Having launched as a smaller beta in May 2005, YouTube celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 23.The first video ever posted was called "Me at the zoo," featuring YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. Just one year after its launch, Karim and co-founders Cha Hurley and Steve Chen sold YouTube to Google for US$1.65 Billion. Its now the third-most-visited website, following Google and Facebook with some 800 million user.
More tan 300 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute of the day. After being acquired by Google, Youube continuedto grow and attract users. It consumed as much bandwidth in 2007 as the entire Internet in 2000, according toone estimate.
As of 2011, it commanded more than 3 billion views per day, and that figure increased to 4 billion just a year later. In May 2013 YouTube launched a pilot programme that would offer content providers the ability to charge $0.99 a month for certain channels, but today the vast majority of contents remains free- albeit ad-supported. YouTube earlier this year announced the launch of YouTube kids, a mobile app that offers parental controls and restrictions on who can upload and with videos.
