YouTube turns five

Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world. Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself.

Over time, these aspirations have created a vibrant and inspiring community that helped transform a murmur of interest into something far greater than any of us ever could have imagined. Today, to celebrate its birthday, YouTube has just announced a major new milestone: it’s streaming a whopping two billion views per day (the company notes that this is “nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined”) and launching the YouTube Five Year channel. There, you’ll find the “My YouTube Story” project which features people from all over describing how YouTube has changed or shaped their lives.

Source: http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/doodles/5year-vfl165239.jpg

So, in the spirit of the day, YouTube's excited to launch http://www.youtube.co.za, a South African version of YouTube and our first domain on the continent. The goal here is to give South Africans a way to easily discover local content and content producers. From now on when users in South Africa visit the site, they will see, for example, the most popular and most viewed videos in South Africa along with local content that closely matches their interests.

Source: http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/doodles/za_yoodle-vfl165239.png