YouTube at five: the greatest hits

Pioneering video-sharing website YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday. SBS takes a look at some of the most famous clips in the site's history.

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Pioneering video-sharing website YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday.

Things have come a long way since its one of its founders posted a boring clip of him talking about the elephants at San Diego Zoo.

Five years on, everything from a laughing baby to a toilet-trained cat to singers Susan Boyle and Justin Bieber have been branded 'YouTube sensations'.

SBS takes a look at some of the most famous clips in the site's history.

The first of many

YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim became the first person to post a clip to the site in May 2005. Pity his 19-second piece-to-camera - about elephants - was so dull.



'Charlie bit me'

Since it was founded five years ago, YouTube has become the repository of billions of hours of home video, none more famous than this British clip of two brothers.

The video went viral - becoming the most popular item on the site, with more than 189 million hits - and has only recently been surpassed (by Lady Gaga's Bad Romance) as YouTube's biggest hit.



Children doing daft things have proved something of a YouTube staple - when someone posted a tape of Star Wars Kid pretending to play with a light sabre, the clip was such a hit his family sued, fearing he would be permanently damaged by the exposure.

Susan Boyle


Until she appeared on a British TV talent show, Susan Boyle was a shy Scottish woman who harboured a long-held dream to become the next Elaine Paige.

Boyle's performance of I Dreamed A Dream, from the musical Les Miserables, stunned the judges on Britain's Got Talent, and quickly became an internet phenomenon, catapulting her to global stardom and huge album sales.


Their music may just about be the polar opposite of Susan Boyle, but US band OK Go's quirky videos have ensured they too have a place in the YouTube hall of fame.

Battle at Kruger

YouTube's popularity has skyrocketed as more and more people carry a means of recording video on them every day - from iPhones, to Flip cameras - turning them into amateur filmmakers and cameramen.

The site means that anyone who happens to witness a remarkable event - from an angry protest to a celebrity meltdown - can share what they've seen.



The death of Neda

Contrary to popular belief - and some of the evidence above - YouTube is not just about quirky, silly clips. The site also features serious news events.

This was brutally evident during the post-election protests in Iran in June 2009. News of the demonstrations was spread by social networking sites such as Twitter, and when protester Neda Agha-Soltan was killed, a video clip of her death - broadcast on YouTube - helped crystallise worldwide opinion on the uprising.



Crush on Obama

The 2008 US presidential election was the first held in the YouTube era, and the site proved a popular way of sharing all manner of pre-vote 'propaganda' - from gaffes caught on camera to videos in which stars endorsed their pick for the White House.

Republican Vice Presidential wannabe Sarah Palin's TV interviews became YouTube hits - as did Tina Fey's spoofs of those same appearances. But perhaps the most famous YouTube contribution to the campaign was 'Obama Girl'.



J&K's wedding entrance

The secret of much of YouTube's success has been the advent of the 'viral video' - a clip which, once posted, acquires a life of its own as it is forwarded - via email and social networking sites - around the world.

When Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz got married in Minnesota in June 2009, they and their wedding party planned a spectacular entrance... and when Jill's father posted the clip to YouTube a month later for the friends and family who couldn't be there to see, it went viral - attracting more than 3.5 million hits in the first 48 hours.



Another music-and-dance YouTube sensation is the Evolution of Dance by Judson Laipply, which is still the third most popular video on the site, some four years after it was posted.


So which YouTube video is your favourite? Use the comments form above to let us know



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4 min read

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Source: SBS



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