The upward push of YouTube: two decades of creators, tradition, and content material at VidCon by way of NewsFlicks

Did you pass to the zoo two decades in the past? Over 364 million folks did.

On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim stood in entrance of the elephants on the San Diego Zoo, recorded some gentle statement, and posted it to YouTube. It used to be the primary ever video uploaded to the platform. At first conceived as a relationship website, YouTube as a substitute ushered in a brand new virtual global: one in all plentiful content material, influencers and creators, algorithmic obsession, the viral unfold of disinformation, and a society an increasing number of formed by way of metrics — likes, stocks, and perspectives.

Its have an effect on is so huge that it is tricky to measure. Ultimate yr by myself, the video-sharing platform introduced in $36.15 billion in advert earnings, in line with Selection. At VidCon 2025, YouTube’s VP of Author Merchandise, Amjad Hanif, shared that kind of 20 million movies are uploaded to the platform each day. 

YouTube wasn’t the primary social media website. Platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com, SixDegrees.com, Friendster, and MySpace all predate it. However the ones websites functioned like static virtual puts for customers to offer private data or to seek out folks they already knew in actual existence. There used to be no set of rules, and surely no “content material” in the way in which we know it as of late. YouTube, in its early days, used to be identical. But someway it no longer simplest persisted however flourished, shifted the material of our verbal exchange, and democratized the power for documentary filmmakers, comedians, and artists to make their paintings. What used to be as soon as a spot designed for relationship has transform a mass of monetization and the house of the $250 billion author financial system. 

How did we get right here? And, two decades later, what comes subsequent?

The primary author financial system

YouTube didn’t simply host movies; it created the primary true author financial system, giving upward thrust to a technology of influencers who may just in truth make a residing from their paintings. Sure, folks have been making movies prior to YouTube, however conventional media had top partitions. Hollywood gatekeepers managed who were given to be noticed, heard, and paid. YouTube blew that style large open. 

“The explanation YouTube has outlasted nearly each different platform, or stayed the space, is that on the subject of longform video, it is quite simple — it isn’t only a content material platform, it is a author financial system spine,” Matt Navarra, a social media skilled, instructed Mashable. “Whilst different platforms have been following traits, YouTube constructed infrastructure.”

Google got YouTube in 2006, and, as soon as YouTube changed into a part of the biggest and maximum tough seek engine on this planet, it had a sexy impressive quantity of sources, visitors, and cash at its disposal — and it gave a few of the ones sources, visitors, and cash to its customers. 

In 2007, YouTube introduced the YouTube Spouse Program, introducing author payouts, which Mark Bergen, a journalist and creator of Like, Remark, Subscribe: How YouTube Drives Google’s Dominance and Controls Our Tradition, argues successfully invented the speculation of the content material author as a career. Customers started depending at the platform to make an source of revenue, and that monetary incentive made creators unswerving; few have been keen to desert a platform that paid them, particularly when opponents couldn’t be offering the similar. Greater than that, new creators started flooding the YouTube device, hoping to enjoy the similar freedom and repute to be had to them simplest at the platform. 

However lengthy prior to the paychecks and polished manufacturing got here the fervour. Early creators like John and Hank Inexperienced weren’t chasing clout or a paycheck — as a result of neither actually existed but. “After we began, there used to be no technique to generate profits and there used to be additionally no standing tied to it,” Hank Inexperienced later recalled throughout VidCon 2025’s “YouTube Legends” panel. That used to be a part of the attraction. “No one [was] getting paid smartly, however everyone’s in combination, loving it, and group, it seems, is extra necessary for happiness than cash. I pass over the ones days when I used to be making $20,000 a yr with a number of nerds who didn’t be expecting that it could ever transform a cultural drive or phenomenon,” he mentioned. “However I’m additionally more than pleased that there’s a possibility for actually gifted individuals who would by no means have the ability to have ingenious careers, to have the ones careers now.”

YouTube has “found out the author financial system and has had a lock on that for just about two decades. Fb, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, everybody’s attempted and failed to return any place with regards to that,” Bergen instructed Mashable. He mentioned not one of the different platforms “have constructed out simply this dimension and scale of a real virtual financial system and a staff.”

Navarra identified that the early YouTubers — creators like John and Hank Inexperienced, Rhett & Hyperlink, Grace Helbig, and Tyler Oakley, lots of whom have been inducted into the inaugural VidCon Corridor of Status this yr — did not simplest create content material, however they constructed empires, aided by way of YouTube’s world achieve and monetization gear. Navarra mentioned it set the “gold usual” for author sustainability.

Movies do not simply pattern, they rank — and that is the reason a superpower that no person else has rather matched in the similar approach.

A large a part of this luck is because of discoverability, which did not occur independently. 

“That is a big explanation why you may have these types of incentives for folks to stay posting, to stay upping the manufacturing price, to stay seeking to transform an influencer and author, as a result of you’ll be able to make a residing or aspire to make a residing. And you’ll be able to’t bargain the truth that it is been a part of Google,” Bergen mentioned.

That integration gave YouTube a novel edge. As Navarra put it, “Movies do not simply pattern, they rank — and that is the reason a superpower that no person else has rather matched in the similar approach.”

After all, being the primary had its drawbacks. YouTube needed to confront the rising pains of content material introduction prior to someone else, particularly when it got here to moderation. Its insurance policies advanced through the years, and different platforms ceaselessly adopted its lead, even though no longer with out controversy.

“YouTube has been the canary within the coal mine for content material moderation at scale as it confronted existential threats previous than maximum platforms,” Navarra mentioned. And it is true. Within the early days, YouTube inquisitive about doing away with movies that violated its pointers associated with nudity, graphic violence, and hate speech. However because the platform matured, so did its method. It needed to make room for content material with instructional, documentary, or creative price, and later, make calls on movies within the public pastime, like marketing campaign content material from electoral applicants that violated its personal insurance policies.

“YouTube has transform some of the brand-safe video or social platforms, which is why advertisers nonetheless spend giant there in spite of their dimension and complexity,” Navarra mentioned, including that whilst they “have not been with out their disasters,” they have got nonetheless fared “higher than maximum platforms around the longer time period.”

What is subsequent? Quick-form vs. long-form, AI, and TV

YouTube used to be a pioneer in on-line video, but it surely gave the impression stuck off guard when TikTok made short-form vertical video the dominant structure. TikTok entered the U.S. marketplace in 2018, prompting YouTube to reply with Shorts in 2019. Instagram temporarily adopted with Reels in 2020.

YouTube Shorts now averages over 200 billion day-to-day perspectives, Hanif mentioned throughout a YouTube Keynote at VidCon 2025, supposed to rejoice its twentieth anniversary. That is an enormous quantity, however it’s not essentially consultant culturally. It is extra of a “useful software that hasn’t discovered its soul or persona or goal up to different platforms have relating to short-form video,” Navarra mentioned.

“It really works on paper: the perspectives are large, the monetization has stepped forward, however culturally, TikTok owns the vibe. The problem is extra belief… YouTube’s DNA is in storytelling and intensity… If YouTube can crack cultural relevance with Shorts and no longer simply scale, then it turns into relatively unbeatable,” Navarra mentioned.

And whilst a lot of folks watch YouTube Shorts, audience are leaning extra against long-form video on YouTube — and they are staring at it on their TVs.

“Increasingly more when folks say they are staring at TV, they are staring at YouTube,” Hanif mentioned at VidCon. 

Gwen Miller, the senior director of enlargement at Legendary Leisure, famous throughout a VidCon panel that this pattern bodes smartly for creators. Longer watch instances on TVs imply audience are much more likely to take a seat via commercials, which results in higher profits for creators.

Content material isn’t the one factor converting on YouTube, and AI is readily turning into a driver in the back of the place the platform is headed subsequent.

“With regards to AI and YouTube’s long run, if you happen to glance the place YouTube is heading, AI is central,” Navarra mentioned. “It isn’t a gimmick however as a enlargement engine. The platform’s giant benefit is not just the dimensions and age, it is the approach it quietly builds essentially the most complex gear for creators any place else on the net.”

And YouTube CEO Neal Mohan introduced ultimate week on the Cannes Lions 2025 Pageant of Creativity that Veo 3, the newest style of Google DeepMind’s video technology style, which lets you create AI-generated backgrounds and video clips, is coming to YouTube Shorts later this summer time.

Autodubbing, an AI software that permits creators to dub their movies in different languages, is these days to be had in 9 languages and can quickly be to be had in 20 languages, Hanif mentioned. Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s world director of tradition and traits, mentioned at VidCon that 52 % of 14 to 24-year-olds within the U.S. have watched content material or creators which have been translated from any other language. As an example, MrBeast dubs his movies in 16 other languages, together with Eastern, French, Hindi, and Spanish, that have garnered him huge followings across the world.

The concept that AI is central to the way forward for introduction is not one thing YouTube is by myself in predicting. In 2023, Ollie Forsyth, the founding father of New Economies, discovered that 33 % of creators used AI. That quantity has jumped to 80 % in 2025, largely because of the significance of language dubbing. All the way through Forsyth’s communicate “Mapping the Trendy Author Financial system: Developments, Tensions, and What Comes Subsequent” at VidCon this yr, he argued that each author goes to should be AI-focused as a result of AI brokers will have the ability to permit creators to be in point of fact versatile and extra environment friendly. It is going to lend a hand them unlock the time they spend on admin, price range, model partnerships, advertising and marketing, and extra as startups use AI to unravel those issues. 

If historical past is any indication of the longer term, it could be extra useful to have a look at this from a special standpoint — it’s not essentially guessing what the way forward for YouTube will seem like, however extra figuring out that no matter long run is selected might be reflected throughout each different social media platform.