YouTube adalah sebuah situs web video sharing (berbagi video) populer yang didirikan pada Februari 2005 oleh tiga orang bekas karyawan PayPal: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, dan Jawed Karim. Menurut perusahaan penelitian Internet Hitwise, pada Mei 2006 YouTube memiliki pangsa pasar sebesar 43 persen. Para pengguna dapat memuat, menonton, dan berbagi klip video secara gratis. Umumnya video-video di YouTube adalah klip musik (video klip), film, TV, serta video buatan para penggunanya sendiri. Format yang digunakan video-video di YouTube adalah .flv yang dapat diputar di penjelajah web yang memiliki plugin Flash Player.

Pada 9 Oktober 2006 diumumkan bahwa YouTube telah dibeli Google dengan harga US$1,65 miliar.Pada awal April 2008 beberapa ISP Indonesia menutup akses ke beberapa situs web termasuk YouTube karena memuat film Fitna. Awalnya pemblokiran berupa pemblokiran sepenuhnya terhadap seluruh situs web, namun kemudian diubah menjadi pemblokiran terhadap URL tertentu yang memuat video tersebut saja



History

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, while Hurley commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible."

YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a US$11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006 YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, CaliforniaThe domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.

The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows founder Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site