YouTube evolved into a film distributor

Youtube, explained

YouTube began as a quirky site where users uploaded funny, random videos—a do-it-yourself television service. Today, it’s a global media powerhouse and home to everything from movie trailers to video podcasts, livestreams, and much more. Want to learn more about the streaming giant? Check out our 5-minute explainer here.

YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65B in stock during its second year

In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65B, only two years after its launch. Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's best-known venture firms, was an early investor in the streaming video platform, seeing it as the next step in the evolution of user-generated content that flourished online during the mid-2000s.

A small fraction of creators make money on YouTube

YouTube has become one of the world's leading entertainment platforms almost entirely on the back of users who upload their own content. An estimated 3.7 million new videos get uploaded to YouTube each day, but only a small, very popular fraction are able to make money from their content.

YouTube's first video was grainy video of co-founder Jawed Karim at the zoo

Some 500 hours of content are posted to YouTube every minute. The video at the beginning of that massive growing stream of content is this one—"Me at the Zoo." Uploaded in April 2005 by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, it shows him at the San Diego Zoo talking about elephants.

YouTube brought endless content—and endless culture wars

How did YouTube grow from a startup in 2005, to a media powerhouse with more than 2.5 billion monthly logged-in users who watch more than 1 billion hours of video every day? That’s what this podcast interview with Bloomberg tech reporter Mark Bergen on NPR’s Fresh Air explores.

YouTube occupies more US screen time than Netflix

As consumers continue to shift their viewing activity away from traditional cable and broadcast TV, they’re spending an increasing amount of time streaming content, much of it on YouTube. In fact, Nielsen data from August 2025, shows that YouTube accounted for 13.1% of US screen time, compared to Netflix’s 8.7%.

YouTube plans on embracing AI-powered features

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan lays out a series of priorities and predictions for how the online video giant will continue to evolve. Mohan says the company wants AI to play a bigger role—in addition to figuring out how YouTube can evolve and improve the experience of streaming its content.

Understanding 'YouTube Face,' the platform's pervasive thumbnail style

It's an image that's rampant across the web's premier video platform: open mouths, astonished eyes. It looks cheesy and cheap, yet its practitioners are some of YouTube's most popular personalities. The Ringer's Nate Rogers digs into the history of the phenomenon to learn why it's had such staying power.

YouTube's 10 most viewed music videos of all time

YouTube arrived in 2005 with a short, innocuous video about the San Diego Zoo. Just 20 years later, it's one of the most popular websites and a go-to for countless music fans. This list of the site's most popular music videos analyzes how the videos hold up after reaching billions of views. The biggest takeaway? "Gangnam Style" is still a thrilling watch.

YouTube no longer provides data to Billboard

Billboard began using data from YouTube in 2013, tracking the platform’s most popular songs as it became a hub for listeners. That relationship ended in January 2026, when YouTube announced it was ending the partnership, citing a disagreement over how Billboard weighted premium users more heavily than free users.

MrBeast became one of YouTube's biggest creators

Jimmy Donaldson, aka "MrBeast," has racked up more than 312 million subscribers on the platform thanks to high-energy videos that mostly feature challenges, stunts, and philanthropy. He joined YouTube in February 2012, and his 800-plus videos have racked up more than 57 billion views.

Why content disappears from streaming services

The early days of streaming suggested we'd have access to all the world's content whenever we wanted. Those days are now long behind us, with streaming companies removing hundreds of movies and shows from their services, including titles they funded. This explainer from the Guardian argues that the reasons behind this shift are both financial and cultural.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Netflix positioned itself as a logical alternative to movie rentals

At its inception, Netflix disrupted the entertainment industry, in particular the movie rental business, by mass mailing DVDs to customers who made selections online. That brand is evident in this 2004 commercial.

'Lazy Sunday' was YouTube's first viral hit

Initially aired on television, the 2005 "Saturday Night Live" digital short featuring Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell took off on YouTube, becoming one of the platform's first viral videos. The song may be a joke, but its success underscored how online video could extend the lifespan of regularly televised content.

Amazon expanded its business and diversified its offerings by acquiring companies

Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses have been key drivers of the company’s growth over the years, but they haven’t done all the work by themselves. Companies Amazon has acquired include the video doorbell maker Ring, the grocer Whole Foods, the streaming service Twitch, the shoe retailer Zappos, and the film studio MGM.

'Special effects' have evolved alongside Hollywood

Since the early days of moviemaking, directors have played with perspective to create incredible effects on the screen. From Buster Keaton to contemporary CGI, this 30-minute documentary details the amazing evolution of Hollywood's special effects.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Why A24 has had such massive success

It's rare for a production studio to have a fanbase, but A24 Films has achieved that in its decade of existence. This five-minute video explains why the studio's focus on authentic, "cool" films has helped make it standout.

One filmmaker turned an abandoned high school into a film studio

In 2017, Jeremy Garelick purchased a vacant school in Liverpool, New York, and turned it into a comedy production studio aimed at social media. The gambit has been successful, with the studio's two TikTok accounts earning over 1M combined followers.

Most memes now begin on TikTok

The website Know Your Meme looked at the data for 700 to 1,400 memes uploaded to the platform each year from 2010 to 2022. In 2010, a majority of memes began on YouTube (34%) or 4chan (28%), but by 2022 most were starting on TikTok.

‘Horror hosts’ helped build the genre’s cult following

Horror is now considered high art, but much of its cult popularity is due to the B-movies that defined the genre. Starting in the 1950s, many of these low-grade films were licensed on the cheap by television networks to fill airtime, introduced by “horror hosts”—MCs with campy, over-the-top personas.

Film festivals are where independent projects find studios

Film festivals are incubators for the movie industry, providing smaller films and their producers with opportunities to screen in front of live audiences, as well as potential investors who may offer wider distribution.

Explore demonstrations of hundreds of viruses and other malware in action

On their YouTube channel, Malware historian Daniel White has documented what happens when various types of malware—mostly from the 1980s and 90s—run on a computer or Nokia cell phone. The demonstrations were safely conducted within virtual machines—older operating systems run within contained windows of modern software, resembling a picture-in-picture setup.

The ubiquitous 1990s “Got Milk?” ad campaign was intended to fix milk’s dwindling popularity in the late 20th century

Despite its success in spreading the word about milk, the sales numbers weren’t quite as impressive. This Mental Floss article details the marketing efforts themselves, as well as how milk lobbyists didn’t necessarily succeed despite their revolutionary ads.

An archive of Korean film

If Bong Joon Ho’s 2020 Oscar-winning film Parasite whet your appetite for Korean cinema, check out the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube channel, which has more than a hundred full-length classic films available to stream for free, some dating back as far as 1930. Many of the titles are remastered and feature subtitles in multiple languages. Start with “Mandala” (1981) and “Aimless Bullet” (1961).

Hulu debuted a movie about Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2025

The film, called "Swiped," follows the story of Wolfe Herd's post-college career at Tinder, her ill-fated affair with Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen that led to her being pushed out of the company and an eventual lawsuit, and how she created Bumble. Wolfe Herd was not involved in the creation of the movie.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.