25 Text 8

YOUTUBE

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. The company is based in San Bruno, California.

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois.

According to the story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco.

YouTube began as a venture-funded technology start-up, primarily from a $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in Santa Mateo, California. The first YouTube video was entitled "Me at the Zoo", and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.

The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65.000 new videos were being uploaded every day. According to data published by a well-known market research company, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the US, with a market share of around 43 per cent and more than 14 billion videos viewed in May 2010. YouTube says that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the US. The site has eight hundred million unique users a month. In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rental service, which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK. The service offers over 6,000 films.

26

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, HULU, and other organizations offer some of their material through the site, as part of YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos, while registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users at least 18 years old. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$ 1.65 billion, and has been operating as a subsidiary of Google ever since. Exercise 1. Read the text and answer the questions using the data only:

1. When was YouTube created?

2. What company was an initial investor into YouTube?

3. When was the first video uploaded?

4. How much of the online video market does YouTube occupy?

5. What is the minimum age limit of registered users?

6. How many films can be rented from YouTube?

Exercise 2. Read the text once more and give full answers the questions:

1. What company had the tree founders of YouTube worked before they startedYouTube?

2. What incident prompted the idea of YouTube?

3. Can one watch the first YouTube video now?

4. What is/are the main source/sources of videos uploaded to the site?

5. Who can view potentially offensive content?

6. Who can use the online rental service?

Exercise 3. On the basis of the text, put questions to the following answers:

1. In San Francisco.

2. Co-founder Jawed Karim.

3. 60 hours of new videos.

4. An unlimited number.5.For$US 1.65 billion.6. In May 2010.

27

Find synonyms to the following words in the text: to watch (par. 1) to be located (par.4) to inform (par.5) quantity (par.6) branch (par.6)