The very first YouTube video is officially a work of art

YouTube may be the most watched video platform in the world, and perhaps the biggest existential threat to traditional TV in history, but it wasn't always the cultural behemoth it is today. Back in April 2005, the whole thing was much more quaint; in fact, there was only one video – a grainy 19-second piece-to-camera featuring a young man at the zoo.

Over the last two decades, 'Me at the zoo' has racked up over 380M views. And now, the unassuming video uploaded by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim is a literal artwork, having just been snapped up as a digital exhibit by London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

"The acquisition of the earliest available YouTube watch page featuring ‘Me at the zoo’, dated 8 December 2006, captures a significant moment in the history of the internet and web design – the shift from a read-only internet to one centred on user-generated multimedia content, social interaction and collaboration, otherwise known as Web 2.0," reads a blog post on the V&A website.

The museum explains how the acquisition is actually three-fold, and goes beyond just the video itself. It includes the original front-end code as captured by the Internet Archive on 8 December 2006 (including the original Adobe Flash video player), the video file for 'Me at the zoo', and YouTube ads from 2006 and 2007. These were used to 'reconstruct' the page as it appeared at the time.

"Reconstructing the early watch page was a joint effort between V&A curators and conservators, YouTube’s User Experience team and interaction design studio oio," the museum explains. "The main challenge of the reconstruction process was working through the technological obsolesce of the underlying technologies that sustained YouTube at the time. This included YouTube’s custom video player, designed by Ches Wajda, that was built to run on Adobe Flash Player. To bring its functionality back, despite Adobe Flash Player no longer being supported by modern browsers, the team used the Flash emulator Ruffle."

Perhaps the strangest thing here isn't the fact that the V&A has acquired a video and a web page, but the fact rather that YouTube itself is over 20 years old. I can't quite believe it either – but with Gen Z loving Y2K tech and the iPod making a comeback, it seems what's old is new again.

TOPICS

Daniel John is Design Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of design, branding and lifestyle tech, and has covered several industry events including Milan Design Week, OFFF Barcelona and Adobe Max in Los Angeles. He has interviewed leaders and designers at brands including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. Daniel's debut book of short stories and poems was published in 2018, and his comedy newsletter is a Substack Bestseller.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.