their rules. It\\u2019s b******t. YouTube, and several other social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter, know full well that if they were to actually adhere to the very rules they set in place that they would lose half of their users overnight. If amazing journalists like Ryan didn\\u2019t write on this issue profusely, Google would happily continue to skip along as if nothing was wrong.

YouTube\\u2019s Hits and Misses

So we know that YouTube has completely revolutionized the way we watch video, and how thousands of people can earn a living. But what other industries has it spawned? And what did it miss out on? Let\\u2019s start with eSports, the multi-billion dollar industry that has absolutely exploded over the past decade. Now, YouTube didn\\u2019t create eSports, but it\\u2019s fair to say that without it, the professional gaming industry would look totally different. The story arguably starts in South Korea in the late 1990s with the game StarCraft, a science fiction strategy game that allowed multiple players to compete at the same time. As YouTube became more and more popular toward the late 2000s, millions of people began to watch other people play the likes of Minecraft, World of Warcraft and any other game ending in -craft. Online gaming on YouTube is still incredibly strong, with half of the top 10 earners making their fortune from gaming.

But it hasn\\u2019t been all fun and games for YouTube, and it certainly isn\\u2019t a company that whatever it touches turns to gold. Perhaps its largest failure to date, both in time and money invested, has been its premium version, YouTube Premium, formerly known as Music Key, also known as YouTube Red. YouTube launched its premium service in 2014 and required users to pay a monthly subscription to listen to music and TV shows. The problem was that Netflix had already cornered the market, switching its own service from Blockbuster-style video rentals to online streaming in 2010. Why would users pay $12 a month on a platform they\\u2019d previously got their content for free? Simply put, YouTube was far too late and Google\\u2019s executives might never get over the billions of dollars Netflix and its streaming rivals are making today.

Like with Netflix, YouTube also missed the boat on the rise and rise of video social media. While YouTube execs were investing the majority of their resources on their ad model, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and now TikTok made it seamless for users to upload videos from their mobile phones, where the majority of internet users now consume content. YouTube has also lost its dominance of the \\u2018influencer market\\u2019, an industry Instagram has gladly made inroads into. Which leads us to our final part of our celebration of YouTube: What\\u2019s next?

The Next 15\\u2026

So here we are, the end of a remarkable journey over the past 15 years. Instead of being sentimental over the fact we\\u2019ll never see such an enthusiastic video about the size of elephant trunks uploaded to the internet ever again, let\\u2019s look forward to what YouTube should do in the next 15 years. I asked Ryan this very question, and his answer centered on mobile. If YouTube is to continue growing its audience, it must make it easier for its content creators to create content. How does it do that? By creating an entire equivalent version of Adobe Premiere inside its app for free. It must also create a virtual editing platform with advanced editing tools that allow users to create quality content with the few proverbial clicks of a user\\u2019s thumbs, similar to how TikTok has taken over the short form video market. And lastly, it must pivot its strategy and have mobile at the very center of it. If it doesn\\u2019t work on mobile, it doesn\\u2019t work for the user. Cheers to that \\U0001f37b

Last week \\u2026

* #70 \\u2014 Amy Webb (Future Today Institute)\\xa0on the lack of government preparation for the coronavirus and the latest 2020 technology trends

* South Korea Election Special

* 44 Reasons Bernie Supporters Should Be Optimistic

\\u2026 Next week

* Nick Rubando on running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio\\u2019s 5th district and his upcoming primary on Tuesday April 28

* Major Garrett (CBS News) on what it\\u2019s like to be in the same room with Donald Trump, and how asking him questions compares to Obama, Bush and Clinton

Related podcasts\\u2026

#52 \\u2014 Katie Notopoulos (BuzzFeed) on the \\u2018techlash\\u2019 and why we can\\u2019t trust any of the big technology companies with our privacy

#43 \\u2014 Kashmir Hill (New York Times) on what she discovered by cutting out Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft from her life for six weeks

#41 \\u2014 Jessica Lessin (The Information) on starting a technology journalism startup from scratch and how to breakup Facebook

Job Corner

A couple of weeks ago I launched a journalism jobs and internships board. It now has almost 600 active postings, mostly based in the U.S. and the UK, but also a few dozen from other parts of the world.\\xa0Sign up for weekly updates. New jobs from yesterday include\\u2026

Bloomberg \\u2014 Graphic Designer

Indianapolis Star \\u2014 Food and Dining Reporter

New York Magazine \\u2014 Features Writer

The Athletic \\u2014 Staff Editor

The New York Times (London) \\u2014 Business Reporter

The Texas Tribune Student Fellowships

The Toronto Star \\u2014 Freelance Writers Needed

The Wall Street Journal (London) \\u2014 Editor

University of Stirling \\u2014 Professor in Digital Journalism

Vox Media \\u2014 Audio Producer

YouTube \\u2014 Media Specialist

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