Website YouTube Uploader Jawed Karim | Filmed by Yakov Lapitsky Duration 0:19 | |
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Uploaded April 23, 2005 (2005-04-23) Published April 23, 2005 (2005-04-23) | ||
Me at the zoo is the first-ever video that was uploaded to YouTube. It was uploaded at 8:27:12 p.m. UTC on April 23, 2005 by the site's cofounder Jawed Karim, with the username "jawed" and recorded by his high school friend Yakov Lapitsky.
Contents
He created an account on YouTube the same day.
The nineteen-second video was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo, featuring Karim in front of the elephants in their old exhibit in Elephant Mesa, professing his interest in their "really, really, really long trunks".
Transcript and caption
The transcript of the video is:
Alright, so here we are in front of the, uh, elephants. Uh. The cool thing about these guys is that, is that they have really, really, really long, um, trunks, and that's, that's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to say.
Reception
The Los Angeles Times explains that "as the first video uploaded to YouTube, it played a pivotal role in fundamentally altering how people consumed media and helped usher in a golden era of the 60-second video." The Observer describes its production quality as "poor". As of March 2017, the video has received nearly 37 million views and more than 260,000 comments.
Legacy
In 2013, the video description was updated in protest of Google+ and two annotations were added to the video.
On the tenth anniversary of YouTube in 2015, the description was changed to "The first video on YouTube. Maybe it's time to go back to the zoo?" On October 11, 2016, he added "The name of the music playing in the background is the single 'Sandstorm' released in 1999, as the first single from Before the Storm, by Finnish DJ and music producer Darude" to the description. As of March 2017, this description has been altered to "The name of the music playing in the background is Darude - Sandstorm."