YouTube (owned by Google) has come a long way since the idea for the popular video-sharing site was first sparked at a San Francisco dinner party in 2005. The concept was comically inspired by the viral Super Bowl “Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction” when the three founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim (all early employees of PayPal at the time) discussed the difficulty of finding, watching, and sharing video clips of the mishap online. “Video, we felt, really wasn’t being addressed on the Internet” said Hurley in an early interview, “People were collecting video clips on their cell phones…but there was no easy way to share.”
Lauren Cosgrove is a freelance writer passionate about branding, global issues, and the world’s little mysteries. A Pacific Northwest native, Lauren can be found hiking the great outdoors, practicing her dance steps, or illustrating children’s books.