Jawed Karim | |
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 Karim in August 2008 | |
| Born | (1979-10-28)October 28, 1979 (age 45) |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign (BS) Stanford University (MS) |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Known for |
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| YouTube information | |
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| Years active |
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| Genre | Educational |
| Subscribers | 5.4 million |
| Views | 356 million |
| Last updated: April 27, 2025 | |
Jawed Karim (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer andInternet entrepreneur. He is one of the co-founders ofYouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. The site's inaugural video, "Me at the zoo", uploaded on April 23, 2005, has been viewed over 360 million times as of May 2025.[1] During Karim's time working atPayPal, where he met fellow YouTube co-foundersSteve Chen andChad Hurley, he designed many of its core components, including its real-time anti-fraud system.
Jawed Karim was born on October 28, 1979, inMerseburg,East Germany, to aBangladeshi father and aGerman mother.[2] His father Naimul Karim (Bengali:নাইমুল করিম) is a Bangladeshi who is a researcher at3M, and his mother, Christine, is a German biochemistry scientist at theUniversity of Minnesota.[3] He was the elder of two boys.[4] He crossed theinner German border with his family in the early 1980s due to experiencingracism,[5] growing up inNeuss,West Germany.[note 1] Facing racism there as well,[5] Karim moved with his family toSaint Paul, Minnesota, United States, in 1992.[6]
He graduated fromSaint Paul Central High School in 1997,[7][8] and attended theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[7] He left campus prior to graduating to become an early employee atPayPal. He continued his coursework,[6] earning his bachelor's degree incomputer science.[9] He subsequently earned a master's degree in computer science fromStanford University.[10] In addition to his native language German, he speaks English and Bengali.[11]
In university, Karim served an Internship atSilicon Graphics, Inc., where he worked on 3D voxel data management for very large data sets forvolume rendering, including the data for theVisible Human Project.[12] While working at PayPal in 2002, he metChad Hurley andSteve Chen. Three years later, in 2005, they founded the video-sharing website YouTube.[13] Karim created the first account on YouTube, "jawed", on April 23, 2005PDT (April 24, 2005UTC),[14] and uploaded the website's first video, "Me at the zoo", the same day.[15][16]
After co-founding the company and developing the YouTube concept and website withChad Hurley andSteve Chen, Karim enrolled as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University while acting as an adviser to YouTube. When the site was founded in February 2005, Karim agreed not to be an employee and simply be an informal adviser, and that he was focusing on his studies.[6] As a result, he took a much lower share in the company compared to Hurley and Chen.[17]
Because of his smaller role in the company, Karim was mostly unknown to the public as the third founder untilYouTube was acquired by Google in 2006. Despite his lower share in the company, the purchase was still large enough that he received 137,443 shares of stock, worth about $64 million based on Google's closing stock price at the time.[18]
In October 2006, Karim gave a lecture about the history of YouTube at theUniversity of Illinois annual ACM Conference entitledYouTube From Concept to Hyper growth. Karim returned again to theUniversity of Illinois in May 2008 as the 136th and youngest commencement speaker in the school's history.[19][20]
In March 2008, Karim launched a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures (now known as YVentures) with partnersKeith Rabois andKevin Hartz.[21] Karim is one ofAirbnb's first investors, investing in the company's initialseed round in April 2009.[22] YVentures has also invested inPalantir,Reddit andEventbrite.[23]
Occasionally, Karim has updated the video description of "Me at the zoo" to criticize decisions made by YouTube.
On November 6, 2013, YouTube began requiring that commenting on its videos be done via aGoogle+ account, a move that was widely opposed by the YouTube community. An online petition to revert the change garnered over 240,000 signatures.[24]
In response to Google requiring YouTube members to use Google+ for its comment system, Karim wrote on his YouTube account, "why the fuck do i need a Google+ account to comment on a video?", and updated the video description on his first video titled "Me at the zoo" to "I can't comment here anymore, since i don't want a Google+ account".[25]
In response to pressure from the YouTube community,Google publicly apologized for forcing Google+ users to use their real names, which was one of the reasons the Google+ integration was unpopular with YouTube users.[26] Google subsequently dropped its Google+ requirement across all products, beginning with YouTube.[27] Google announced in October 2018 its intention to permanently shut down Google+, as it had failed to achieve broad consumer or developer adoption,[28][29] and because of a vulnerability that exposed 500,000 users data.[30][31] Google+ was closed for personal accounts on April 2, 2019.[32]
In November 2021, Jawed updated the "Me at the zoo" video description to include "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube🤦♂️."[33] A few days later, Karim updated the description again to a more detailed condemnation of YouTube's decision.[34] In February 2025, Jawed updated the "Me at the zoo" video's description to refer to the danger of microplastics to the brain.[35]
Der andere heißt Jawed Karim und wurde 1979 in Merseburg/DDR geboren. Sein Vater kam aus Bangladesch, seine Mutter aus dem Harz. Die Karims waren als Ausländer verpönt und wanderten deswegen 1982 in den Westen aus. In Neuss schlug ihnen wieder Fremdenhass entgegen; deshalb zogen sie in die USA
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