1. YouTube was founded by 3 former employees of PayPal.
YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by three ex-PayPal employees.
It was originally funded with the bonuses that the employees received when eBay bought out PayPal.

2. Initially, YouTube was created to be a video dating site called “Tune In Hook Up.”

3. You can navigate YouTube in more than 80 different languages, covering 95% of the Internet population.

4. Google bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stocks just 18 months after YouTube's creation.

5. At YouTube's headquarters, employees can either take the elevator, stairs or a big slide.

6. Every minute, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

7. YouTube has over 2 billion users, almost one-third of all people on the Internet.

8. 1 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube every day.
Every month, YouTubers watch 6 billion hours of videos per month, and 4 billion videos every day.
Every day, over 150 years of YouTube are watched on Facebook.

9. Every April Fool's Day, YouTube plays a prank on its millions of users.

10. The total amount of videos uploaded in 2010 is the equivalent of 150,000+ full-length movies in theaters every week.

11. In 2011, 30% of all the videos on YouTube account for over 99% of views.

12. There is a program to scan for copyright infringement called Automated Content ID – it scans over 100 years of video every day.

13. Aside from the US, most YouTube views come from Saudi Arabia. This is because TV, Facebook, and Twitter are banned in Saudi Arabia, but YouTube is unrestricted.

14. The First YouTube Video was uploaded in April 2005, featuring its co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.

15. Music video 'Gangnam Style' was so popular, it broke YouTube's view counter, which had to be upgraded.

16. The first world leader to create a YouTube channel was the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair who made his account in 2007.

17. The longest video on YouTube is 571 hours, 1 minute, and 41 seconds long. That’s the same as 23 days and 19 hours!

18. The first video to reach one billion views the fastest was Hello by Adele. It reached one billion views in just 88 days.

19. The oldest video of cats on YouTube dates from 1894.
It features two cats boxing.

20. YouTube's ten highest-earning channels made anywhere from US$2.5 million to US$12 million in 2015.

21. The most popular topic that is searched for is, of course, music!

22. The most searched tutorial on YouTube is "How to Kiss.".
The second most-searched-for tutorial is "how to tie a tie."

23. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.

24. YouTube is the second largest search engine, right after Google. It's bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask combined.

25. The woman who rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 when they were creating Google later became the CEO of YouTube.

26. If you search for "Do the Harlem shake" on YouTube, the page itself will do the harlem shake for you.

27. On mobile alone, YouTube reaches more youngsters (18-34 year olds) in the US than any TV network.

28. YouTube has a production space in Los Angeles that is free to use if you have 10,000 subscribers.

29. 32 million inappropriate videos were removed from YouTube in 2018 by a team of 10,000 reviewers.

30. Anne Frank is on YouTube. She was captured on film while leaning out of her window to get a good look of a wedding.

31. US$ 22 million were earned by 7-year-old YouTube star Ryan, from Toysreview, in 2018.

32. The most disliked video on YouTube is Justin Bieber's "Baby," with over 4,400,000 dislikes.
Justin Bieber is one of the first YouTube success stories. He posted covers on YouTube that was discovered by Usher which paved the road to his astounding level of fame.

33. 60% of YouTube's 1,000 most popular videos are blocked in Germany.

34. Family Guy once used footage from 9-year-old YouTube video in one of its episodes without permission from the owner. The owner's original clip was then removed from Youtube for copyright infringement.

35. YouTube star Grumpy Cat earned more money than Oscar-Winning Actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2014.

36. Rickrolling made its first appearance on YouTube in 2009. At the height of Rickrolling which was 2008, over 18 million U.S. adults were Rickrolled.

37. The video to reach the most views in the first day of being uploaded is Star Wars: The Force Awakens Official Teaser #2. It reached 112 million views in 24 hours.

38. In Thailand, YouTube was blocked for 5 months in 2007 due to a 44-second video that showed pictures of the king being defaced.

39. On April 3, 2018, a shooting took place at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California. The shooter, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, wounded three people before killing herself.

Preview photo credit: YouTube