Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by salsadip 2529 days ago
https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-started-as-an-online-datin...

Here's a little more info. They changed it to a general purpose video site after 5 days after nobody uploaded any videos although they offered 20 USD to each woman for uploading a self-introduction video.

4 comments

This wayback machine is from April 28, 2005. Me at the Zoo[1] is from April 23, 2005.

So technically speaking, someone did upload something. And 5 days is actually really 5 days...

Which brings the question - what is the second oldest YouTube video still on the site? Who is the “also ran”?

[1] https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw

One of the comments on that video claims that the guy makes $5.9k-$93.7k per year on that one 18-second video. Does that sound plausible and consistent with what YouTube pays? Is there any way to check if he has actually monetized his video?
$1-10 per 1k views.

73m views / 15 years = 5.2m views/year

=$5.2k/year - $52k/year.

Turn off Adblock and see if an ad plays.

> [1] https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw

Wow, the level of spammy comments on that one is perpetual.

The comments on that video default to sorted by new. You can change it to sorted by top. The uploader chooses the default sort, but the default for the default is top.
The founder of the site seeded content, that isn’t users uploading...
Founders do that? That’s so seedy!
So that's why he talks about the long trunks of the elephants in that video.
Is there a sequel? First ever tweet, HN comment, SO question... tinder profile?
wow a whopping 18 seconds and 72,954,314 views!
Here's a full visual history of Youtube starting in 2005:

https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/youtube-website

I completely forgot about the 2012 version... Bad times :(
It's missing the posted version of the site.
CoffeeMeetsBagel briefly added a video feature where you could record your answer to a question they asked each day. They had it for a short time before they completely pulled it. I wonder if the ROI in terms of handling video bandwidth to conversion to dates wasn't really that much better than just still photos.
It’s hard to make a flattering video. TV studios have professional makeup artists and lighting from every angle. It’s a lot easier to take a flattering photo.
As the former PM of a competing dating app, I agree.
It's more likely that even in our modern age of ephemeral video sharing, the idea of recording a video to introduce yourself to strangers still introduces substantial friction and stress, which would turn people off from engagement even if it were optional.
The real interesting part is how modern Google would have simply just executed the product today.
Launch seven slightly different platforms, all of which have the theoretical scalability of YouTube, four of them using AI.

Then putting them on cards on their search engine, triggering a gazillion unsuccessful antitrust lawsuits, only to see they all still aren‘t used.

Then shelving half of them 5 years later and killing all the content forever.