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YouTube Is Born

Make Connections One of the ways YouTube pulled in so many users so quickly was by promising rewards for using the website. In 2005, an iPod Nano was promised to one random user per day until the end of the year, which helped pull in a lot of new users. What kept the users there, however, was how useful and fun the website was!

acting as a window to the world to them. They have a chance to experi- ence cultures beyond their border. They would never have had the op- portunity to do that before,” Chad said in a 2007 interview. YouTube has become a way for people to share their unique experi- ences without a need for an official news outlet. Anyone can upload a video to YouTube, and anyone can come to watch that video with a reli- able Internet connection. YouTube has adapted to help people become more connected than ever before. Some of the community features that were added were comments and tags. People who post and watch any video on YouTube can interact with each other, as long as comments are enabled on that video. Messages can even be sent from one user to another. Some people have said that YouTube is redefining television, but the creators of YouTube do not feel that way. “It’s definitely not television. It’s a different medium ,” Chad Hurley said. “It’s a different experience. People just have a chance to consume video.” GROWTH Soon, YouTube was considered to be one of the fastest growing websites on the web. In July of 2006, users were uploading more than 65,000 videos each day, and there were 100 million unique views occurring per