YouTube
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6correct to beat the crowd
This YouTube trivia quiz has 43 free questions with answers and covers the platform from its 2005 founding by three ex-PayPal employees to today. There are questions on the first video, the pizzeria office, the $1.65 billion Google acquisition, the CEOs, and the records: the first video to a billion views, the most-viewed and most-subscribed of all time, and the Rewind that became the most-disliked video ever. Creators get their due too, from Smosh and PewDiePie to Ryan's World and MrBeast, along with features like Shorts, Premium and the Creator Award Play Buttons. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who watches YouTube, a third are medium, and the rest ask for dates, figures and behind-the-scenes details that will stump casual viewers. Figures are current to 2025-2026 where a source confirms them. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 43 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01YouTube's three founders had all been early employees of which company?
PayPal
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim all worked at PayPal before founding YouTube in February 2005; Hurley had designed PayPal's logo.
Q 02Per Jawed Karim, YouTube's idea partly came from being unable to find clips of which 2004 event?
Janet Jackson's halftime show
He also could not find video of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Q 03The first video ever uploaded to YouTube, on 23 April 2005, was titled what?
Me at the zoo
'Me at the zoo' shows Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo, filmed by his school friend Yakov Lapitsky, and was uploaded on 23 April 2005 to the channel 'jawed'.
Q 04In the first video uploaded to YouTube, Jawed Karim stands in front of which animals?
Elephants
Elephants: Karim's entire commentary is that they have 'really, really, really long trunks'.
Q 05How much did Google pay to acquire YouTube in November 2006?
$1.65bn
Susan Wojcicki, then a Google executive, recommended and managed the purchase.
Q 06What slogan did YouTube adopt in its early years?
Broadcast Yourself
'Broadcast Yourself' sat under the YouTube logo through the site's early years until it was dropped in 2012, summing up the pitch of letting anyone post their own video.
Q 07Roughly how many hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, per 2024 figures?
500+
More than 500 hours of video were uploaded every minute in 2024 by YouTube's own figures, which works out to about 30,000 hours of new video every hour.
Q 08In which year did YouTube launch its Partner Program, letting creators earn ad revenue?
2007
The YouTube Partner Program launched in May 2007, letting selected creators share advertising revenue from their videos; it was broadened to more creators that December and later to other countries.
Q 09Which former Google executive, in whose garage Google was founded, was YouTube's CEO from 2014 to 2023?
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki was Google's 16th employee and rented Larry Page and Sergey Brin her Menlo Park garage in 1998; she ran YouTube from February 2014 until stepping down in February 2023.
Q 10Who was named YouTube's CEO in February 2023?
Neal Mohan
Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer since 2015, was named CEO on 16 February 2023 when its previous chief stepped down after nine years.
Q 11Which video became the first on YouTube to reach a billion views, on 21 December 2012?
Gangnam Style
Psy's 'Gangnam Style' hit a billion views on 21 December 2012, five months after release, and was also the first video to pass two billion, in May 2014.
Q 12Which Pinkfong video became YouTube's most-viewed of all time in November 2020?
Baby Shark Dance
'Baby Shark Dance' overtook the previous record holder as YouTube's most-viewed video on 2 November 2020 and became the first to pass 10 billion views in January 2022.
Q 13Which 2017 Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee video was the first ever to reach six billion views?
Despacito
Q 21In November 2021, YouTube announced it would hide what from viewers?
Dislike counts
YouTube hid public dislike counts from 10 November 2021, saying it would reduce harassment of smaller creators; creators kept seeing their dislike numbers in YouTube Studio.
Q 22A YouTube channel receives the Gold Creator Award, or Gold Play Button, on reaching how many subscribers?
1,000,000
The Gold Creator Award marks 1,000,000 subscribers; Silver comes at 100,000 and Diamond at 10 million, and YouTube sends the plaques to eligible channels in good standing.
Q 23The Red Diamond Creator Award is given to channels that reach how many subscribers?
100,000,000
'Despacito' passed six billion views in February 2019 and held the most-viewed title from August 2017 until November 2020.
Q 14'Charlie bit my finger', the 2007 viral clip of two English brothers, was sold in 2021 as what?
An NFT
The family auctioned the clip as an NFT in May 2021; the winning bid of $760,999 came from 3F Music, and the video had once been the most-viewed on the site.
Q 15How many contestants competed for the $5m prize in Beast Games (Prime Video, December 2024)?
1,000
Beast Games gathered 1,000 contestants, a record for a game show, competing for a $5 million prize billed as the largest cash prize in television history.
Q 16Which Indian music label became the first channel to reach 100,000,000 subscribers, in May 2019?
T-Series
T-Series, the Bollywood music label founded by Gulshan Kumar, passed 100 million subscribers on 29 May 2019 after a long, meme-fuelled race with PewDiePie.
Q 17Which YouTube comedy series, begun in 2009, became a Cartoon Network show in 2012?
The Annoying Orange
The Annoying Orange, Dane Boedigheimer's talking-fruit series, began on YouTube in October 2009; Cartoon Network premiered The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange in June 2012.
Q 18What is the real name of PewDiePie, the first individual YouTuber to pass 100 million subscribers?
Felix Kjellberg
Felix Kjellberg, born in Gothenburg in 1989, built PewDiePie on horror-game Let's Plays such as Amnesia, passed 100 million subscribers in August 2019 and moved to Japan in 2022.
Q 19What was PewDiePie's October 2018 diss track aimed at the Indian label overtaking him called?
Bitch Lasagna
'Bitch Lasagna', released 5 October 2018, mocked the label during the subscriber race; 'Congratulations', with Roomie and Boyinaband, followed in March 2019 when the label passed him.
Q 20YouTube Rewind 2018 overtook which music video as the most-disliked video on the site?
Justin Bieber's 'Baby'
Justin Bieber's 'Baby' had long been the most-disliked video; YouTube Rewind 2018 passed it on 13 December 2018, a week after release, and went past 10 million dislikes that month.
The Red Diamond Creator Award marks 100,000,000 subscribers, ten times the Diamond award's 10 million; the first one was presented in May 2019.
Q 24YouTube Shorts launched as a beta in September 2020 in which country, soon after it banned TikTok?
India
YouTube Shorts began as a beta in India on 14 September 2020, less than three months after the Indian government banned TikTok, and rolled out worldwide in July 2021.
Q 25In September 2024, YouTube announced that Shorts could be up to how long?
3 minutes
From 15 October 2024 Shorts could run up to 3 minutes, triple the previous 60-second limit, with any square or vertical upload of that length treated as a Short.
Q 26YouTube Premium was first unveiled in November 2014 under what name?
Music Key
Music Key launched in beta in November 2014 as an ad-free music subscription bundled with Google Play Music All Access; it was folded into a broader paid tier the next year and renamed Premium in 2018.
Q 27YouTube Kids, the child-focused app, was first released as an Android and iOS app in which year?
2015
YouTube Kids launched on 23 February 2015 in the United States for Android and iOS, with a simplified interface, parental controls and curated channels.
Q 28The 2017 advertiser exodus over ads beside extremist content became known by which nickname?
The Adpocalypse
Creators dubbed the 2017 advertiser pullout the Adpocalypse; YouTube responded by requiring channels to have 10,000 lifetime views to join its Partner Program, raised to 1,000 subscribers in 2018.
Q 29Which comedy duo of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla had YouTube's most-subscribed channel three times?
Smosh
Smosh's 2005 lip-sync of the Pokémon theme was briefly the most-viewed video on the whole site, and the channel held the most-subscribed title three times, most recently in 2013.
Q 30In 2023, Hecox and Padilla bought back a majority stake in their channel from which company?
Mythical
Mythical Entertainment, Rhett & Link's company, bought the channel out of Defy Media's collapse in 2019; Hecox and Padilla bought a majority stake back in June 2023, with Mythical keeping a minority.