When it comes to streaming video, there’s still hardly a more popular spot on the internet than YouTube. YouTube is over a decade into its rich history and still has millions of users each day, uploading and watching content onto its platform.

You might, yourself, spend a great deal of time on YouTube. However, you might not really know much about the site, it’s history, or how it really works. There are many facts about YouTube that the average user might find interesting, however.

Ready to learn a few surprising or intriguing tidbits about the popular video website? Read on and we’ll walk you through everything that you might want to know.

1. YouTube Almost Became a Dating Site

It might sound difficult to imagine today, but the story goes that in the initial stages of designing YouTube, the creators actually envisioned it as more of an online dating site. It’s hard to believe that future.

That’s how the story goes. Initially, the website was intended to be a kind of video-based hot or not site, a trend that was popular at the time on the web (and also contributed famously to the creation of Facebook).

However, just as the creators of the site were starting to go into that direction, other problems caught their attention. They weren’t able to find videos online that they were looking for, unfortunately. They also seemed to be having trouble sending video footage to their friends via e-mail.

These problems all of the sudden shifted the purpose of YouTube in the mind of its’ creators and led to the website we all know and love today. 

2. The First-Ever YouTube Video?

There are so many videos hosted on the YouTube server it can be hard to wrap your mind around. What video has the honor of being the first among these many offspring?

It’s one that you actually probably haven’t seen. It’s certainly not one of the more famous viral videos that took off in the early days of the website. It’s actually, simply, a video of YouTube creator Jawed Kaim at the San Diego Zoo. 

It’s a very casual and fairly short video, but it does have the honor of being the first video ever uploaded to the website, dated April 23rd, 2005. Kaim certainly had a head start over everyone else, of course.

3. Most Viewed Video Ever

If Kaim’s trip to the zoo was the first video ever posted, what was the most popular? In this case, it is likely something you’ve heard of yourself. 

That video, barring professionally-made content such as music videos and the like, is the internet classic Charlie Bit My Finger, which holds nearly one billion views. One billion! That’s a whole lot of attention.

If you want to count music videos, Gangnam Style and Baby have both crossed the one billion mark already, as well as a number of other music videos on the site. In fact, there are about nearly fifty music videos that have exceeded the one billion view count. 

As you can tell, people really turn to YouTube for their music video content, though there’s still plenty of user-generated material on there as well. 

4. YouTube is Really, ReallyPopular

You know that YouTube is a popular destination on the web, but do you know just how popular it really is? More than one billion people use YouTube around the globe, which is nearly a third of the people on the web in total. That’s a huge percentage for one website.

Of those users, many spend a great deal of time on YouTube. All in all, an average of 300 hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s a whole lot of content. 

How many videos are watched a day on the platform? Nearly 4 billion. That’s a whole lot of streaming. 

You can likely count yourself as part of that large viewing audience, but now you know just how many people are watching videos alongside you. 

5. YouTube Won’t Allow You to Download Videos

You might have never considered downloading a video from YouTube before, or maybe you’ve tried and realized how difficult it is. It might be tough because YouTube actually doesn’t allow any download functionality on their website, unlike some competitors of theirs such as Vimeo do.

This means if you want to download a video you like and take it with you, you will be unable to. You can’t keep videos to put on your devices or edit different videos together yourself.

It’s been fifteen years and YouTube seems pretty steadfast in limiting users’ ability to do this. It doesn’t seem like it will change anytime soon.

However, there are some workarounds. There are many websites online that work as third party downloaders, helping you to get the YouTube videos you covet onto your personal hard drive. Which is the best youtube to mp3 converter? 

That one may vary from person to person, but there’s sure to be one out there that will suit your needs. You just need to try a few out and determine which you like the best.

Interesting Facts About YouTube

As one of the most popular places online, there’s a lot to learn about YouTube. The above facts about YouTube are really just the tip of the iceberg — there’s a lot more to learn and watch if you want to continue expanding your knowledge! 

Need more interesting facts and advice? Keep scrolling our blog for more.