- Video sharing website
- Created by three former PayPal employees
       o Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim
- Created in February 2005
- Launched in November 2005
- Independent (2005-2006)
- Subsidiary of Google (2006 – present)
       o Bought for $1.65 billion
- Displays a large variety of content – movie/TV clips, music videos, video blogs, original videos, sketches/skits
- Most content uploaded by individuals
- Media corporations such as BBC, VEVO, CBS offer material
- YouTube partnership programs – used to enhance user activity and allows the user more features such as branding and more promotion
- July 2006 – announced that over 65,000 videos were uploaded daily
- The site receives more than 3 billion views per month
- Roughly 72 hours of new content are uploaded every minute to the site
- 800 million users visit per month
- Third most visited website behind Google and Facebook

- 2008 – companies such as MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBC came to an agreement with YouTube – full length films and TV episodes could be uploaded on the site accompanied with advertisements

- 2010 – film rental service introduced
- March 2010 – live streams, free live online broadcasts 
- July 2009 – 3D videos