YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday today. In honour of 1825 days of free video watching from world shaking events to cats leaping into cardboard boxes, we’ve rounded up five Youtube firsts, landmark uploads which show how far the video sharing site has come.
1. The first upload
Jawed Karim visits San Diego Zoo
The very first YouTube video was uploaded five years ago today (23 April 2005) and features one of YouTube’s founders, Jawed Karim. It shows him on a visit to San Diego Zoo’s elephant enclosure and comes in at just 19 seconds long. What do you learn from it? Elephant’s have really long trunks. More seriously, it proved that YouTube worked and in October 2006, Google gobbled up the site for $1.65bn.
2. The first full HD video
Toy Story 3 Official Teaser Trailer
YouTube introduced full 1080p HD video in November 2009, allowing users to upload their own HD clips but more importantly taking a big step towards YouTube truly invading the HDTV in your living room. Google’s plan to create a YouTube movie service was highlighted by the first clip to go full HD – the Toy Story 3 Official Teaser Trailer. YouTube has disabled embedding of the clip, but you can see it here.
3. The first 3D clip
Anaglyph 3D video
Official YouTube support for 3D videos was introduced in July 2009 but we uncovered this 3D webcam video from back in October 2006. To watch it in 3D, you’ll need traditional red and blue 3D glasses. Hop over to more recent 3D YouTube videos though and you’ll be able to choose a range of different options including ditching glasses all together and just crossing your eyes. Follow the instructions in this YouTube blog post and you can make your own too.
4. The first download
11/15/08 President-Elect Obama’s Weekly Address
Up until November 2008, you could upload videos to YouTube but you couldn’t download any of them without indulging in some complicated and legally dubious software tricks. That changed with Barack Obama’s first weekly address as President-Elect. YouTube made it available for download and now features tonnes of downloadable public domain clips.
5. The first live video
Tiger Woods’s public apology
The public apology from Tiger Woods wasn’t the first live stream by YouTube – it had previously streamed its own earnings announcements, Obama’s inauguration and the US political debates – but it was the first time it had live broadcast a piece of breaking news.
And finally…
Take a peak at our latest YouTube creation, Romeo the Robot seducing a series of Android phones. Gawd bless the ‘tube:
