一则视频与YouTube的诞生

“我们现在位于大象前面。”

It’s a phrase that you probably don’t recognize, but it helped launch a platform that you probably do: YouTube.

你可能不会知道这句话的出处，但它帮助推出了一个你可能知道的平台：YouTube。

Thirteen years ago today, one of the video-sharing site’s co-founders, Jawed Karim, published its first clip: a brief video of himself at the San Diego Zoo.

13年前的今天，这家视频分享网站的共同创始人之一贾韦德·卡里姆(Jawed Karim)发布了其首个视频：他在圣地亚哥动物园的一小段画面。

YouTube now has over a billion users who consume a billion hours of video each day. With five billion views, the music video for “Despacito” is the most-watched video on YouTube. (Here's a full list.)

如今，YouTube有着10亿多用户，他们每天观看10亿小时的视频。《Despacito》这首歌以50亿点击率成为了YouTube上观看次数最多的视频(这里是完整排名)。

People can watch Tom Cruise jump off Oprah Winfrey’s couch on repeat; laugh at a baby biting his brother’s finger; and relive the world’s introduction to the singer Susan Boyle.

人们能够不断重复观看汤姆·克鲁斯(Tom Cruise)跳上奥普拉·温弗瑞(Oprah Winfrey)的沙发;对着一个宝宝咬哥哥手指的视频大笑;还能重温这个世界对歌手苏珊·博伊尔(Susan Boyle)的介绍。

YouTube, now owned by Google, was dreamed up by Mr. Karim and two other former PayPal employees. They were initially depressed by YouTube’s content: “There’s not that many videos I’d want to watch,” one lamented.

如今为谷歌(Google)所有的YouTube，设想源自卡里姆及另外两名前PayPal员工。他们起初对YouTube上的东西感到很不满意：“没多少我想看的视频，”其中一人感叹道。

The trip to the zoo was one of those videos.

这个动物园之旅就是那些视频之一。

“The cool thing about these guys is they have really, really, really long trunks and that’s cool,” Mr. Karim says in the 19-second video, which has more than 48 million views. “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”

“这些家伙很酷的地方就是它们有着很长很长很长的鼻子，这很酷，”卡里姆在那条19秒的视频中说，该视频获得了超过4800万点击率。“我们能说的就这些”。