[ghaff]

To a fairly casual observer like myself, YouTube early on looked like mostly a platform for massive video copyright infringement--especially before home video became so relatively cheap and easy. I don't use it nearly as much as some here but it definitely transformed into something much different for the most part and managed to make it work as a business (at least as part of Google).

[ethbr1]

Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to streaming (2007).

In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c) there was no "on demand" anything, as most media flowed over centrally-programmed cable or broadcast subscriptions, and (d) people capturing video on mobile devices was rare (first gen iPhone couldn't) but obviously a future growth area.

So early YouTube was literally unlike anything that came before -- watch a thing you want, whenever you want.

[lawgimenez]

Wow I just realized how old YouTube is. My video on YouTube was uploaded on 2006 and it is still there.

I remember uploading it from my Sony handcam, then editing it in Sony Vegas and exporting it to make sure it hits the required YT file upload limit.

[qingcharles]

And it was a video dating site when it started!

[kylec]

That was also an era where bandwidth to serve content was extremely expensive, I still don't know how 2005 YouTube was able to find a way to make serving user-uploaded videos for free financially viable, but that was a HUGE component of their success.

[hedora]

Also, the DMCA had just passed, which basically eliminated liability for hosting copyrighted video content as long as the infringement was laundered through a service provider.

I honestly don’t think YouTube would exist without that particular piece of regulatory capture.

Contrast the video and podcast ecosystems.

Podcasts are arguably much healthier (the publishers maintain creative control), and are certainly decentralized.

[takinola]

I think the secret was being acquired by Google. Without the deep financial pockets and strategic patience of Google, I doubt they would have been able to become what they are today.

[Kye]

How YouTube would pay for itself was one of those top topics back in that thin slice of time between when YouTube took off and Google bought it.

The Techmeme page from the day of the announcement (October 9, 2006) if you want to dig into it: https://www.techmeme.com/061009/h2355

[ghaff]

Self-hosting video at scale is still pretty expensive although using CDN can reduce it.

[ethbr1]

At YouTube scale, it feels like that quip: 'When you need to serve a few videos, it's your problem. When you need to serve video everyone watches, it's the ISPs' problem.'

I'd be fascinated to look at their peering terms.

[treyd]

The slogan "Broadcast Yourself" was really inspiring at the time, because it actually was kinda hard to do that at scale in video.

[Kye]

On-demand was a thing before, but it was mediated through slow, glitchy cable and satellite boxes. There was also a thriving scene of RSS-delivered web TV shows.

[ghaff]

And Cisco didn't acquire Flip until 2009.

Really most of the content that YouTube had available was material recorded off of broadcast/cable which was mostly not available otherwise unless you had recorded it or gotten it off a torrent.

[hnburnsy]

Flip has a special place in my heart, right next to my memories of my Diamond Rio MP3 player.

[-mlv]

Even cheap digital cameras back then could record video + audio.

[ethbr1]

True, but scale drastically changed once there was serviceable video recording in every mobile phone.

Lots of people carried digital cameras, but even more have mobile phones.

[coffeebeqn]

Yeah I remember watching Seinfeld and full seasons of cartoons on early YouTube. People basically just uploaded their whole pirated video collections there

[marcuskane2]

To a less casual observer like myself, early YouTube looked like a bastion of protection for fair use of copyrighted material.

Sadly, the copyright cartel swiftly attacked and all the regular people lost their rights. It seems like the lesson learned is that the copyright-owning corporations can't be trusted to play fairly or meet in the middle on fair use. We really need to just abolish copyright laws entirely.