Did you know: The Very First of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram

Much like how a seed grows to become a tree, today’s gargantuan online commodities began with humble beginnings. They’re now part of the memorable moments in the lives of their users. From sharing birthday pictures online, expressing euphoria after popping the big question to posting portraits of the beloved pet Purrfect, the impact is almost universal.

Every legend has a beginning to tell, let’s start with these four:

THE VERY FIRST VIDEO UPLOADED ON YOUTUBE

Although Youtube was established on February 14, 2005, it was only two months later, on April 23 more specifically, that the very first video was uploaded.

The 18-second video features one of the founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo. It was titled “Me at the zoo” and was shot by Yakov Lapitsky.

This simple upload has encouraged millions of others to do the same. The site is not without a lot of changes, one of them is the acquisition by Google.

THE VERY FIRST FACEBOOK PROFILE

“The Social Network” movie have hinted that the very first Facebook profiles created was of founder Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates. _The Facebook_, as it was then called, has then spread all over Harvard University that started such a frenzy.

To determine the first few FB users, all you need is to enter on your browser the following: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=x_, where _x_ could be a positive number starting from 1.

As such, numbers 1 to 3 are empty profiles, which are more or less used for testing during the site’s conception. Mark Zuckerberg falls onnumber 4, followed by his room mates and co-founders, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, respectively.

I would have liked the lucky spot, but 7 was already taken by Arie Hasit, who is a friend of Chris Hughes.

THE VERY FIRST TWITTER STATUS

“Twttr” was actually the original name of the most popular micro-blogging site now known as Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey tweeted the very first twit composed of these two words: “inviting coworkers”.

There were a few other tweets before that, but they were machine generated. Status numbers 1 to 19 are not available as of the moment, but numbers 20 to 28 all express the same tweet: “just setting up my twttr”. To make sure, type in https://twitter.com/test/status/1 on your browser (incrementally change the value of 1).

Number 29 was the very first tweet posted by a civilian.

THE VERY FIRST INSTAGRAM PHOTO

It was also one of the founders of Instagram that published the very first photo to test the said application. It showcases a dog and a foot. The application was then called Codename before its launch for public use 3 months later (October 2010).

The photo was captured by Instagram’s co-founder and CEO, Kevin Systrom. The foot in question belongs to his by then girlfriend. However, the dog, which the lovers stumbled upon a Mexican taco stand, remains unknown.

From then on a lot of feet and dogs have been published on the site — together with cats, bridges and captive tigers.

It’s amazing how these breakthroughs affect our daily lives without us knowing how they all begun.