I was doing some rewrites on the video chapter in our book, and discovered that this unremarkable clip was the first ever video posted to YouTube. It features YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim making a bad joke:
It’s interesting how much this video predicts the vast majority of YouTube videos: a young person speaking in direct address to the camera. He’s not in his bedroom, but otherwise it’s utterly typical.
In other words, what most people put on an online video service are what people put up when testing an online video service.
‘This is one small step for man…’
It’s pretty momentous, ‘the first video’ – since its launch, there have been cases of collective & individual power-shifting as a result of YouTube.
It amuses me that the first line of the first video ever to be launched on YouTube is ‘Hi, so here we are in front of the elephants’.