[SerLava]

>videos were basically non-existent to download as real-player was in its infancy serving up what amounted to flip-book quality clips which still took 15 minutes to download a 15 second clip.

And then even after video was available, it was incredibly unreliable.

Am I crazy, or does anyone else think YouTube became popular because the videos almost always worked when you hit Play?

People seem to think the community features were responsible for YouTube's success, but I specifically remember finding videos, then looking them up on YouTube instead, because the original source was some garbage video player that you'd click and nothing would happen.