Feb. 14, 2005 – Founders Mike Hurley and Steve Chen register the domain name YouTube.com and begin to work on the site, according to YouTube’s five-year celebration video.
April 23, 2005 – First videos uploaded to the site were called “Me at the Zoo,” filmed at the San Diego Zoo with third co-founder Jawed Karim talking about the wonders of Elephants, and “My Snowboarding Skills,” according to YouTube’s five-year celebration video.
June 2006 – lonelygirl15
According to the Associated Press, the web series focused on the life of 16-year-old Bree, known online as lonelygirl15, and was initially portrayed to be non-fictional, but later revealed by Wired magazine as 19-year-old actor Jessica Rose. The videos slowly morphed from everyday subject matter of a teenager to a bizarre narrative focusing on Bree’s family’s cult practices. According to the Associated Press, it is the first web series to introduce product placement, when main character Bree was shown chewing Ice Breakers Sours Gum in a one episode deal with Hershey’s.
September 2006 – Philip DeFranco
According to Philip DeFranco’s YouTube channel, DeFranco, known on YouTube as sxephil, is an American video blogger who talks about current events, politics and celebrity gossip. He has received nearly 500 million views and has nearly 1.5 million subscribers. According to the technology website Tubefilter, he is one of only a handful of YouTubers who are producing regularly scheduled content.
October 2006 – Fred
Fred Figglehorn, 17, is the fictional 6-year-old YouTube character created by Lucas Cruikshank, a teenager from Nebraska. Fred uses a high-pitched chipmunk voice and has “anger management issues.” According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Cruikshank writes, films and edits all of the films himself. According to Fred’s YouTube channel, his channel has received over 684 million video views and 2.1 million channel subscriptions.
2006- OK GO
According to National Public Radio (NPR), this Grammy-award winning rock band from Chicago is best know for their creative and low budget music videos promoted through YouTube. Most notably, their 2006 video “Here It Goes Again” shows the band doing complex choreography on treadmills. This video has received over 50 million hits on YouTube.
May 2007-Rick Astley
According to the website Know Your Meme, this is the first known instance of rick-rolling, a practical joke where someone is linked to the video of Rick Astley’s 1987 music video Never Gonna Give You Up. On April Fools 2008, every featured video on YouTube’s front page redirected to the Rick Astley’s video.
2007- Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em
Soulja Boy is an American rapper made famous by his hit song “Crank That.” According to Billboard, in September 2007, Soulja Boy’s song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in 2008, he was nominated for a Grammy for best rap song. According to allmusic.com, after self-releasing “Crank That,” he uploaded a low-budget instructional video to YouTube explaining the dance, which went quickly viral.
2008- Justin Bieber
According to his website, the 16-year-old from Stratford, Ont caught the eye of Scooter Braun and Usher after his mom posted YouTube videos of him singing at a competition. Eight months later, Bieber was signed under Usher’s major record label. According to YouTube’s most subscribed list. Bieber’s YouTube channel, kidrauhl, is the most subscribed of all time for Canada.
2008- Nigahiga
According their Nigahiga’s YouTube channel, what originally started in 2006 as lip syncing videos to popular songs soon expanded to various comedic pieces. Ryan Higa currently has most subscribed YouTube channel of all time, with over three million subscribers.
2010- Antoine Dodson
According to Billboard.com, Antoine Dodson from Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama rose to YouTube fame after he was interviewed about the attempted rape of his sister. Soon after, a song was created by The Gregory Brothers called “Bed Intruder Song.” It became one of the top viewed YouTube video of 2010, and has over 60 million views.
May 2010 – According to YouTube’s five-year celebration video, YouTube has exceeded a total of 2 billion views a day.