Chris Stokel-Walker

Others moved into niches, such as Vimeo, which hosted high-quality videos by musicians and film-makers.

Google decided that instead of trying to beat the competition, it would buy it and acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006.

estimated 576,000 hours of video are added daily to YouTube – vastly more than the new releases on Netflix.

In one month alone, November 2017, YouTube was watched by an estimated 91 million Americans and by 21 million people in Britain.

Though only 38, Casey Neistat is something of the grand old man of YouTube. He became a viral sensation in 2003 when he uncovered Apple’s attempts to keep people locked into buying its products by making batteries in its iPods irreplaceable – and quick to wear out. He parlayed that into making independent films and an eight-part television show for American cable network HBO. He joined YouTube in 2010 and is approached by its executives when they want to publicly admit to and atone for transgressions against the community. He has 10 million subscribers, but his power eclipses even that vast number.

Neistat’s beef was that people didn’t just go on YouTube to make money – they did it because they wanted to create.

YouTube is different to a conventional media company: its reach is wider, its diversity broader, its demographic younger, and its power stronger.

‘Social media makes every single person that participates in it a content producer as well as consumer. Content flow is no longer coming out of TV networks: it’s coming out of users.’

Israeli entrepreneurs launched Metacafe in 2003. Two were started at the end of 2004 – Vimeo established a platform for independent film-makers and Grouper hosted the sharing of photos, video and music.

well as its relaxed attitude to copyright, YouTube had other advantages. It was fast and clean. While contemporary competitors could sometimes struggle under the weight of overwrought design, YouTube was slick.