YouTube wasn’t always the home it is now for viral videos, music videos, and “let’s play” content. Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawad Karim started working on the idea behind YouTube in 2004. Originally, they thought the site should be a dating website to which users uploaded video profiles. By 2005, YouTube’s domain was trademarked and the website officially launched in beta form to a small group of users. The dating idea didn’t track, and users were posting videos of all sorts. The founders caught on and changed YouTube to be a free video-hosting platform. The first video to be uploaded to the new version of the site was called “Me at the Zoo.” Posted by Karim and clocking in at just 18 seconds, this video would be the first of many. The beta version of the free video-hosting site launched in May 2005, and by September, it landed a critical $3.5 millio...