海角大神

On April 23, 2005, shortly before YouTube鈥檚 public debut, co-founder Jawed Karim posted the site鈥檚 first video clip. 鈥溾�� is an unremarkable 18-second video in which Mr. Karim, standing in front of an African elephant exhibit, observes, 鈥淭hey have really, really, really long trunks 鈥� and that鈥檚 pretty much all there is to say.鈥�

Ten years later, YouTube has grown from a small site for hosting short video clips to a media juggernaut in its own right. It鈥檚 the home of long-form documentaries, live concerts and events, and virtual town-hall meetings with presidential candidates.

And as YouTube鈥檚 audience grew 鈥� from 100 million views per day in 2006 to more than 4 billion daily views today 鈥� the site became home to a cottage industry of professional videomakers.

YouTube's industry-changing success all comes down to ads. More than a million advertisers, ranging from small businesses to giant corporations, use the ad platforms of YouTube鈥檚 parent company, Google. Every time a video is played and an ad is served, the video鈥檚 creator gets a small cut. That means the most popular YouTubers, such as Swedish video gamer PewDiePie and Chilean comedian HolaSoyGerman, make millions of dollars a year from their content. (The top YouTubers are also more widely recognized than mainstream celebrities by American teenagers, a discovered last summer.)

A video that garners a million views can bring in between $800 and $8,000 to the video鈥檚 creator, . The most popular YouTube video of all time is the music video for Psy鈥檚 鈥淕angnam Style,鈥� which has gotten more than 2.3 billion views and earned more than $6 million in revenue.

YouTube鈥檚 popularity as a platform also means that popularity on the video site can spill over into other forms of media, as well. Comedy Central鈥檚 "Key & Peele" sketch comedy show gained a huge following on YouTube following the series鈥� debut in 2012 after several of the sketches went viral. One of the best examples of a YouTube hit, 鈥淪ubstitute teacher鈥� 鈥� a skit centered on an inner-city substitute teacher who is impatient with a class of suburban high schoolers 鈥� gained nearly 75 million views on YouTube and will be turned into a feature film by Paramount Pictures. (For a time, Key & Peele videos even ran with an introduction that stated, 鈥淲e know you like watching Key & Peele on YouTube, but you鈥檒l love watching the whole show even more on Comedy Central鈥� 鈥� an indication that the show鈥檚 producers wanted to make sure that its YouTube popularity translated into a real-world audience.)

As YouTube continues to grow, there鈥檚 no telling what the site will look like in another 10 years. But the video site鈥檚 main societal contribution 鈥� the idea that someone can achieve wealth and fame solely through producing popular online content 鈥� will probably always be true in the future.