Youtube was founded on February 14th, 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.

Original Idea

The site we now all use to figure out how to set up Ikea furniture or to watch videos of dogs that sound like they’re speaking actually started as an idea for a dating site. This site, dubbed “Tune in Hook Up”, was supposed to be a version of HotOrNot, another dating site at the time, but the founders decided not to go that route.

The platform that we all know now came about a different way. Two events lead to its creation: firstly that Karim could not find any videos online of Janice Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction,  and the second being that Hurley and Chen were unable to send a video from a dinner party they attended due to e-mail attachment limitations.

Beta Site

Youtube’s beta (trial) site was launched in May 2005. This is what its homepage looked like:

First Video

The first video posted on Youtube’s website came from one of the founders, Jawed Karim. It was titled “Me at the zoo” and was only 19 seconds long.

This video set the tone for what Youtube would become: a site where anyone can broadcast anything.

First Viral Video

In September 2005, this Nike ad garnered over one million views. It was a clip of Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho receiving his pair of Golden Boots.

 

Launching out of Beta

Youtube finally launched out of beta on December 15th, 2005, following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital, giving the founders of Youtube enough money to increase it bandwidth, improve its servers and launch to the public.

Launching the “Content Verification Program”

In February 2006, NBC asked Youtube to take down a clip from Saturday Night Live titled “Lazy Sunday” because it was attracting a lot of attention to Youtube post-airing, so NBC was not receiving the views. This incited Youtube to create its Content Verification Program to help the rightful owners of videos remove those that infringe on their copyrights.

Google Buys Youtube

In October of 2006, when Youtube had only 65 employees, Google buys the company for ~$1.65 billion.

Partner Program

In May of 2007, Youtube launches their Partner Program, making it possible for people to profit odd of their videos.

Creating Stardom

Many people got their start on Youtube, including Justing Bieber who got his start through a Youtube video, which lead him to get signed by Usher in April of 2009.

Mainstream

In 2009, the 111th U.S. Congress launched the official Congressional Youtube channel. This helped American citizens attain a level of access to the government that was never before possible.

Vevo

In April 2009, Youtube and Vivendi teamed up to create Vevo, a music video service. They did this to try to repair links with music companies, which had complained about piracy and unfair licensing terms.

Movie Rental

In April 2010, Youtube entered into Neflix’s territory by having a film rental component, where viewers can pay a few dollars per film, with prices less expensive than Apple Movie but without access to more than 1 film for your money, like Netflix offers.

Live

In April 2011, Youtube introduced its “live” feature, where creators can stream live to their viewers. Since then, the Royal Wedding, the Olympics and even the Presidential Elections have been broadcasted on Youtube Live.

Today

Now, Youtube is still a massive phenomenon. After launching things such as Youtube Red, Youtube bring in billions of dollars annually.

Coded behaviour is unconscious behaviour that reveals hidden meaning. For this project, we split up into groups to observe peoples’ coded behaviour. We decided to look at how people sit depending on who they are with.

To start, we observed groups of two people who seemed to know each other and were conversing. These people were sitting across from each other at a table. Quickly, we began to noticed that they were clearly mimicking one another. For example, these two girls both had their head in their right hand and were using their left hand to gesture while they talked. A couple tables down, two girls were sitting with their legs crossed and their bodies hunched towards one another. The same phenomenon seemed to be happening with boys. Two boys were sitting with their legs spread apart, both touching their necks as they talked. From this, we can infer that people have the subconscious need to mimic each other in order to fit in. Depending on how well these people knew one another, we can assume that one’s behaviour can influence another’s, compelling people to mimic each other.

Secondly, we observed people sharing an area or table with someone they do not know. These people were all, without fail, sitting diagonally from each other and every single person was on their phone. The unwillingness to sit close to each other or look at one another shows how uncomfortable they are. They are clearly using their cell phones as distractions from one another, as well as the space between each other to convey that they are not interested in speaking to one another.

Finally, we observed groups of three or more who all seem to know each other. Here, we could see that all of the group members were sitting with their bodies pointing towards one person: the alpha. Regardless of where they were sitting around the table in relation to the alpha – across, diagonally or next to – each member had shifted their body to face them. This behaviour made it easy to determine who was the alpha in the group. Through this behaviour, we can see that there is usually a natural leader in any group as well as natural followers.

In conclusion, observing coded behaviour through the way people sit told us a lot about their position in said group as well as their internal drives. Those sitting in groups of two had the desire to be liked, thus mimicking each others behaviour to seem “relatable” and similar. Those sitting alone had the need to not seem “awkward”, and would turn to their cellphones to accomplish that. Those sitting in groups had the drive to be a leader or a follower, either by all sitting a certain way to face the alpha or by sitting tall and leading the discussion, thus asserting their alpha position.

I think I want to do my project on the Person of Interest topic. I’m not quite sure yet who I want to interview, but I have a couple of people in mind. We’ll see how it goes.