What year did you start watching YouTube?

[Vax]

Throughout the years our beloved platform has taken many changes, some for the better, some to be more modern, or to just de-clutter things. But there are things that some people who have been on the site for a long time do remember and are nostalgic about. The yellow subscribe button? The star ratings? Video replies? Sooooo much has changed.. what was your favorite year?

I started on the site in 2006 before my junior high school blocked the website, so I only vaguely remember the layout backthen.

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

And that's that! The evolution of the YouTube homepage over the years!

 

[Stike96]

I don't know when I started using it for sure, but the earliest version I remember interacting with what the 2013 one so I voted that. It is really nice to see how it's changed over the years too.

Edit: oops actually meant 2012.

 

[xingcat]

I'm pretty sure I started watching regularly in 2006, because I was moving to Japan and was watching American vloggers who lived in Japan for tips and tricks.

 

[AceOfBats]

2006, I was addicted to Anime music videos (Naruto especially.)

 

[Switchbox]

I think it was back in 2006.
Shoes was the first one I watched, I think.

 

[Courtney Candice]

I watch a little bit of YouTube when I was in middle school for music videos and Fred, I think it was around 2007 or 08 and then in my freshman year of high school I started watching the computernerd01 and then my sophomore year I started watching Shane Dawson.

 

[KudoJin]

My earliest interaction with YouTube was 2007 (that's when I made my account), but I only started seriously watching it a couple of years later that when I was in middle school.

 

[Thunderturd13]

Probably 2009. Whenever Kimbo Slice (rip) became a sensation

 

[BrainInAJar]

I started watching and had a channel in 2006. My channel back then was dedicated to hacks and homebrew software for the Nokia N-Gage.
One of my videos got posted on some tech-forum in Russia and had over 40000 views, which back then was a big deal. I recieved an invitation to become partner, but at this point I already had lost interest and deleted the channel short after...

I didn't use the site very much after that, up until around 2012. Somewhere around that year I stumbled upon some JonTron-episodes and got back into watching several shows.

It is amazing, how the platform changed in these years. Not primarily from the technical side of things or the interface, but from the kind and quality of content.
In the early days you had more forum-like discussions and video replies you had to follow to understand what was even going on, and most videos (including mine) basically were horribly blurry and pixelated, barely edited flipcam-videos people shot in their bedrooms...

 

[KatyAdelson]

I was a viewer on the site fairly regularly in 2006, but I think I stumbled upon a few things back in 2005...I'm not really sure when I started watching, tbh...