If you are a fan of Clay Aiken, you are probably also a fan of YouTube.  This five – year – old company has allowed fans to share “Clack” easily all over the world.

In its short life, YouTube has completely reshaped the Internet and influenced media and political landscapes.

In February of 2005, 3 young employees of PayPal started to work on the concept of YouTube.  It wasn’t until December of 2005 that YouTube officially debuted.

Saturday Night Live helped in making YouTube a popular site.  In December 2005, they aired a skit titled Lazy Sunday.  This short clip was an instant success for YouTube as the video had nearly 2 million views in one week.

Four months later, a company called Sequoia funded YouTube to the tune of $8 million dollars.  A year later, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

There are a couple of extraordinary events in YouTube history:

• April 6, 2006: “The Evolution of Dance,” a six-minute mashup of 50 years of dance crazes was put on YouTube.  It became the most popular clip in YouTube history.  It generated over 131 million views.
• July 23, 2007: CNN and YouTube hosted their first presidential debate.
• April 11, 2009: Susan Boyle became a global celebrity. Her performance on a British show was viewed 80 million times.
• October 12, 2009:  YouTube passes 1 billion videos a day.  The company still remains unprofitable as they spend more than $700 million to store and serve all the videos.
• May, 2010:  The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube.
• Current:  24 hours worth of videos upload every minute.
• Lady Gaga’s video of “Bad Romance” is the most popular video with 185.39 million views.

I can get lost in YouTube.  I probably spend too much time hunting for interesting videos and spend most of my YouTube time watching Clay Aiken.  Today I found a couple from the beginning of Clay’s professional musical career.  He was an amazing talent when these videos were filmed and I feel he is only become better as time has gone by.

I hope you have fun with these videos too!!

By the way…on Wednesday, January 12^th we will post our trivia contest for 2 free PBS tickets to the San Francisco Tried & True concert.  Seat assignments are unknown at this time, but the seats should be good as they were bought through KQED as part of a pledge gift.