Over the last 17 years, YouTube has emerged as one of the top video streaming platforms in the world. YouTube was created in February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim as a platform where people could share their "home videos". The platform quickly became a success. During its Beta stages, YouTube was used to post everything from video dating profiles to wedding videos to advertisements. Even before its official launch to the public, YouTube had received a $3.5 million investment from an investment firm after one of its partners, who previously worked with YouTube's cofounders at PayPal, used the site to share old wedding and honeymoon videos. At the time of its public launch in December 2005, YouTube was receiving 8 million views each day. Soon, the platform caught the attention of Google, who had recently failed in the launch of their own video-sharing platform. In October 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion. The following year, "Charlie Bit my Finger" became one of the first YouTube videos to go viral. Though the original video has now been deleted from the platform, viral videos like it brought YouTube as a platform into the mainstream.
With the platform's success came a new phenomenon: the YouTuber. In December 2007, YouTube released its "Partner Program" which allowed creators to make money on their content. Around the same time, the company was also expanding its use of advertising as a source of revenue by offering sponsored videos and pre-roll ads as options for monetization. In 2009, YouTube teamed up with a media company to create the Vevo service, which is licensed to distribute music videos. YouTube seems to have entered its peak era in the early 2010s, when it began allowing people to live stream events, saw the emergence of some of its most popular creators (including PewDiePie), and launched a series of "YouTube Spaces" where creators could go to make content.
YouTube entered its Late Adopters phase around 2015, when it launched services geared towards children (YouTube Kids), gamers (YouTube Gaming), and paying subscribers (YouTube Red/Premium). Around 2017, the platform began to enter a decline, in large part because of changes to its algorithm and advertising systems that resulted in the so-called "Adpocalypse". In the years since, YouTube has faced a variety of controversies ranging from inappropriate behavior by its top creators to privacy breaches by the company itself. Likewise, a number of top YouTubers who found success during the platform's peak have since left to pursue other ventures and to escape the stress of such a fast-paced environment as the Internet.
Ultimately, I think people jumped on the YouTube train because it presented a novel way to connect with people. In its early days, the platform served as a way to share content between a small group of people that likely new each other. But it quickly grew into a platform to connect with people from around the world, both as a creator and as a viewer. As more people joined, the platform benefited from a wealth of content that could appeal to everyone. In addition to having videos for any interest, "how-to" style videos also grew in popularity, which YouTube a practical platform as well as an entertaining one. However, the growing struggles faced by the company demonstrate its negative side, particularly when it comes to inappropriate content. Because YouTube features content for all audiences, it can be easy for children to find content that they should not be exposed to. Despite policies intended to regulate inappropriate and/or illegal content, plenty of videos slip through the cracks. This, in turn, has much broader implications for society as a whole. Like with any technology, YouTube has a variety of benefits and pitfalls, but it is up to the individual consumer to determine what they are and are not willing to support.
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