There's nothing like a good Twitter PR backfire to highlight how satisfying it can be when users take hold of something and flip on its intended purpose. Thankfully, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen didn't take it too personally when users sent him a clear message that the original iteration of YouTube wasn't working. That's right: YouTube was supposed to be a dating site.
Chen admitted at a SXSW conference this year that the initial concept for YouTube involved singles signing up, uploading videos of themselves offering a rundown of who they are and what they want in a partner, and then attracting potential matches via the comments. (Shudder.) Imagine an entire video hosting service just for those cringe-worthy self-tapes that rich, socially inept bachelors force Patti Stanger to screen on Millionaire Matchmaker.
"We thought dating would be the obvious choice," said Chen. The site's original co-founders even went so far as to offer women on Craigslist $20 to upload videos when the site first launched in 2005, not yet hip to the now widely known fact that for-pay seed hotties are the death knell of any dating platform.
“We even had a slogan for it," co-founder Jawed Karim told Motherboard last year. "Tune in, Hook up."
But after five whole days of being live with nary a single single's video (sorrysorrysorry) being uploaded to the site, the co-founders swiftly and smartly course-corrected.
"OK, forget the dating aspect," Chen recalled. "Let’s just open it up to any video."
A year later, they landed a $1.65 billion acquisition from Google, and you could say the rest was history, but that history is now fully searchable on YouTube.
Want more of Bustle's Sex and Relationships coverage? Check out our new podcast, I Want It That Way, which delves into the difficult and downright dirty parts of a relationship, and find more on our Soundcloud page.
Images: Andrew Zaeh/Bustle; Giphy (2)
