The first YouTube viral video that blew me away, in terms of content and in showing the potential of democratized video, was the anonymous Korean kid shredding Pachelbel's Canon in D in his bedroom:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8</a><p>The Times wrote a story about it here: "Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last"<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.html?ref=arts&_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.htm...</a>
It's sad how much of the original spark that made Youtube interesting is long gone. I use to had a vlog myself where I would discuss issues particularly from a right-libertarian perspective (most of those vids are private or deleted now since I don't believe anything I've said back then anymore). I think the first thing that killed such vlogs at least in my opinion was the removal of the whole comment system. It wasn't the best thing in the world but you could actually setup reply videos which made conversations possible. It's weird how YT's dev team never though to reintroduce the reply system like that again. That was the best part of YT at least for vloggers even if they didn't like each other (Me and FringeElements/ConfederalSocialist didn't get along. Same with HannibalBarca/HannibalVictor.) because you could see if a thread going on via video replies. I doubt YT will ever reintroduce such a feature again since it led to weeks long flame wars that did eventually lead to some people getting doxxed like thunderf00t (I know a few others were doxxed well before him, but he's one that I remember in detail, especially with his spat against DawahFilms).
Side note: Holy cow. I was initially posting to say I distinctly remembered Lazy Sunday coming out in 2004, because I remember posting it on my blog in my dorm room freshmen year. Then I remembered if it was in 2004 I was almost done with college, and so it couldn't have been from my dorm. Then I check the Wikipedia and realized he was right about the Dec 2005 date, which means I had already finished school. The mind is weird.
I distinctly remember being 17 years old and being fascinated watching these videos on YouTube. It was really one of the first things to get me interested in logging into YouTube actively as opposed to simply being linked to the site from elsewhere. Nice to see that the actors didn't come out of it for the worse :)
I also fondly remember "The Show with Ze Frank" from back in 2006:<p><a href="http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvL6NITEozY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvL6NITEozY</a> (sadly the frame-rate in this reupload is messed up)
It looks like they might be doing something for the 10 year anniversary, as a new video was posted to the lonelygirl15 page today, the first in 7 years according to the comments: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwklfIbSAgA" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwklfIbSAgA</a>
So many articles from just ten years ago are dead links now. But I found this amusing:<p>"lonelygirl15 is the hottest thing on YouTube at the moment (18,222 subscribers, 1.5 million views)"<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2006/aug/28/islonelygirl15" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2006/aug/28/islo...</a><p>18,222 subscribers! And they're still talking about it a decade later.<p>Meanwhile rocketboom.com was serving up QuickTime that required a plugin to install before you could view a video and claiming 400,000+ downloads <i>per episode</i>. (Later investigated and disproved by BusinessWeek.)<p>Early web video was a debacle. So many shady companies. Cool times, though. Fun to watch the history get re-written. Note how CAA was in on it from nearly day one.
The first video I remember downloading from the internet was The Spirit of Christmas in 1996[1] followed by Troops[2] the following year. 30MB takes a <i>long</i> time to download over a 28.8 modem. Streaming was out of the question.<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_(short_film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Christmas_(short...</a><p>2: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops_(film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troops_(film)</a>
You might think this format died after lonelygirl15 was exposed, but there are plenty of moderately successful copycats, like "14 year old" Pupinia Steward <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Robloxobbystar/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/Robloxobbystar/videos</a><p>All it takes is one good troll video landing you on top of reddit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYsi6Z6sXY8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYsi6Z6sXY8</a> (All about my Incest) hitting 1 mil views and you get the ball rolling. Throw in a plot twist of being madly in love with Trump (and into older men in general) and you have a success on your hands. Might even be Jimmy Kimmels long con for the election, like the Olympics wolf inside hotel video.
First video I ever saw in youtube[1] is still up, worse than I remember, and has less than 500k views. That strikes me as so strange.<p>1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVslAo8Cz8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVslAo8Cz8</a>
For me it was smosh pokemon theme song lip sync.<p>Unfortunately, Smosh were sued for using the theme song and had to take it down.<p>Here's a duplicate of it:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOX3OmUhQoo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOX3OmUhQoo</a>
Wow, I was watching YouTube from the beginning and I have never heard of this. I guess I was more in the sketch comedy and sudo public access side of it.
If I remember correctly what really rocketed youtube from being a website with nothing but crap to a site worth going to were the home videos from tourists caught in the the Tsunami in Thailand.
That girl is super cute, but having been a Youtube addict back in 2006/07, I don't really recall her being that popular. As mentioned in the comments, the big one was Canon in D. Pokemon parody by Smosh. Evolution of dance. Urban ninja.