YouTube turns 20 years old. Did you know it was originally a dating website?

It’s February 14, 2025. You know what that means? Yes, Happy Valentine’s Day, but there’s also something else worth remembering today.YouTube has officially turned 20 years old.That’s right, the internet’s biggest video platform as well as one of the most trafficked websites in the world, was founded on Feb. 14, 2005. At least, that’s when three former PayPal employees – Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim – got together and decided on a name: YouTube. As Karim later explained in an early re-telling of YouTube’s history, “the work began” on YouTube on Feb. 14, 2005. The YouTube dot com domain name was registered 20 years ago on that date. However, the video platform you know and love today was certainly not what they had in mind. While the founders have previously shared other reasons behind starting YouTube, such as not being able to find clips of the infamous Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show online, the reality is that the first iteration of YouTube was a dating website.That’s right, YouTube was first intended to be an online dating site. YouTube in April 2005 as saved by the Internet Archive Credit: Internet Archive In fact, you can go check it out and confirm it yourself by looking at the earliest archived version of YouTube that’s saved in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from April 2005. Prominently featured at the top of the page, right below the login section, is an area to input your gender identity, the gender of…YouTube turns 20 years old. Did you know it was originally a dating website?