Twenty years of YouTube: How the site has revolutionised the internet

How LGBTQ+ YouTubers helped shape a queer generation

20 years ago, on 23 April 2005, a man uploaded a video of himself to YouTube. In the clip, titled Me at the Zoo, the man is at San Diego Zoo, in California. “All right, so here we are in front of the elephants,” he says in the wobbly 19-second footage, “and the cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks and that’s cool.” To this day, that short video is the only one uploaded on his account, but, while it nev…

20 years ago, the first video was uploaded to the YouTube platform. The short clip from the San Diego Zoo wrote Internet history. We show it.

First video uploaded to YouTube 20 years ago

(CNN, KYMA/KECY) - 20 years ago Wednesday, history was made as the very first YouTube video was uploaded. Titled "Me at the Zoo," the 19-second clip features YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim in front of an elephant exhibit. He was 25-years-old at the time. Karim was one of the company's three founders, all of whom previously worked at PayPal. YouTube was a very fast success, and just after 18 months, it would be sold to Google for $1.65 billion wo…

Twenty years of YouTube: How the site has revolutionised the internet

Exactly 20 years ago, a 19-second clip was uploaded to a website that would, in the space of just a few years, revolutionise the internet. The video was called "Me at the zoo," and was published on YouTube.com, which nobody had ever heard of at the time. We speak to our Los Angeles correspondant Wassim Cornet about how YouTube has changed our lives.

Today, April 23, 2025, two decades have passed since Jawed Karim uploaded the first video to YouTube, a 19-second clip that marked the beginning of a digital revolution. Its impact and the evolution of the platform. Today, April 23, 2025, the 20th anniversary of the first video uploaded to YouTube, a milestone that transformed the way we consume and create content on the Internet. The clip, entitled Me at the Zoo, was published by Jawed Karim, o…

It is currently considered a historical piece of Internet culture, and is still available for viewing on Karim's original channel, accumulating millions of views and comments