YouTube‘s first video is more than 18 years old, but it recently received an update that brought it in line with contemporary digital content trends. Jawed Karim, the YouTube Co-Founder who turned a herd of elephants into a piece of history, uploaded a new thumbnail for “me at the zoo” earlier this year.
In 2005, Karim kicked off the YouTube era with a 17-second clip set at the San Diego Zoo. Recently, some viewers who searched for “me at the zoo” received a surprise: A new thumbnail that shows Karim with glowing eyes and a herd of elephants to his right. It’s a change that seems at least partially inspired by MrBeast, who has ushered in a new era of thumbnail design by pairing funny faces with eye-grabbing details.
On ViewStats, the new data analytics platform co-founded by MrBeast, Karim’s profile shows that he uploaded the new thumbnail on December 16 before reversing that change about two weeks later. Traffic on Karim’s channel (which features no videos other than “me at the zoo”) has risen steadily over the past few years, and his thumbnail swap drew attention on Reddit.
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The new thumbnail is not the first update Karim has made to YouTube’s earliest video. He has cut the 17-second clip into timestamped sections, and he occasionally shows up in the video’s comment section to offer his takes on current YouTube happenings. When YouTube announced that it would remove public dislike counts on videos, Karim updated the description of “me at the zoo” to protest the policy shift.
Karim is not the only YouTube Co-Founder keeping busy. Chad Hurley recently reappeared on the online video radar with a new AI company called EyeTell. The other brain behind YouTube, Steve Chen, has invested in some of the platform’s most prominent media brands.
Though he has still only uploaded the lone video on his channel, Karim previously flirted with the idea of expanding his YouTube operation. If he does, he can put his thumbnail design skills to good use, but the first video in YouTube history is a hard act to follow.
