Delicious was a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter and Peter Gadjokov in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. By the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs. Yahoo sold Delicious to AVOS Systems in April 2011, and the site relaunched in a "back to beta" state on September 27 that year. In May 2014, AVOS sold the site to Science Inc. In January 2016 Delicious Media, a new alliance, reported it had assumed control of the service.
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States, it is the second-most visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of 2023, there were approximately 14 billion videos in total.
Steve Chen is a Taiwanese-American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur who is one of the co-founders and previous chief technology officer of the video-sharing website YouTube. After he co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, he joined Google Ventures in 2014.
Jawed Karim is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur. He is one of the co-founders of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. The site's inaugural video, "Me at the zoo", uploaded on April 23, 2005, has been viewed over 342 million times as of November 28, 2024. During Karim's time working at PayPal, where he met fellow YouTube co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, he designed many of its core components, including its real-time anti-fraud system.
Chad Meredith Hurley is an American webmaster and businessman who serves as the advisor and former chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube. He also co-founded MixBit, a since closed video sharing service. In October 2006, he and Steve Chen sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google. Hurley worked in eBay's PayPal division—one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo—before co-founding YouTube with fellow PayPal colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Hurley was primarily responsible for the tagging and video-sharing aspects of YouTube.
Lisa Donovan is an American former YouTuber. She is a founder of Zappin Productions, a production company that specialized in viral videos, as well as the founder and CEO of The Pattern, an astrology-based personality app.
Keek is a free online social networking service that allowed its users to upload video status updates, which are called "keeks". Users can post keeks to the Keek website using a webcam or via the Keek mobile apps for iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, or Android. Users could also reply back with text or video comments, known as "keekbacks", and share content to other major social media networks. There was also an embed option so users could embed their keeks into a blog or website.
Smosh is an American YouTube sketch comedy-improv collective, independent production company, and former social networking site founded by Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox. In 2002, Padilla created a website named "smosh.com" for making Flash animations, and he was later joined by Hecox. They began posting videos on Smosh's YouTube channel in 2005 and quickly became one of the most popular channels on the site. As of 2024, the channel has over 10 billion views and over 26 million subscribers.
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, founded by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
Songza was a free music streaming and recommendation service for Internet users in the United States and Canada.
"Me at the zoo" is a YouTube video uploaded on April 23, 2005, recognized as the first video uploaded to the platform. The 19-second video features Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube. His high school friend, Yakov Lapitsky recorded it. In the video, Karim is seen standing in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo in California, where he briefly comments on the length of their trunks. Multiple journalists thought the video represented YouTube as a whole and stated it was a monumental step for the platform's history. Karim later updated the video's description to criticize YouTube's usage of Google+ accounts and removal of dislikes from public view. As of December 2024, the video has received more than 330 million views.
The 11th annual 2007 Webby Awards were held in New York City on June 3, 2007. They were hosted by comedian Rob Corddry and were judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The ceremony saw 8,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 United States. Lifetime achievement awards were given to David Bowie and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. This award ceremony for the first time introduced category awards beyond Websites in the three new super-categories: Interactive Advertising, Mobile & Apps, and Online Film & Video.
Qwiki was a New York City–based startup automated video production company acquired by Yahoo! on July 2, 2013 for a reported $50 million. Qwiki released an iPhone app that automatically turns the pictures and videos from a user's camera roll into movies to share. The company's initial product, an iPad application that created video summaries of over 3 million search terms, was downloaded more than 3 million times and named by Apple as the best "Search and Reference" application of 2011.
Duolingo, Inc., is an American educational technology company that produces learning apps and provides language certification. Duolingo offers courses on 44 languages, ranging from English, French, and Spanish to less commonly studied languages such as Welsh, Irish, and Navajo, and even constructed languages such as Klingon. It also offers courses on music and math. The learning method incorporates gamification to motivate users with points, rewards and interactive lessons featuring spaced repetition. The app promotes short, daily lessons for consistent-phased practice.
Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc., four months later for $30 million. Vine launched with its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with Android and Windows versions following.
Zachary Michael King is an American internet personality based in Los Angeles. He is most known for his "magic vines," which are six-second videos digitally edited to look as if he is doing magic. He calls his videos "digital sleight of hand." He began posting videos on YouTube in 2008 and in 2013 he started posting videos to Vine. King posted his first video to TikTok in 2016, and has since attracted over 90 million followers, making him the sixth most-followed individual on the platform.
Daniel James Gonzalez is an American commentary YouTuber and musician who originally came to prominence for his short comedy sketches on Vine in 2014. He created his main YouTube channel that same year, subsequently moving over to YouTube full-time when Vine closed down in 2017. His three personal channels and three group channels have collectively earned around 9.62 million subscribers, and 1.94 billion views, as of December 2024.
