20th Anniversary of YouTube: Did You Know It Was Originally a Dating Site?

On February 14, 2025, the 20th anniversary of YouTube will be celebrated, the largest online video platform and one of the most visited websites in the world. It was on this date in 2005 that Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees, came together to bring the idea of YouTube to life, at which point they registered the corresponding domain.

However, the original concept of YouTube is far from what we know today. While the founders have occasionally mentioned that the lack of clips from the famous Super Bowl halftime show featuring Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson was a motivating factor, the truth is that the first version of YouTube was conceived as a dating site. On the first archived page of YouTube, preserved in the Internet Archive in April 2005, there is a form to enter data such as gender identity and partner preferences.

Despite initial efforts, such as seeking women to upload videos in exchange for $20 on Craigslist, the dating site failed to attract users and was ultimately abandoned by its creators. Instead, they decided to allow the upload of all kinds of videos, which led Karim to upload the first video on the platform, titled "Me at the zoo," on April 23, 2005. This video featured the founder talking about elephants at the San Diego Zoo.

YouTube was officially launched to the public in December 2005. Although today it is impossible to imagine the internet without YouTube, it was not the first online video site, as Vimeo had started its activities a year earlier. However, just a few days after the official launch of YouTube, a viral video from Saturday Night Live, titled "Lazy Sunday," was uploaded without authorization and became a phenomenon, thus solidifying YouTube's presence in viral culture.

In November 2006, Google acquired YouTube for the astonishing sum of $1.65 billion, marking a significant milestone in the history of technology and digital entertainment.