Who Was The First YouTuber? (Fun Facts)

History can be fun, especially if we’re talking about YouTube.

In this article, we will look back at the first YouTube videos, comments, and channels. We will also reveal who were the first YouTubers to reach one million, ten million, and a hundred million subscriber marks.

So, who was the first YouTuber? The first YouTuber was Jawed Karim. He is one of the co-founders of YouTube, and he was the first person to upload a video on YouTube. The first YouTube video was uploaded on 23 April 2005, and currently, it has 95 million views, 6 million comments, 3.2 million likes, and 98 thousand dislikes. Nowadays, many YouTubers are famous worldwide celebrities, but in 2005 the word YouTuber didn’t even exist.

Nowadays, YouTube has 2 billion logged-in monthly users, and people upload 500 hours of video every minute. According to Hootsuite, in the U.S alone, this year, YouTube will make 5.5. billion dollars in advertising revenue.

And all of it started with this 18 seconds long Jawed’s video named “Me at the zoo.”

 

So, the world’s first YouTuber.

Here is what he got to say to the world: “All right, so here we are in front of the elephants. The cool thing about these guys is that they have really long trunks, and that’s, that’s cool. And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”

Did you notice that he didn’t ask you to subscribe to his channel or to leave a comment, or to watch another of his videos?

Technically this video was published in Jawed’s channel seven months before YouTube was officially launched in November 2005.

Today his channel has only one video in it. Interestingly enough, the first YouTuber needed to publish only one video to get 850 000 subscribers. And the number is continuously growing.

This channel’s comments section has turned into a place where new YouTubers beg for new subscribers. Every minute several new comments like the ones in the picture below appear underneath Jawed’s video.

 

What Was The First YouTube Comment?

The first-ever YouTube comment is “LOL!!!!!!!”. Its author is Marco Casse, and the comment was made for the YouTube video “Good Times!!!”. Yes, the first YouTube comment wasn’t made on the first YouTube video that is “Me at the zoo.” Marco Casse made the first YouTube comment on 14 June 2005, which was 52 days later, after the first YouTube video was published.

A few years ago, Marco Casse said hi to his viewers by leaving another comment on the same video. See the print screen below. All 500 replies are awesome and worth reading.

Some sources mention COBALTGRUV (Tim Leister) as the first YouTube commentator, but it isn’t entirely true.

COBALTGRUV is the author of the first YouTube comment, which got taken down due to spam.

He left a comment on the first YouTube video (Me at the zoo) that said: “Interesting…”, but after Google+ comments integration on 6 November 2013, it got removed together with many other comments marked as spam.

COBALTGRUV made his first YouTube comment on his video called “hOUsE DISMOUNT.” It said: “Well, I suppose I have landed on my back once….that is only because the fence broke…lol…Thanks for the input!!! COBALT” This comment was made 16 June 2005 – two days later after the first YouTube comment was made.

 

Who Was The First YouTuber To Hit 1 Million?

The first YouTuber to hit 1 million subscribers was Fred (Lucas Cruikshank). Nowadays, his old channel is not available anymore, but his fans can continue watching his videos on a YouTube channel named Lucas.

His new channel (technically created in 2005) has 3.2 million subscribers. He now releases 1 to 2 videos per week, and each video is averaging 250 000 views.

He also has half a million followers on Instagram and almost 400 000 followers on Twitter.

You may not have liked his old videos, but his name is to stay in the history books of YouTube. Fred, the first YouTuber who hit 1 million YouTube subscribers.

 

The second YouTuber to hit 1 million subscribers on YouTube was nigahiga. The third was Smosh.

Nigahiga’s YouTube channel had around 615 000 subscribers when Fred overtook the lead as the most subscribed YouTuber.

Fred was the most subscribed YouTuber starting from November 2008 until October 2009.

 

Who Was The First YouTuber To Hit 10 Million Subscribers?

Smosh was the first YouTube channel to hit 10 million subscribers. It happened on 28 May 2013.

At that time their closest rivals were:

• JennaMarbles with 9 million subscribers;
• RayWilliamJohnson with 8.9 million subscribers;
• Nigahiga with 8.4 million subscribers;
• PewDiePie with 8.2 million subscribers.

Today their channel has 25 million subscribers. At the end of 2015, they hit 20 million subscribers mark, and since then, their growth has been quite slow. At the end of 2017, they had already lost their second position to several other YouTube channels – HolaSoyGerman, T-Series, ElrubiousOMG, and others.

 

Who Was The First YouTuber To Hit 50 Million Subscribers?

In August 2013, PewDiePie overtook Smosh and became the most subscribed YouTuber of all time. After that, it took him only three years to reach 50 million subscribers mark.

At PewDiePie’s 65 million subscribers mark on September 2018, T-Series (music record label and film production company in India) almost took the 1st place from the PewDiePie away.

(Print Screen from Statistico’s YouTube channel – An updated history of Youtube Stars 2006-2019).

It was also the date when the race for 100 million subscribers began.

It was an exciting time to be on YouTube because many famous YouTubers and people around the world started coming up with creative ideas to support PewDiePie in this race.

For example, MrBeast, together with his friends, bought tickets to the Super Bowl. They dressed up so that their t-shirts, when next to each other, would say “Sub 2 PEW DIE PIE” and sat right behind the field goal on the Los Angeles Ram’s side of the stadium. They were easy to notice almost every time a field goal was kicked on that side.

Most of the supporting activities were positive and exciting to watch, but then one thing led to another, and it suddenly was about politics, race, nationalities, etc.

To make it stop, PewDiePie released this video.

 

Although PewDiePie’s YouTube channel wasn’t the first to hit the 100 million subscribers, PewDiePie still is the first individual creator to achieve this.

Currently, PewDiePie has 104 million subscribers.

One-third of PewDiePie’s followers on YouTube subscribed to his channel in 2019. The reason behind that is the “subscriber race” with T-Series.

 

Who Was The First YouTuber To Hit 100 Million Subscribers?

The first YouTube channel to hit 100 million subscribers was T-Series. It is India’s largest music label and movie studio, and by getting approximately one million subscribers every ten days, it hit the 100 million subscriber milestone on 29 May 2019. One year later, T-series crossed 140 million subscribers mark.

The race to win YouTube’s award for 100 million subscribers between T-Series and PewDiePie was eight months long. By the time T-Series hit the milestone, PewDiePie had 96 million subscribers.

After reaching 100 million subscribers PewDiePie channel’s insanely fast growth has slowed down, but T-Series just keeps growing.

According to Socialblade, T-Series gets 100 000 new subscribers every day.

YouTube has five different tiers of rewards:

• The Silver Creator Award for channels that reach or surpass 100 000 subscribers
• The Gold Creator Award for one million subscribers;
• The Diamond Creator Award for ten million subscribers;
• The Custom Creator Award for 50 million subscribers;
• The Red Diamond Creator Award for 100 million subscribers;

Currently, only PewDiePie and T-Series have surpassed all five tiers and are owners of the Red Diamond Creator Award.

According to What’s Inside YouTube channel, there are three Red Diamond Creator Awards made. Two for the previously mentioned Youtube channels and one for whoever is going to take third place in this race.

 

Who do you think will take the third place? Maybe Cocomelon?

And who will be the first YouTuber to hit 200 million Subscribers?

And what will be YouTube’s next tier of awards? Is it going to be 200 million subscribers? 500 million? Or maybe 1 trillion subscribers?

So I hope you had a good read. I will do my best to keep this article updated, but please do not hesitate to leave a comment if big things have happened, and you believe it should be updated right away.

Have a great day, and see you on YouTube.