The first video of YouTube

YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first video “Me at the Zoo” on the website this day eight years ago.

According to the description of the video, it was uploaded on Apr 23, 2005 at 8.27 pm (US time). It now boasts more than 14 million views.

The 19-second clip shows Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo and saying that the “cool thing” about the animals is that “they have really, really, really long, um, trunks.”

YouTube — the world's third most visited website after Google and Facebook — was founded by former PayPal co-workers Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in February 2005.

Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Most of the content on YouTube are uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC and other organisations offer some of their material via YouTube.

YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between Nov 2005 and Apr 2006.

Its early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.

The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on Feb 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.

YouTube was bought by Google for $ 1.65 billion in Nov 2006 and now operates as a Google subsidiary.