YouTube Inc. was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in February 2005 in San Bruno, California. They all met while working at PayPal, Chen and Karim as engineers and designer Chad. According to Hurley and Chen, the idea of YouTube came at the difficulties experienced in trying to share videos taken during a party San Francisco. This story has been considered a very simplified version, and Chen has recognized that this idea can be promoted by the need to present a simple story to the market. Karim said that the party never happened, and that the idea of sharing Internet video was his. His colleagues have stated that the party did happen, and Karim's original idea was to create a dating site where people could be classified based on their videos. Karim acknowledges having been influenced by a dating site called HotorNot.com ('"Hot or Not'), where users could upload pictures of themselves, which were then rated by other users.
The domain was activated on February 15, 2005, and 23 April was the first video uploaded, Me at the Zoo ("I at the zoo '). In the spring YouTube went online. However, developers quickly realized that users were carrying all sorts of videos, leaving behind the original idea. Traffic soared as people began to put YouTube links in their MySpace pages. The rapid growth of the site attracted Time Warner and Sequoia Capital, which invested in it. After that in October 2005, the company placed a Nike spot featuring Ronaldinho, large companies began to feel attracted by YouTube. In 2005, Sequoia had to invest U.S. $ 8.5 million on the site.
By December 2005 YouTube pages were visited 50 million times a day. However, after the music video Lazy Sunday, originally broadcast on the show Saturday Night Live, was uploaded to YouTube, visits skyrocketed again to reach the 250 million daily views. By May 2006, according to Alexa.com, YouTube reached 2000 million views a day, and by mid-August had reached 7000 million mark several times, also had become the tenth most visited site in the United States. At that time, the New York Post estimated that YouTube would be worth between 600 and 1000 million U.S. dollars. MySpace.com and Google published their own versions of YouTube, but without success.
In October 2006 YouTube offices remained in San Mateo County, located on the second floor of a building, and had about 60 employees. An executive of Universal Music Group recently announced that "YouTube owed tens of millions of dollars" for violation of copyright. Mark Cuban, co-founder of Broadcast.com, an Internet radio service purchased by Yahoo in 1999, a month earlier had declared that "only a fool would buy YouTube for potential legal problems that face." However, site owners were already committed with Warner Music to improve service, so that could detect more quickly when a video of his property was uploaded to the site. However, earlier this month published a report in the Wall Street Journal indicating that Google was buying YouTube for U.S. $ 1600 million. This information was initially denied by YouTube and Google, which described it as hearsay.
Offices YouTube, San Bruno, California, after its purchase by Google.
That same month, Google bought YouTube for $ 1650 million dollars in stock. At the time of purchase 100 million videos on YouTube were displayed and 65 thousand new videos were added daily. In addition, some 72 million people visiting per month. Hurley and Chen held their positions, like the 67 employees at that time worked in the company. In the days before, YouTube has signed two agreements with Universal Music Group and CBS, and Google had signed agreements with Sony BMG and Warner Music to distribute music videos.
By June 2008 38% of videos viewed in Internet came from YouTube, the closest competitor came to represent only 4%. Although Google did not reveal the figures, it was estimated that the site generated U.S. $ 200 million that year. In that month, an announcement on the YouTube home page daily cost $ 175,000, and the customer must commit to spending 50,000 additional dollars on ads on Google or other pages on YouTube. However, because the content of the vast majority of YouTube videos did not attract advertisers, ad prices collapsed. YouTube proceeded to put pressure on movie studios and television to produce quality video content, and gave them prominent channels, which announcements could present premieres of short films and television. Also came to place ads before the start of a video, but then discovered that 70% of users left the site before it was over.
YouTube's relationship with TV production companies and film has been mixed. Viacom lawsuit against YouTube continues billion for 1000, which started in March 2007 for alleged massive violation of copyright. In addition, Disney signed in late March 2009 an agreement with YouTube, allowing transmission short video of the ABC and ESPN. Disney may submit ads on YouTube with this treatment. In April 2009, Google announced that YouTube signed alliances with some Hollywood studios that the site could show television and full movies. In January 2010, launches YouTube Rentals, an online video store service with full-length movies which can be viewed instantly after payment.
In recent years, Google has not yet achieved the high traffic effectively converting YouTube into profits, the company has recognized this, but has refused to provide figures. According to a Forbes Magazine article, YouTube will generate $ 240 million in 2009, remaining well below the $ 710 million in operating costs of the site. According to an analyst at Credit Suisse, YouTube would show losses by 470 million U.S. dollars in 2009, however, other companies estimate losses 174.2 million.
More about videos from YouTube and other video portals you can find on evideo.si web portal.
