YouTube turns 19: Look back at the first video ever posted
File: A web page of www.youtube.com is displayed on a computer screen, August 2, 2006. (SAMANTHA SIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Nearly 19 years ago, a guy named Jawed Karim posted the very first video to YouTube.
The video, published on April 23, 2005, is titled "Me at the zoo," and features Karim, a co-founder of YouTube, at the San Diego Zoo in front of an elephant exhibit.
"All right, so here we are in front of the elephants," he says in the 19-second clip. "The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks, and that's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to say."
The domain name YouTube.com, which ultimately became the social media platform and website for sharing videos, was registered on February 14, 2005. The video was posted on YouTube a month before the platform's public launch in May 2005.
YouTube was registered by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the American e-commerce company PayPal. They initially hoped to start a dating website but soon realized that ordinary people would enjoy sharing their home videos.
The company was purchased by Google just over a year later.
YouTube is headquartered in San Bruno, California.
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This story was reported from Los Angeles.