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10 Years Ago This Week: YouTube Turned 10

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the week ending May 2, 2015.


20 years ago this week, the first video was uploaded to YouTube.

That means that 10 years ago this week YouTube turned 10.
Video celebrating YouTube's 10th birthday. 

 At the time, the most viewed channel was gamer PewDiePie and Let's Play videos were a trend, as were vloggers, reaction videos, dance and beauty tips.

The 10th anniversary highlighted Felix Baumgartner's 2012 jump from the edge of spaceGangnam Style, the first music video to reach 1 billion views; and the ever-classic "Charlie bit my finger". 

And big things were happening on the platform.

2015 saw the launch of YouTube Kids, YouTube Music, and YouTube Gaming. And Google+ was disconnected, eventually changing the way comments and channel identity worked.

The view from 2025

 
Celebrating 20 years of YouTube. Does it seem less casual and weird than it was in 2015? 

Over the past decade, YouTube has grown immensely. 


It's now over 500 hours of content uploaded per minute, and 20 million videos uploaded per day.  (If you do a bit of math, that comes out to an average video length of just over 2 minutes).

There were some bumps in the road, of course:

In 2017 there was the so-called adpocalypse that resulted in new monetization eligibility requirements and stricter advertiser-friendly guidelines. They also had to implement a new policy that penalized egregious actions off of the platform if they caused harm to the "broader YouTube community." 

 In 2020 YouTube had to manage viewing changes and policy updates as COVID-19 spread around the globe.  

 And the launch of Shorts in 2020 seemed to be a response to the rising popularity of TikTok, which launched in 2016.  

Today YouTube is thriving, people are subscribing to YouTube Premium and Music, and YouTube seems to dominate everywhere from streaming on TV to podcasts.

YouTube feels more corporate today than it was a decade ago, and I miss the 2015 vibes.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 10 years.

Dominating virtual reality? Sweeping the Oscars? Or something totally new? 

References

YouTube Blog, 1 May 2015: Celebrating 10 years of YouTube

YouTube Trends blog, May 2015: A month of YouTube trends

YouTube Blog, 28 May 2015: YouTube A to Z #HappyBirthdayYouTube (2015 version via Internet Archive)

YouTube Blog, 23 April 2025: 20 ways we're celebrating 2 decades of YouTube

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