The rise of YouTube: 20 years of creators, tradition, and content material at VidCon

Did you go to the zoo 20 years in the past? Over 364 million folks did.

On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim stood in entrance of the elephants on the San Diego Zoo, recorded some mild commentary, and posted it to YouTube. It was the primary ever video uploaded to the platform. Initially conceived as a courting website, YouTube as an alternative ushered in a brand new digital world: certainly one of considerable content material, influencers and creators, algorithmic obsession, the viral unfold of disinformation, and a society more and more formed by metrics — likes, shares, and views.

Its impression is so huge that it is troublesome to measure. Final 12 months alone, the video-sharing platform introduced in $36.15 billion in advert income, in accordance with Selection. At VidCon 2025, YouTube’s VP of Creator Merchandise, Amjad Hanif, shared that roughly 20 million movies are uploaded to the platform daily. 

YouTube wasn’t the primary social media website. Platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com, SixDegrees.com, Friendster, and MySpace all predate it. However these websites functioned like static digital locations for customers to current private info or to search out folks they already knew in actual life. There was no algorithm, and positively no “content material” in the way in which we perceive it as we speak. YouTube, in its early days, was related. But someway it not solely endured however flourished, shifted the material of our communication, and democratized the flexibility for documentary filmmakers, comedians, and artists to make their work. What was as soon as a spot designed for courting has turn into a mass of monetization and the house of the $250 billion creator financial system. 

How did we get right here? And, 20 years later, what comes subsequent?

The primary creator financial system

YouTube didn’t simply host movies; it created the primary true creator financial system, giving rise to a era of influencers who may really make a dwelling from their work. Sure, folks have been making movies earlier than YouTube, however conventional media had excessive partitions. Hollywood gatekeepers managed who bought to be seen, heard, and paid. YouTube blew that mannequin broad open. 

“The rationale YouTube has outlasted virtually each different platform, or stayed the gap, is that with regards to longform video, it is quite simple — it isn’t only a content material platform, it is a creator financial system spine,” Matt Navarra, a social media knowledgeable, informed Mashable. “Whereas different platforms have been following developments, YouTube constructed infrastructure.”

Google acquired YouTube in 2006, and, as soon as YouTube grew to become a part of the biggest and strongest search engine on the planet, it had a reasonably spectacular quantity of assets, site visitors, and cash at its disposal — and it gave a few of these assets, site visitors, and cash to its customers. 

In 2007, YouTube launched the YouTube Companion Program, introducing creator payouts, which Mark Bergen, a journalist and creator of Like, Remark, Subscribe: How YouTube Drives Google’s Dominance and Controls Our Tradition, argues successfully invented the thought of the content material creator as a occupation. Customers started counting on the platform to make an earnings, and that monetary incentive made creators loyal; few have been desirous to abandon a platform that paid them, particularly when rivals couldn’t provide the identical. Greater than that, new creators started flooding the YouTube system, hoping to expertise the identical freedom and fame accessible to them solely on the platform. 

However lengthy earlier than the paychecks and polished manufacturing got here the eagerness. Early creators like John and Hank Inexperienced weren’t chasing clout or a paycheck — as a result of neither actually existed but. “After we began, there was no option to earn money and there was additionally no standing tied to it,” Hank Inexperienced later recalled throughout VidCon 2025’s “YouTube Legends” panel. That was a part of the enchantment. “No one [was] getting paid nicely, however all people’s collectively, loving it, and group, it seems, is extra necessary for happiness than cash. I miss these days once I was making $20,000 a 12 months with a bunch of nerds who didn’t count on that it might ever turn into a cultural pressure or phenomenon,” he mentioned. “However I’m additionally very blissful that there’s a possibility for actually gifted individuals who would by no means be capable of have artistic careers, to have these careers now.”

YouTube has “found out the creator financial system and has had a lock on that for almost 20 years. Fb, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, everybody’s tried and failed to return anyplace near that,” Bergen informed Mashable. He mentioned not one of the different platforms “have constructed out simply this measurement and scale of an precise digital financial system and a workforce.”

Navarra identified that the early YouTubers — creators like John and Hank Inexperienced, Rhett & Hyperlink, Grace Helbig, and Tyler Oakley, a lot of whom have been inducted into the inaugural VidCon Corridor of Fame this 12 months — did not solely create content material, however they constructed empires, aided by YouTube’s international attain and monetization instruments. Navarra mentioned it set the “gold commonplace” for creator sustainability.

Movies do not simply pattern, they rank — and that is a superpower that nobody else has fairly matched in the identical method.

An enormous a part of this success is because of discoverability, which did not occur independently. 

“That is a serious purpose why you’ve got all these incentives for folks to maintain posting, to maintain upping the manufacturing worth, to maintain making an attempt to turn into an influencer and creator, as a result of you can also make a dwelling or aspire to make a dwelling. And you may’t low cost the truth that it has been a part of Google,” Bergen mentioned.

That integration gave YouTube a singular edge. As Navarra put it, “Movies do not simply pattern, they rank — and that is a superpower that nobody else has fairly matched in the identical method.”

After all, being the primary had its drawbacks. YouTube needed to confront the rising pains of content material creation earlier than anybody else, particularly when it got here to moderation. Its insurance policies developed over time, and different platforms typically adopted its lead, although not with out controversy.

“YouTube has been the canary within the coal mine for content material moderation at scale as a result of it confronted existential threats sooner than most platforms,” Navarra mentioned. And it is true. Within the early days, YouTube centered on eradicating movies that violated its tips associated to nudity, graphic violence, and hate speech. However because the platform matured, so did its strategy. It needed to make room for content material with instructional, documentary, or creative worth, and later, make calls on movies within the public curiosity, like marketing campaign content material from electoral candidates that violated its personal insurance policies.

“YouTube has turn into probably the most brand-safe video or social platforms, which is why advertisers nonetheless spend large there regardless of their measurement and complexity,” Navarra mentioned, including that whereas they “have not been with out their failures,” they’ve nonetheless fared “higher than most platforms throughout the longer time-frame.”

What’s subsequent? Quick-form vs. long-form, AI, and TV

YouTube was a pioneer in on-line video, but it surely appeared caught off guard when TikTok made short-form vertical video the dominant format. TikTok entered the U.S. market in 2018, prompting YouTube to reply with Shorts in 2019. Instagram rapidly adopted with Reels in 2020.

YouTube Shorts now averages over 200 billion each day views, Hanif mentioned throughout a YouTube Keynote at VidCon 2025, meant to rejoice its twentieth anniversary. That is an enormous quantity, but it surely is not essentially consultant culturally. It is extra of a “purposeful instrument that hasn’t discovered its soul or character or objective as a lot as different platforms have by way of short-form video,” Navarra mentioned.

“It really works on paper: the views are big, the monetization has improved, however culturally, TikTok owns the vibe. The difficulty is extra notion… YouTube’s DNA is in storytelling and depth… If YouTube can crack cultural relevance with Shorts and never simply scale, then it turns into pretty unbeatable,” Navarra mentioned.

And whereas loads of folks watch YouTube Shorts, viewers are leaning extra in the direction of long-form video on YouTube — and so they’re watching it on their TVs.

“An increasing number of when folks say they’re watching TV, they’re watching YouTube,” Hanif mentioned at VidCon. 

Gwen Miller, the senior director of progress at Legendary Leisure, famous throughout a VidCon panel that this pattern bodes nicely for creators. Longer watch instances on TVs imply viewers usually tend to sit by means of advertisements, which ends up in higher earnings for creators.

Content material isn’t the one factor altering on YouTube, and AI is rapidly turning into a driving pressure behind the place the platform is headed subsequent.

“By way of AI and YouTube’s future, for those who look the place YouTube is heading, AI is central,” Navarra mentioned. “It is not a gimmick however as a progress engine. The platform’s large benefit is not simply the dimensions and age, it is the way in which it quietly builds essentially the most superior instruments for creators anyplace else on the web.”

And YouTube CEO Neal Mohan introduced final week on the Cannes Lions 2025 Competition of Creativity that Veo 3, the most recent mannequin of Google DeepMind’s video era mannequin, which lets you create AI-generated backgrounds and video clips, is coming to YouTube Shorts later this summer season.

Autodubbing, an AI instrument that permits creators to dub their movies in different languages, is at the moment accessible in 9 languages and can quickly be accessible in 20 languages, Hanif mentioned. Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s international director of tradition and developments, mentioned at VidCon that 52 p.c of 14 to 24-year-olds within the U.S. have watched content material or creators which were translated from one other language. As an illustration, MrBeast dubs his movies in 16 completely different languages, together with Japanese, French, Hindi, and Spanish, which have garnered him huge followings internationally.

The concept that AI is central to the way forward for creation is not one thing YouTube is alone in predicting. In 2023, Ollie Forsyth, the founding father of New Economies, discovered that 33 p.c of creators used AI. That quantity has jumped to 80 p.c in 2025, largely because of the significance of language dubbing. Throughout Forsyth’s discuss “Mapping the Fashionable Creator Financial system: Traits, Tensions, and What Comes Subsequent” at VidCon this 12 months, he argued that each creator goes to need to be AI-focused as a result of AI brokers will be capable of permit creators to be really versatile and extra environment friendly. It’s going to assist them unencumber the time they spend on admin, funds, model partnerships, advertising, and extra as startups use AI to resolve these issues. 

If historical past is any indication of the long run, it could be extra useful to take a look at this from a unique perspective — it is not essentially guessing what the way forward for YouTube will appear to be, however extra understanding that no matter future is chosen shall be mirrored throughout each different social media platform.