Product Journeys: Youtube

When it was launched in 2005, according to co-founder Steve Chen, Youtube was designed as a way for people to upload videos of themselves talking about the partner of their dreams. Co-founder Jawed Karim also talked about YouTube’s romantic origins. “We even had a slogan for it: Tune in, Hook up.” Despite offering to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to YouTube, nobody came forward, forcing Chen, Karim and co-founder Chad Hurley to adopt a different strategy. Today we explore the epic pivot Youtube took just ten days after launching, that set it on course to be the backbone of video on the internet that it is today. This podcast is brought to you by: Digital Ocean is a cloud provider that makes it easy for entrepreneurs and startups to deploy and scale web applications with no issues and unplanned costs. Get started for free at do.co/rocketship. Teamistry is a new podcast brought to you by Atlassian. Teamistry is the chemistry of unsung teams that achieve the impossible. Season two begins on September 21st. Subscribe today. Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices