The first youtuber was Jawed Karim who was also a founder of YouTube. Jawed Karim posted the first-ever video to YouTube. The 18-second video, entitled “Me at the zoo,” features Karim, a YouTube cofounder, at the San Diego Zoo standing in front of a bunch of elephants.
Jawed Karim Childhood and Personal Life
Jawed was born on October 28, 1979, in Merseburg, East Germany (Present day Germany) to Christine Karim and Naimul Karim. His father is a researcher from Bangladesh, while his mother is a German scientist associated with the University of Minnesota as a research professor of biochemistry. He has a sister, Ilias.
During the early 1980s, he relocated to West Germany with his family after crossing the inner German border and was raised in Neuss. In 1992, his family relocated to Saint Paul, Minnesota, US, where he attended Saint Paul Central High School.
Jawed Karim Education
He enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, in the department of computer science. He joined PayPal and left the university *campus before completing his graduation. He was as one of PayPal’s early employees. He, however, continued to complete his course and obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2004. Thereafter, he joined Stanford University and earned a master’s degree in computer science.
Career
Karim did an Internship in 1998 with the American high-performance computing manufacturer, Silicon Graphics Inc. that produces both computer hardware and software. There he had to work on 3D voxel data management for huge data sets for volume rendering.
He was one of the earliest employees of PayPal, the American company that operates an online payments system worldwide. There he came into contact with two other early employees of the company, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. In 2005, the three created the video sharing website, YouTube. Karim designed and implemented several core components of PayPal which included real-time anti-fraud system.
How he founded Youtube?
According to Karim, the inspiration of developing YouTube came when he could not find video clips of two events easily. These included the clips of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy involving Janet Jackson and that of Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, both happened in 2004. Hurley and Chen mentioned that the concept of creating YouTube was originally inspired from the rating site, Hot or Not.
When YouTube made it mandatory that all comments on the videos of the website will be through a Google+ account, it met with widespread opposition from the YouTube community. More than 240K signatories made an online petition for reversion of this move. Karim also displayed his disapproval of this change by writing “why the ….do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?” on his YouTube account. He also went on to update the video description of ‘Me at the zoo’ … ‘I can’t comment here anymore, since I don’t want a Google+ account.’
Several of Karim’s articles on programming has been published in the United Business Media published US monthly journal, Dr. Dobb’s Journal (DDJ).
How much did Jawed Karim sell YouTube for?
$1.65 billion
It was only when YouTube was sold to Google for nearly $1.65 billion in the year 2006 that Karim was again back in the news and media. This small share still proved large enough to let him receive close to 137,443 shares, worth around $64 million, at the closing of the famous Google acquisition of YouTube.
Jawed Karim Wife
Karim does not like to divulge much about his personal life, as there is not much information available in this regard. However, according to some sources, he is dating British writer Kia Abdullah as the duo have been spotted together several times. At present, Karim lives in Palo Alto, California.
Jawed Karim Instagram Account
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Some Interesting Facts About Jawed Karim
- Karim was the first person to upload a video on YouTube on channel jawed which has 1.1 million subscribers and his video Me at a zoo is viewed by more than 112 million.
- Jawed Karim founded an organization called the Karim Immigration which is a Canadian immigration firm that provides counsel and represents its clients worldwide.
- He grabbed the opportunity to work for PayPal which turned a turning point in his life.
- He continued his higher studies even after founding YouTube and earned his master’s degree from Stanford University. During his study time, he was serving YouTube as an advisor.
- Besides, Karim had a major say in many crucial YouTube decisions, including the one to collaborate with companies like Google and NBC, which can undoubtedly be marked as some of the most significant reasons behind the popularity that YouTube enjoys today.
- Jawed Karim’s “Me at the zoo” was You tube’s first video that was uploaded on the social media platform.
Body Measurements
Jawed Karim seems to be fairly tall. But has no exact measurements of his body like height, or weight. Further, his eyes seem to be brown, and also has brown hair.
Bio/Wiki
| Real Name | Jawed Karim |
| Nick Name | Jawed |
| Profession | Entrepreneur, Internet Entrepreneur, Software Engineer |
| Popular for | Co-founder of YouTube, Uploader of the first video ever on YouTube |
| Date Of Birth | 28 October 1979 |
| Day | Sunday |
| Age | 42 Years (As of 2022) |
| Mother | Christine Karim |
| Father | Naimul Karim |
| Weight | 75 Kgs |
| Height | 5′ 7″ |
| College Name | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (BS), Stanford University (MS) |
| Educational Qualification | Master’s degree in Computer Science |
| Nationality | American/German |
| Brother | Ilias Karim |
| Martial Status | Not Known |
| Wife | Aanchal Kumar (Model) |
| Net Worth | $300 million |
| School | Saint Paul Central High School |
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