February (Valentine’s Day!) 2005 YouTube was founded and youtube.com was activated by then-PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim November 2006 It was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in stock – Google’s second- largest acquisition at the time
April 2008 PRANK WARS: For April Fools’, YouTube popularised Rickrolling, which involves being unexpectedly redirected to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up music video YOUTUBE TIMELINE
December 2007 The Partner Program launched – a way for video creators to run ads and earn money
April 2011 Live streaming was introduced, later branded as YouTube Live
October 2012 In conjunction with ABC News, YouTube
livestreamed the US presidential debate between candidates Barack Obama (D) and Mitt Romney (R)
December 2012 WORLD RECORD: Psy’s Gangnam Style music video was the first-ever video on the platform to surpass one billion views
August 2015 YouTube Gaming launched, a separate front end showing only gaming-related content. It merged with YouTube’s main site in 2019
November 2018 YouTube launched Stories to compete with Snapchat and Instagram
January 2020 Creators were required to mark whether a video was suitable for kids, complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
July 2021 Shorts was launched, a short-form video platform optimised for mobile devices
November 2021 The ‘dislike’ button was removed to protect creators from online harassment
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