Which video-sharing website was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005? The answer is YouTube.
The three founders were former PayPal employees who established YouTube in February 2005. Chad Hurley focused heavily on design, Steve Chen on the technical infrastructure, and Jawed Karim contributed programming and helped shape the product. The service was designed to make uploading and sharing video simple through an ordinary web browser.
YouTube’s domain was registered on February 14, 2005, and the first surviving upload, “Me at the zoo,” was posted by Karim on April 23. The 19-second clip shows him at the San Diego Zoo and became a landmark in internet history. The site’s original concept reportedly included an online-dating angle, but the founders shifted toward general-purpose video sharing.
YouTube was not the first video-sharing website—Vimeo predates it—but its ease of use and rapid growth made it dominant. Google acquired YouTube in November 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, while allowing the service to retain its distinct brand.