YouTube Original Concept Was Online Dating Site Said Co-Founder Steve Chen
YouTube is one of the biggest sites in the world with over a billion users, but it begins life as a dating site, one its co-founders has revealed at the SXSW Conference.
YouTube have firmly settled as online viewers’ first call for music videos, makeup tutorials and men screaming at games. But in 2005 when it was introduced, the site had a different point: dating.
Steve Chen explained the original concept about YouTube, declaring that it was considered designed for single people to make and upload videos introducing themselves and talking what they were looking for means about the partner of their dreams. Even the site’s domain name was listed on February 14, Valentine’s Day.
First registered on February 14 2005, Valentine's Day, Chen and fellow founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley decided quickly to open it up to all kinds of clips.
'Just three guys on Valentine's Day that had nothing to do,'
Chen said.
In 2006, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion, and now it has more than a billion users - meaning it's used by around one-third of people who surf the web. Daily, people watch hundreds of millions of hours of content and make billions of views.
Growth in watch time is up 60 per cent year-on-year, which is the fastest the company has seen in two years.
'We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application?' he said. 'We thought dating would be the obvious choice’- but internet users didn’t agree In 2016,
YouTube had very few users, as a dating site. It didn't allow the user to select videos—instead, it chose them at random. The server used to host the videos cost $100 a month. Nobody used it.
Currently, Chen launched a live video startup NOM. It is a community for food lovers to create, share and watch their favorite stories in real-time. If you’ve ever posted a photo of a favorite dish, Nom is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to host your own cooking show, Nom is for you. If chef whites are your uniform, Nom is for you and your team.