YouTubers With Over 100 Million Subscribers, Mr Beast and Pewdiepie Would Not Exist Without Janet Jackson’s Infamous Wardrobe Malfunction
Arguably no halftime show has ever been as memorable as Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake‘s February 2004 performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII. The show was a relatively standard halftime concert until the final moment when the Mirrors singer ripped off part of Jackson’s costume, revealing her mostly uncovered right breast. While everyone is well aware of how the aftermath of “Ni*plegate” was truly wild and how Jackson’s career took a hit that it never quite recovered from, little do they know that it helped start the platform of YouTube as we see it today.
In a 2016 South by Southwest conference co-founder Steve Chen revealed that YouTube was originally designed as a video-dating website. After the infamous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson, there wasn’t really any place where people can play the malfunction clip after it was aired on live tv. The founders of youtube saw this as an opportunity to pivot from their original dating platform idea which wasn’t working for them at all. And that was when they decided to let the users upload random videos, like the malfunction clip, so as to increase Youtube’s popularity.
YouTube was originally designed as a video-dating website
Launched in 2005, the video social media platform was founded by formal PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. In a 2016 South by Southwest conference co-founder Steve Chen revealed that YouTube was originally designed as a video-dating website. It even had its own slogan: “Tune in, Hook up.”
Their intention was simple, to get single people to upload introductory videos of themselves describing what they are looking for in a partner. The three co-founders even tried paying 20$ on Craiglist to any woman who agreed to upload a dating video on YouTube. But, here’s the sad part: Five days after its release, no video had still been uploaded to the platform.
How Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction saved YouTube
In February 2004, there was no such thing as a “viral” video — even a moment as iconic as the Nipple Bounce was still a case of “If you missed it, you missed it.” One person who was really upset at having missed Janet Jackson‘s wardrobe malfunction was Jawed Karim, who at the time was working for PayPal, just like his tech bros, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. He was unable to find any videos of the incident online.
This gave him and the others the idea to let people share any kind of video that they want. Karim uploaded the site’s first clip on April 23rd, 2005: a 19-second video of himself visiting the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Once YouTube launched, it was an enormous success, thanks in part to people looking for clips of Janet and Justin’s performance.
Also read: “Her Father Wouldn’t Allow Her”: Bobby Brown Reveals Real Reason Janet Jackson Left Him
Just one year later, Google saw the potential of the site and purchased it for over $1.5 billion. Practically everybody on earth was addicted to YouTube at this point. And that is how the famous Youtube celebrities of today like Mr. Beast and PewDiePie are earning millions, all thanks to their 100 million subscribers on the platform.
Source: Youtube
