"Me at the zoo."
That's the title of one of the most consequential videos of all time. The video to start all videos. The "Big Bang" of the video-sharing world.
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WATCH HEREIt was the first-ever clip uploaded to YouTube, 20 years ago. That zoo? The one in San Diego's backyard.
On April 23, 2005, YouTube founder Jawed Karim shared the unedited 18-second clip of himself in front of the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. It was shot by his co-founder Yakov Lapitsky.
"Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants," Karim casually shares with the camera. "The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks. And that's, that's cool."
"And, that's pretty much all there is to say."
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And that's pretty much the start of the largest video-sharing platform in the world. "Me at the Zoo" now has more than 355 million video views and more than 10 million comments.
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SIGN UP A month after the first video clip was uploaded — while the platform was in beta mode — YouTube was already garnering about 300,000 video views a day. By the end of the year, the platform was getting two million views a day.
And that's pretty much all there is to say.
