Why was YouTube created

YouTube, the video sharing website based in San Bruno, California, is the world’s biggest host of user generated video content. From movie clips to home made videos, from music videos to documentaries; YouTube is a storehouse of visual data. The company was formed by three Paypal employees — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Whereas Chad Hurley was a design student at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were computer science students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The most tenable theory of as to how the site was conceptualized is that Hurley and Chan thought about a website that could simplify the process of sharing videos with the world. Is had so happened that these two wanted to upload some videos that had been shot at a dinner party held at Chen’s San Francisco located apartment. They are said to have reflected on the idea that video sharing also needed to be as simple as photo sharing on the internet. And this is, most probably, the starting point of the basic idea of YouTube. However, there is a slight twist to the tale. YouTube has three founders, and the third of the lot, i.e. Jawed Karim, denies reports of the party in question. The fact that none of the three have ever given any concrete statements regarding the rumours in media also adds a lot of intrigue to the story.

Hurley once commented that there could be a bit of intelligent marketing behind the propulsion of such a theory. It is safe to say that the desire of creating a very simple video sharing platform was the primary motive of those behind YouTube. There is at least some degree of doubt about the venue where the idea was presented. A very interesting thing to note here is that the first video uploaded on Youtube was that of Jawed Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo. This strengthens the doubts about the theory of the dubious party at Chen’s apartment being the beginning of the idea of YouTube.