> Google is the most visited website in the world. What's the second most visited?And the answer: YouTube. Photo credit: YouTube.comAs the most popular video website on the internet,YouTube has so many daily visitors that billions of videos are watched everysingle day. The website was founded in 2005 by three former employees of PayPal,who predicted that people would want to share their "home videos" with others.YouTube had taken off before its creators knew what to do with it. By the timeof its official launch in 2005, it was serving more than two million video viewseach day. Within a year, that number had more than quadrupled – YouTube wasalready amassing 25 million views a day. During this time, YouTube's creators were forced to continually buy morecomputer equipment and broadband connections, as they attempted to keep up withthe influx of site traffic. Copyright also became an issue, as they struggled tocontain and prevent unlawfully reproduced material on their site. In 2006,Google Inc. purchased YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion in stock (just a yearafter the site's official launch!). After the fact, Google helped with copyrightlitigation and began playing paid advertisements. Since then, it has all but slowed down. It's estimated that in 2007, YouTubeconsumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000 (no wonder they neededmore computers).YouTube has revolutionized job platforms across the market. It has also createdan all-new job archetype: the YouTuber. Perhaps one of the first forms of thesocial media "influencer," YouTubers produced and catered content to specific,loyal audiences. Quickly, it was realized that money could be made in thispursuit through advertisement monetization. Today, it is now a necessary sourceof information, and even a means of starting a prosperous career.Learn more about the history of YouTube with this, well, YouTube video.