To celebrate, the Google-owned site launched its YouTube Five Year Channel and a project called “My YouTube Story,” which features users talking about the ways in which the video site has affected their lives and their favorite videos. Among them are such “high-profile” users:
Since we consider ourselves pretty high-profile as well, here are some Maven favorites:
Jess: Tillman, the Skateboarding Dog (Because I am sucker for animal videos)
Rebecca: Twisted Tea’s “Tea Pahtay” (Because promotion was ingenious marketing – it was fun, cheap to produce, and spanned hundreds of knock off “tea parties” across the country)
Megan: Grape Lady Falls! (Because she was cheating so totally deserved it)
Sarah: Barack/Never Gonna Give You Up (Because apparently Obama is never gonna give you up)
Brittany: Charlie, Bit My Finger (Because it is just adorable and all little kids should have English accents)
Also featured on the Five Year Channels is a timeline of to celebrate some of its milestones, including the first video uploaded by the site’s founders. YouTube is offering a retrospective which makes us wonder what our lives would be like without ever seeing a bridal party dance down the aisle.
Although YouTube is where we visit to usually find silly videos of dancing, QVC gone wrong and funny cat montages but it also disseminates thought provoking material as well. Less we forget videos like Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, Dove’s Evolution of Beauty and an array of some of the world’s most creative social experiments.
Where does it go from here? In five years YouTube has 2 billion views a day, 70% of which are from outside the U.S. If it took you four minutes to read this blog entry, then YouTube users just uploaded 96 hours of new video. Now that kind of growth is worth celebrating.
Happy Birthday YouTube! And to celebrate let us enjoy this birthday montage:
