Research - The History of Content Creation and YouTube

The earliest piece of documented content creation is thought to be John Deere's The Furrow. However, recent research has revealed that Benjamin Franklin might also have been a very early adopter of the trend when he published the yearly Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732 to promote his printing business. Since then content creation has continued to grow and evolve into what it is today. In this post I am going to be researching into the history of content creation.

The source I will be using to research this is a website called joseangelostudios.com

In the 1800s, the concept of creating “content” to promote businesses was developed even further when Bookstore Librairie Galignani opened a reading room and a printed newspaper that showcased articles from influential authors and books at the time. This was one of the more creative ideas at the time.

At this point, the term content creation had never passed anyone’s lips.

And it was a lengthy, difficult process putting something out there for the sole purpose of creative promotion.

Most businesses who dabbled with content creation in the early days created large, standalone pieces of content and produced them maybe only one a year – like the Michelin Guide, which was released in 1900 and the Jell-O Company’s free recipe book which was published in 1904.

Here is an image of the Jell-O company's free cook book published in 1904. As you can see, it is a very historic book and the art style further emphasize. 











It wasn’t until 2001 that the term content marketing and, therefore, it’s partner in crime content creation was first used by Penton Custom Media in Ohio – seems like a long time in the making, right?

Since then, content creation has exploded into an entirely different beast. It’s no longer a huge ordeal to create one piece of mega-content each year.

The start of YouTube

YouTube was founded on Valentine's Day in 2005. It was the brainchild of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all former employees of PayPal. The platform, like so many others in Silicon Valley, began as an angel-funded enterprise with makeshift offices in a garage. Since then YouTube has evolved into one of the biggest social media platforms for content creators to post their videos.

The website I'm using to research this is interestingengineering.com

YouTube was originally created as a platform for anyone to post any video content they desired. It was hoped that users could use the site to upload, share, and view content without restriction. 

It has since grown to become one of the foremost video distribution sites in the world. Today, many content creators make a decent living by selling ad space before or on videos they create and upload onto the site.

Thanks to things like YouTube's partner program AdSense, a few people can actually create successful careers as YouTubers. 

YouTube was founded on Valentine's Day in 2005. It was the brainchild of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all former employees of PayPal. 

The platform, like so many others in Silicon Valley, began as an angel-funded enterprise with makeshift offices in a garage.

According to its founders, the idea was born at a dinner party in San Francisco, about a year earlier, in 2004. The trio was frustrated by how hard it was, at the time, to find and share video clips online.

The first video on YouTube was called Me at the zoo, and was published on April 24th 2005 by the co-founder of YouTube jawed. The video was a 19 seconds long video of Jawed Karim at the zoo. It's a very simple video however it was the first video on the platform and it helped pave the way for future content.


Screenshot from Me at the zoo : April 24th 2005

"Me at the zoo" is the first video uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005, 8:31:52 p.m. PDT, or April 24, 2005, at 03:31:52 UTC. It features YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim, who was 25 years old at the time, in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo, noting their long trunks.

The Day Google Bought YouTube

The website I used to research this was Google

16 years ago, Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOGL, GOOG) Google purchased YouTube for the hefty sum of $1.65 billion. The actual date the news hit was Oct. 9, 2006. That may seem like a small sum for the behemoth that YouTube is today.

The acquisition of the privately held YouTube would enable Google to thrive in one area of the Internet where it has so far failed to gain footing. According to Hitwise, which monitors Web traffic, has the lion's share of online video traffic.

According to Britannica, the number of videos available passed 25 million in March 2006. That's after the site went live in December 2005. Fast forward to today, and some estimate that there are tens of billions of videos on the platform! That's insane growth.



Here is a video I watched to help me with my research, it goes into great depth about how YouTube came to be. feel free to give it a watch if you want to learn more. I found this video very helpful.

Conclusion

As a whole this information has helped me learn about the history of content creation, which has ultimately furthered my understanding on the subject. This will help me improve my over all product because I now know how content creation started and that's really handy to know. I think it's important to really have a good understanding of the topic at hand before you create your project, so I will take this information into consideration when producing my content.


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