YouTube celebrates 20th anniversary milestone

YouTube celebrated a milestone last month.

It's been 20 years since the first video was uploaded to the platform — and a lot has changed since then.

Me at the Zoo shows a man standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. While it's not exactly riveting in terms of today's content standards, it does capture an important moment in time.

"If you think about that 19 seconds and what it's turned into today, it's incredible," said Alexandra Hunnings Klein, head of communications for YouTube Canada.

"It's a platform where anybody anywhere can start a business, express themselves."

According to YouTube, the platform's popularity is dominant across age groups in Canada, with usage peaking among Canadians aged 12 to 34.

"It's a platform not just for Canadians to reflect culture back to each other but also globally," Hunnings Klein said.

Part of YouTube's success can be attributed to its consistency, says Richard Lachman, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's media school.

"For most of us the way YouTube serves content now is very similar to the way they did 20 years ago, they got it right," he said, adding it's also been incredibly influential on the way people consume and share media across traditional industries like journalism and film.

"It's really changed our culture into being a moving video culture," he said.

Lachman says with the platform hosting more longer-form content than some of its social media counterparts, it's also been a bit more resilient to misinformation.

"Rather than quick hits, just headlines, people are engaging, they're not just seeing a 20 second clip about something. There's more deep digging," he said.

YouTube says the platform has created more than 45,000 jobs in Canada. Since the first video was posted 20 years ago, more than 20 billion more videos were uploaded to the platform.