Exactly twenty years ago, on April 23, 2005, an unremarkable 18-second, low-resolution video called “Me at the zoo” appeared online, marking the launch of what would become the world’s largest video platform, YouTube. In the video, one of the site’s founders, Jawed Karim, discusses elephants at the San Diego Zoo.
Image source: youtube.com/@jawed
By today’s standards, the video is completely unimpressive. There are no production tools or audio mastering here – just a 25-year-old programmer who was impressed by elephant trunks. At the time, Karim was unknowingly making internet history. The video, which today has more than 335 million views, became a symbol of the birth of YouTube and the beginning of the era of video content.
Two decades later, YouTube is still going strong. What started with one man and a couple of elephants has now grown into more than 500 hours of content uploaded every minute—and it could be more, but YouTube hasn’t updated its stats in a while. In 2025, the platform has it all: personal vlogs, billion-view music videos, live streams, podcasts, documentaries, short vertical videos, and even videos created by artificial intelligence.
In honor of the anniversary, YouTube added a slider to this video with a picture of a cake and a picture of an elephant, leading to Karim’s channel – by the way, he only has this one video and 5.34 million subscribers. In February of this year, he changed the description of the video to draw public attention to the problem of microplastics.
Over the years, YouTube has expanded far beyond just a video streaming platform, adding YouTube Music, YouTube Kids, YouTube TV, and YouTube Premium. In 2005, the norm was 240p or 360p; in 2025, 4K, 8K, HDR, and even virtual reality are supported. The platform has become heavily ad-heavy, but that doesn’t diminish its influence. YouTube may not be growing the way most users would like, but one of the factors that has contributed to its growth is its short vertical video section. In a way, “Me at the Zoo” is also related in spirit to the now trendy YouTube Shorts.