It`s hard to believe that only 8 years ago, the 5th most popular social networking site among teens called YouTube was invented. YouTube first began on February 14th, 2005 when 3 former PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, started the website name on the Internet called "YouTube.com". The website was designed to allow visitor to upload, share, view and like videos 24/7 for free!!. However, what most of us don't know is that YouTube began life as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up".

Three months after YouTube was activated, the founders wanted to give a sneak peak of the website to capt the interest of the public, which led a venture firm named Sequoia Capital to invest around $3.5 million in the website. A couple months later, Sequoia and Capital Management invested an additional $8 million into YouTube, which gave YouTube a huge popular growth and became much more successful.

Fun Facts

"YouTube is huge. More video content is uploaded to YouTube in a 60 day period than the three major U.S. television networks in 60 years." (http://womenadvisorforum.ning.com/profiles/blogs/3-must-know-youtube-strategies-for-financial-professionals) In July 2006, YouTube had more than 65,000 new videos uploaded per day and over 100 million video views per day. This popular site has almost 20 million visitors per month; 44% female, 56% male, and the age category 12-17 years old is the most popular to watch videos on YouTube. Looking at these statistics, YouTube outranks MySpace by far. The average YouTube user spends between 15 and 25 minutes a day on the site, which always ends up turning into over an hour, for me anyways! As of February 2011, YouTube had over 490 million unique users from around the world per month, which added up to an estimated 92 billion page views each month!!  Looking back at YouTube, the first video to be ever uploaded on YouTube was called "Me at the Zoo", a video Jawed Karim at the San Diege Zoo. This video has racked up over 12 million views since its online debut on April 23, 2005.

Today, there are over 46 thousand YouTube videos being viewed all around the world every second. On March 21, 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion. To add on to that, there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link. It's crazy to believe that such a popular website all started with a twenty second video about a guy at the zoo. Also, YouTube videos are a great way to educate yourself on something, and find out information you didn't know. Its a much more fun way to learn, rather than to read long boring paragraphs on Google. You can search any types of videos on YouTube; tutorials, movies, shows, comedy, even stupid pointless videos, but that's why I really like YouTube!

Tune in next week to find out the 3rd most popular social networking among teens! Ill give you a hint, it starts with the letter M....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html
http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/teens-social-media-chart/