15 Years Ago, This Was YouTube's Only Video

A lot has happened since Jawed went to the zoo
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 23, 2020 8:26 AM CDT

The most-viewed video on YouTube is currently "Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee" by Luis Fonsi, with more than 6.7 billion views. Fifteen years ago today, it was "Me at the zoo" by Jawed Karim—with one view. The 18-second video by the YouTube co-founder was the first video ever posted on the platform, reports the BBC. "The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks," says Karim, standing in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. "And that's, that's cool."

Karim and two friends, who started YouTube because they had nowhere to share videos online, sold the platform to Google for $1.65 billion a year later, CNN reports. YouTube says the world checks out one billion hours of video every day and hundreds of hours of video are uploaded every minute. "Me at the zoo," however, remains the only video on Karim's channel. (More YouTube stories.)

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