"Me at the zoo" is the first video uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005, 8:31:52 p.m. PDT, or April 24, 2005, at 03:31:52 UTC. It features YouTube's 25-year-old co-founder Jawed Karim in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo, noting their long trunks. Using Karim's camera, it was recorded by his high school friend, Yakov Lapitsky, a University of Delaware PhD student at the time, who was in San Diego to deliver his research to the American Chemical Society.

YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform owned by Google. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is the second most visited website, right after Google itself. YouTube has more than one billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute.In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Google's ownership of YouTube has also changed its business model; it no longer generates revenue from advertisements alone, YouTube now offers paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by YouTube. It also offers a paid subscription option for watching content without ads, YouTube Premium. YouTube and approved creators participate in Google's AdSense program, which seeks to generate more revenue for both parties. YouTube's reported revenue for 2020 was $19.8 billion.Since its purchase by Google, YouTube has expanded beyond the core website into mobile apps, network television, and the ability to link with other platforms. Video categories on YouTube include music videos, video clips, news, short films, feature films, documentaries, audio recordings, movie trailers, teasers, live streams, vlogs, and more. Most content is generated by individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and corporate sponsors. Established media corporations such as Disney, Paramount Global, and WarnerMedia have also created and expanded their corporate YouTube channels to advertise to a larger audience.

YouTube has had an unprecedented social impact, influencing popular culture, internet trends, and creating multimillionaire celebrities. Despite all its growth and success, YouTube has been widely criticized. Criticism of YouTube includes the website being used to facilitate the spread of misinformation, copyright issues, routine violations of its users' privacy, enabling censorship, and endangering child safety and wellbeing.