Original subtitles

NARRATOR: There's a virus loose on planet Earth.

It's infecting hundreds of millions of adults and children

every day on every continent.

Each one of us is a potential carrier.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Ow, Charlie! Ow!

NARRATOR: And the means of transmission couldn't be simpler

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Charlie that really hurt.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Welcome to Planet YouTube,

an unrecognizable world in which your home movie is bigger

than a Hollywood blockbuster.

DAVID: Ah!

JAMES KIRKHAM: YouTube has been part of a new world order.

It has shifted culture.

NARRATOR: And backyard science experiments can go global.

FRITZ GROBE: Oh, this is awesome.

NARRATOR: A world where anyone can be a superstar.

SCOOTER BRAUN: He was the first true social media

worldwide phenomenon.

NARRATOR: Where presidents are elected.

BARACK OBAMA: Yes we can.

JOE ROSPARS: YouTube allowed us to elect an outsider

as President of the United States.

NARRATOR: And dictators deposed with the click of a mouse.

PETER ERB: It's anonymous, so it's dangerous.

NARRATOR: And the power of the viral.

PSY: Oppa Gangnam style.

NARRATOR: Is unstoppable.

PSY: I was like, Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

NARRATOR: Over the next hour,

we'll get to the bottom of the epidemic,

tracking down the unlikely pioneers and accidental

celebrities who, in just ten years,

have brought world culture to its knees.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Deep in the bowels of a high security complex,

a secret vault contains billions of YouTube uploads.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

It's the viral mother lode.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

In one year YouTube amassed over a trillion views.

SCOOTER BRAUN: The amount of video that gets uploaded

every single day, it's pretty wild.

NARRATOR: We upload three hundred hours of video

every single minute.

TODD WASSERMAN: If it's not on YouTube,

the video doesn't exist.

NARRATOR: All the uploads in a single day,

would take nearly fifty years to watch.

TOM STANDAGE: The strangest things end up being seen by

millions of people and becoming actually part of the culture.

NARRATOR: Where did this virus emerge?

In a humble garage in Silicon Valley,

where three ex-PayPal employees, Chad Hurley,

Steve Chen and Jawed Karim all in their 20s

were kicking around ideas for a new business.

CHAD HURLEY: So this is by, like, a user.

This is a...

NARRATOR: What they came up with was simple

make it easy to share personal videos with friends.

STEVE CHEN: May of 2005, when we launched the site,

we weren't really sure if this was going to work.

The lofty goals back then was just to try to create a solution

to more of a technical problem about how to make it possible

to share videos online.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: But months in, the site has zero traffic,

so they repositioned themselves as a dating site,

taking out ads on Craigslist offering young women 20 dollars

to upload a video bio.

JAWED KARIM: Alright so here we are on (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

NARRATOR: Jawed shot 19 seconds of himself at the San Diego Zoo.

It's YouTube's first ever video.

JAWED KARIM: The cool thing about these guys is that

they have really, really, really long, trunks.

STEVE CHEN: And that was an utter failure.

I mean, I don't think anybody ever wanted it.

It was just such a creepy experience to have to upload

a video bio of yourself and upload it for the world to see.

NARRATOR: When their dating idea collapsed,

the three guys went back to the drawing board.

They tweaked the technology so that anyone could upload

or share a video with just one click.

It was YouTube's Big Bang moment.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Almost overnight, people started to broadcast themselves

to the world.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

STEVE CHEN: Yeah, we never thought that people were just

gonna be uploading content and just say, Here, the world,

please come watch my content.

JASON TANZ: If you see something and you're amazed

or you're touched or you start crying,

you wanna share that experience with somebody else.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

So suddenly you have all of this traffic of these people

trying to share these emotional moments with one another

and you have these viral sensations.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

MAN: Oh my God, it's a double rainbow all the way across

the sky.

GIRL: Don't talk back to Darth Vader. He'll get ya.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PROF. JONAH BERGER: I think it really is that pure authenticity

that drove sharing of the early content.

MAN: Kind of felt good, didn't it?

DAVID: Ah.

Is this real life?

MAN: Yeah, this is real life.

DAVID: Ah!

PROF. JONAH BERGER: Really seemed like it captured

a true moment, a true experience that people wanted

to share with others.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Oooh! Ouch.

NARRATOR: They were all building up to this.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Ow! Ow, Charlie. Ow!

NARRATOR: Charlie Bit My Finger is one of the biggest viral

videos in history.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Charlie that really hurt.

NARRATOR: More people watched Charlie bit my Finger

than tuned in to watch the moon landings.

Not bad for a video that was never supposed to be posted

on YouTube in the first place.

HOWARD DAVIES-CARR: I video when Charlie bites Harry's finger,

which I found quite funny, but probably a few weeks later

I came back, looked at it and thought, Oh,

that's probably worth sharing with the boys' godfather

in America.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Charlie that really hurt.

NARRATOR: Now, a world exclusive.

We can reveal the untold story behind the sweetest domestic

assault in history.

HOWARD DAVIES-CARR: On the day of the video, what I was doing,

again, is I was just videoing the boys out in the garden,

and there is a moment Charlie gets in the car and Harry drives

him into bushes and leaves him there,

which I thought at the time was really quite a funny little,

little clip. But when Charlie then bites Harry,

it sort of feels a little bit like just desserts because

he's got him back.

(GIGGLES)

NARRATOR: He posted it on YouTube,

expecting feedback from one person.

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Charlie bit me.

NARRATOR: Instead, within ten months it had been viewed

eleven and a half million times.

Everyone wants to know what is his secret.

HOWARD DAVIES-CARR: I think that is the beauty of a viral video,

there is no secret.

If there was a secret, I would have made a second, wouldn't I?

NARRATOR: But some academics who've studied virals disagree.

PROF. JONAH BERGER: Some people think that viral's just random,

luck, chance that it's like bottling lightening.

But it's not.

There's a science behind it.

NARRATOR: A science that was about to be exploited.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Even before Charlie Bit My Finger had entered the culture,

a video emerged of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

What he does next is almost unbelievable.

JASON TANZ: So the Ronaldinho video was one of YouTube's

first big sensations,

in part because it was capturing something that seemed

so super human, this great soccer player kicking

the ball off the cross beam of the goal four times in a row.

NARRATOR: The buzz wasn't about Ronaldinho's ball skills,

but whether or not the video was real.

JASON TANZ: There is something a little bit suspicious

about the golden box with the Nikes in them that he opens,

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

And the way that it pulls back so you can't really see

the detail so well at the most important moments.

There was a lot of speculation over whether it was real or fake

and debates that went on online.

NARRATOR: The clip is the first to reach a million hits

before the creators are soon exposed as Nike.

TOM STANDAGE: And that made lightbulbs come on all over

the place, that actually there was potential in YouTube

and online video as an advertising medium.

NARRATOR: Nike had subverted the home video viral

and commercialized it.

The next mutation would be even more surprising.

BREE: Well, I guess my video blog is about me.

My name is Bree, I'm 16. Ummm.

I don't really wanna tell you where I live because you could,

like, stalk me.

NARRATOR: On June 16th 2006, a video appears on YouTube

with the tagline Lonelygirl15.

Within three months, the teenage star would be the subject

of a media frenzy, bringing YouTube to mass attention.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

JASON TANZ: Lonelygirl15 was this cute,

really candid teenager.

She was sort of fighting with her parents a lot

and she was arguing with her boyfriend

and if you wrote an email to her,

she would respond to you and say, Thanks for the idea,

you know, here's another thought,

so people formed this really personal connection to her.

NARRATOR: Within three months, over half a million viewers

are tuning in for Lonelygirl15's updates.

The more eagle-eyed of them began to notice that

Bree's bedroom blog is just...

JASON TANZ: It was just a little too neat,

you know, the edits were a little bit too good,

the music was synced up too well.

One fan went through and noted all of the items in her bedroom

were from Target, so there was some conjecture that maybe

this was some sort of viral marketing.

NARRATOR: Fans demand answers from Bree.

When she doesn't reply, an LA Times reporter smells a scoop.

RICHARD RUSHFIELD: It was a great mystery,

this girl hiding in plain sight, as it were.

NARRATOR: He sets off to learn the true identity of Lonelygirl

But no one was quite expecting what he would uncover.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

RICHARD RUSHFIELD: And that's when we knew we had her.

NARRATOR: In the summer of 2006, the viral video went mainstream

as an online mystery turned into a real world manhunt.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

The race was on to track down the vlogger behind the latest

YouTube sensation, Lonelygirl15.

BREE: Ok, so I'm kind of in a blue mood again today.

JASON TANZ: This was, like, huge national news.

She wouldn't say where she lived,

so there was this kind of treasure hunt kind of aspect

to it.

BREE: I've been calling my parents all day.

NARRATOR: Gradually the videos began to take the form

of a thriller, with a plot almost as intriguing

as Lonelygirl herself.

RICHARD RUSHFIELD: It was a great mystery.

No-one knew who she was and no-one could find her.

Let's find who this girl is.

BREE: What are they doing?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

RICHARD RUSHFIELD: There was a botanist who analyzed the flora

and the fauna in the video and said it could only appear

in this one little portion of Northern California.

NARRATOR: But where?

After ten fruitless weeks, the reporter and colleagues launched

an audacious sting to out Lonelygirl15

using an email tracker.

RICHARD RUSHFIELD: In those, days when you sent a message

through MySpace, you could implant a tracking code

that allowed you to see where that message had been opened.

We set up a lot of fake accounts pretending to be fans

of Lonelygirl and sent messages to her MySpace page

and it was opened in a server belonging

to the Creative Artists' Agency,

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

and that's when we knew we had her.

NARRATOR: The Creative Artists' Agency represents actors,

writers and directors.

When Richard confronts them with the evidence,

the real Bree comes forward.

19 year old actress, Jessica Rose.

BROADCASTER: Millions believed in her, but it was all an act.

Now for the first time, meet the girl behind Lonelygirl

and the men who pulled the strings.

MILES BECKETT: So the idea was we're gonna build

a huge audience, we're gonna make them committed

and passionate about this character and the storyline.

DIRECTOR: Cut.

MILES BECKETT: she's gonna run away from home

and then we're gonna release a DVD

that will be an independent feature film

about the story of a group of fans on YouTube

trying to find this girl who's vanished.

NARRATOR: The movie never happened,

but Lonelygirl continued online for two years.

BREE: I now see the world from a completely different point

of view from when I was four.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: The YouTube viral video was evolving at faster

and faster rates.

But some videos were more infectious than others,

inspiring viewers not just to watch,

but to make a version of their own.

One of the first videos to have this effect was created

by an unlikely pair of backyard chemists.

FRITZ GROBE: My name is Fritz and I had 20 years working

as a professional juggler.

STEPHEN VOLTZ: My name's Steven and I had 20 years

as a trial lawyer,

but a friend of ours told us about this

Coke and Mentos experiment.

He asked me, have you ever heard about this crazy thing?

You drop Mentos into the Diet Coke and something happens.

FRITZ GROBE: And so Stephen came to visit me and said,

we gotta try this.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

So we went out into the backyard, like a lot of people,

dropped a handful of Mentos into a bottle of Coke.

Oh, this is awesome.

STEPHEN VOLTZ: That's how it started.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: On June 3 2006, Stephen and Fritz posted

their own Coke and Mentos display online,

an epic 101 bottle tribute to the Bellagio fountain

in Las Vegas.

FRITZ GROBE: When we first put our video online,

it was a Saturday morning in June.

We told exactly one person.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

STEPHEN VOLTZ: The next day we'd 14,000 views

and by next afternoon had hundreds of thousands.

FRITZ GROBE: All from telling, FRITZ/STEPHEN: One person.

NARRATOR: By the end of 2006, their Coke and Mentos spectacle

had turned into a YouTube mega viral with 12.5 million views.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

And something about it made people want to make Coke Mentos

videos of their own.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

TOM STANDAGE: Diet Coke and Mentos, what a fantastic meme.

MAN: I can put the Mentos in your mouth,

TOM STANDAGE: I've done it myself,

I've made my own film of it, I've put it on YouTube, in fact.

It's great, it works on so many levels.

On the one hand, it's sort of a science experiment

you see it and you go, really? Does that really work?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

MAN: Dear God.

Ughhh... All right.

I think this is not going so well.

NARRATOR: Stephen and Fritz have their own theory

for its viral success.

FRITZ GROBE: Everyone's favorite moment on our video,

they always say it's, that's that moment of humanity

that you can really connect with.

That's what helps make it extra contagious.

NARRATOR: The contagion boosted global sales of Diet Coke

by five per cent; Mentos, 15 per cent.

Silicon Valley's giants took notice of YouTube's

growing power.

Meanwhile the explosion of video content meant that YouTube's

servers were sent into virtual meltdown.

STEVE CHEN: And there were times where we were hours away

from running out of hard drive space,

storage space and we just overall,

we couldn't take anymore videos.

There was, like, four hours left.

I didn't think it was going to blow up that quickly.

I mean, it was a good thing, but it was my credit card

that was getting blown up as well.

NARRATOR: YouTube needed a bigger home, fast.

NEWS ANCHOR: YouTube, a website that didn't even exist

two years ago,

was purchased today by Google for 1.65 billion dollars.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

[LAUGHING]

MAN: I don't know.

TOM STANDAGE: The acquisition of YouTube by Google was one of

the best deals in the history of the world.

The estimated value of YouTube now is something like

70 or 80 billion.

[LAUGHING]

STEVE CHEN/CHAD EVANS: The king of servers and the king of video

have gotten together. We're gonna have it our way.

NARRATOR: YouTube now had the resources of a major player.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

The viral video was about to take off in a whole new way.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

SCOOTER BRAUN: I was looking for the right person

who could do it.

I was looking for that star who was truly a star.

NARRATOR: Scooter Braun was an ambitious music exec

who recognized YouTube's potential early on.

JUSTIN BIEBER: ♪ I will sing my song 'til I go mad, ♪

♪ you're my girl. ♪

♪ I'm gonna tell it to the whole wide world. ♪

NARRATOR: On YouTube, Scooter found a 13 year old Canadian kid

who'd posted a video of himself performing in a talent contest.

He first tried to launch him with the record labels.

SCOOTER BRAUN: Everyone said no.

Everyone said no because they said it was kids on YouTube,

you can't monetize this, so the only way to make people

understand was to not care about the gatekeepers any more,

not care about the suits and care about the people.

JUSTIN BIEBER: ♪ This is what I found. Nobody wants to be, ♪

NARRATOR: So Scooter turned back to YouTube

and devised strategies for building Bieber

a cult following.

JUSTIN BIEBER: You gonna sing with me or what?

SCOOTER BRAUN: One of the tricks that I used,

that I've actually never talked about in any interview,

is that I never let him introduce himself.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

The reason I did that is because when you watch a video

when someone doesn't introduce themselves

and the video's extraordinary,

you feel like you're getting to see something

you're not supposed to see, it's more exciting,

and that was one of the tricks that I felt worked for us

and made those views even bigger and bigger.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Then the time came to test Bieber's online popularity

in the real world.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Neither Scooter nor the music industry predicted

how it was about to change everything.

SCOOTER BRAUN: I announced with social media that he was going

to do an acoustic performance and sign autographs

in front of the Universal Music building in London.

JUSTIN BIEBER: If you guys don't wanna stop me,

you have to sing along (UNINTELLIGIBLE) my time.

SCOOTER BRAUN: He played his guitar and the whole crowd

was singing all the words at one time.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

JUSTIN BIEBER/CROWD MEMBERS: ♪ My one love, my one heart, ♪

SCOOTER BRAUN: Everyone at the label was looking out

of their widows just in complete shock because no-one had ever

pulled a crowd that big.

He didn't even have a song out there,

and that's when I knew that it was working,

JUSTIN BIEBER: It was crazy.

There's a lot of girls, as you can see.

SCOOTER BRAUN: It's because of YouTube.

MAN: Oh, here we go.

Justin Bieber was the thesis statement of taking a person

from YouTube and using YouTube as a platform

and building it into a worldwide star.

He was the first true social media worldwide phenomenon

and YouTube was the platform I chose to make that happen.

YouTube has completely changed the music industry

on how we discover and how we promote things.

If you go to a record label now and you say,

Hey I have this new artist, they say, Well,

can you send me a YouTube, you know, clip?

And how many views does it have?

Gatekeepers are meaning less and less and less

and the people mean more and more and more and that,

it's democracy.

NARRATOR: Scooter had created YouTube's first ever

global superstar,

but no-one could have seen the epidemic heading our way.

PSY: My biggest regret of entire my life was making

that horse dance move.

PSY: Oppa Gangnam Style.

JUSTIN BIEBER: ♪ This is what I found. Nobody ever, ♪

NARRATOR: Within years of its launch,

YouTube made it possible to almost instantly transform

budding pop stars into global celebrities.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

The next superstar could be anyone and, as it turns out,

from anywhere.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PSY: ♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Psy was a South Korean pop star barely known outside

of his country, but with over 10 hit singles to his name.

PSY: My previous songs and previous dance moves

and previous video, all of them were, like, similar.

PSY: ♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Then, in 2012, he wrote a song poking fun

at his swanky neighborhood,

Gangnam,

and threw his energy into creating a new dance move.

PSY: Gangnam is a name of district in Korea.

You might think the district as some sort of Beverly Hills type,

hot end, wealthy area.

I have my own choreograph teams in Korea and we were focused

on making a new move for the new song.

We literally tried everything on the universe,

not just horse but every animal, every creatures on the universe.

PSY: ♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: PSY finally settled on an equine dance and made a video

intended only for Korean broadcast.

PSY: I was not friendly with internet things at all,

so I didn't do Twitter and I didn't do Facebook

and I honestly didn't know that much about

YouTube before Gangnam Style.

NARRATOR: But one of his team persuaded him to post

the new video onto YouTube.

Two weeks later, he gets a call from a major player

in the music business.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

SCOOTER BRAUN: My buddy sent me a video that had 100,000

views out of Korea and I said, I can make this huge.

He goes, you want him to do it in English?

I said, No, I want him to keep it in Korean,

and two weeks later I'm talking with his translator

explaining that I wanna keep it in Korean.

PSY, he looks at me, looks at his translator,

looks at me again and goes, If you come drinking with me

in Korea Town tonight, I'll do this deal,

and I looked at him and I said, You speak English?

And he goes, I went to Berkeley.

SCOOTER BRAUN: To Psy.

To Korea.

To breaking down barriers. To the future.

PSY: Thanks a lot.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Scooter and his team used their network

to help spread Gangnam Style fever in the West.

[CLAPPING]

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PSY: A lot of worldwide celebrities started to tweet

my video - Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, Tom Cruise.

People told me, like, your song became, like,

trending off the Twitter, and I was like, Trending?

What is trending? (LAUGHS)

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PSY: There were a lot of people eager to learn the dance moves.

NARRATOR: It seemed no one was immune

from the Gangnam infection,

not even the Secretary General of the United Nations.

PSY: He became the second famous Korean in the universe

right now.

NARRATOR: And it triggered countless copycats.

PROF. JONAH BERGER: I think it was really

a cultural phenomenon.

What he was doing was crazy, it was surprising,

and so they shared it with other people 'cause

they couldn't believe what was happening.

PSY: Like, once it exploded, you know, like, huge, I was, like,

surprised literally every day and every moment, like, Wow,

wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

BRENDAN GAHAN: Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.

A few people share it and then they see their friends share it

and they don't wanna be left out, so next thing you know,

they start sharing it and it becomes this snowball.

KEVIN ALLOCCA: We watched as this video spread from Korea

to the United States to South America to Europe.

NARRATOR: As Gangnam style continues to rack up

one million views per day,

will Psy always be living in its shadow?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PSY: My biggest regret of entire my life

was making that horse dance move, you know?

I cannot top it.

I cannot top it, you know?

SCOOTER BRAUN: We came up with a game plan and that video now

is the most watched video in the history of the internet.

NARRATOR: Gangnam Style has now been watched 2.3 billion times.

That's the equivalent of everyone in China,

Europe and America combined.

TODD WASSERMAN: It's incredible.

It's like being struck by lightning,

something that happened and I don't think will ever happen

again on that scale.

PSY: ♪ Korean what I'm saying ♪

SCOOTER BRAUN: He gave a little bit of happiness to everyone

and music has always done that.

The difference is now a slightly overweight - sorry, Psy

man from Korea can make a dance and a song

and an incredible piece of content with that video,

put it online and the entire world can enjoy it

within seconds.

That was never possible before.

NARRATOR: Gangnam Style showed that YouTube now reached

a global population like nothing else.

Soon, it wasn't only pop stars harnessing their power.

BARACK OBAMA: Yes we can. [CROWD CHEERING]

Yes we can.

NARRATOR: And for better or worse,

YouTube became the propaganda tool of our time.

In 2008, one visionary recognized the internet's

ability to reach a new audience.

But did YouTube help elect an outsider

as President of the United States?

In 2007, Barack Obama was up against the well-financed

Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential

nomination.

JOE ROSPARS: Hilary Clinton had most of the party establishment

behind her and so the only path for Obama was to build a big

national grassroots movement from scratch.

NARRATOR: Joe Rospars was a new breed of strategist

employed to head up Obama's social media campaign,

starting with Obama's own website.

BARACK OBAMA: I hope that you use this website as a tool

to organize your friends, your neighbors and your networks.

We can do a different kind of campaign.

Here's the thing, it can only happen if you get involved.

JOE ROSPARS: We wanted them to forward along our content

from YouTube, we wanted them to make phone calls from home,

we wanted them to knock on doors,

we wanted them to chip in five and ten dollars here and there.

That was the nature of the grassroots activity.

CROWD (CHANTING): Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama.

NARRATOR: A video of one of his speeches posted on YouTube

went viral and so too... BARACK OBAMA: Thank you!

NARRATOR: ...did his campaign. BARACK OBAMA: Yes we can.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

JOE ROSPARS: The Yes We Can video actually went viral

over the weekend.

We didn't make the video.

That was something that supporters made and then

posted to YouTube which ultimately allowed it to spread.

BARACK OBAMA: We will begin the next great chapter

in the American story with three words that will ring,

JASON TANZ: If you hit the right emotional notes,

this stuff can go everywhere.

You're not dependent upon the media

to define your message for you.

NARRATOR: But just as YouTube was inching Obama ever closer

to the White House, his rivals hit back,

questioning Obama's track record on the subject

of race politics...

threatening to split his support in half.

JASON TANZ: This was kind of a cliff hanger moment

for the election, you know,

was this going to sink this candidate?

How would he respond?

And there was a lot of build up to the speech.

BARACK OBAMA: Against all predictions to the contrary,

we saw how hungry the American people were for this message

of unity.

Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through

a purely racial lens...

NARRATOR: Obama's race speech was hailed as a game changer.

Uploaded onto YouTube, it snowballed,

getting 1.6 million views in 48 hours.

JASON TANZ: He really did knock it out of the park.

Even his critics sort of admitted this.

NARRATOR: Fueled by this success,

Obama's team posted over 2,000 YouTube clips during his march

to the White House.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

It raised Obama's profile across the nation.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

OBAMA GIRL: Hey, B, it's me,

NARRATOR: At the same time, Obama fans were getting in

on the act, posting their own campaign messages online.

OBAMA GIRL: ♪ 'Cause I got a crush on Obama, ♪

♪ I cannot wait 'til 2008 (Barack Obama), ♪

NARRATOR: Obama Girl was a huge viral video of the time,

scoring over 26 million hits.

OBAMA GIRL: ♪ Or Hillary in debate, won't you big up your. ♪

BARACK OBAMA: I went on YouTube once,

I don't go real often, just to see what was being

sort of generated under my name.

Some of them were pretty creative and there's some

cartoon and, WOMAN: Yeah. Ears.

BARACK OBAMA: You know, the ears are all huge.

JOE ROSPARS: People are hungry for content that's outside of

the traditional press, which allowed us to run a grassroots

campaign to elect an outsider as President of the United States.

MAN: And it's my pleasure to welcome you,

NARRATOR: After Obama became President,

he continued to use the platform to connect directly

with the nation. BARACK OBAMA: Thanks.

MAN: We've invited three top YouTube creators here

to the White House today

we're in the East Room and they have set up

their own YouTube sets right here in the White House.

BARACK OBAMA: Great to see you, Hank.

HANK: President Obama.

BARACK OBAMA: Hey, Gozelle. GOZELLE: Hello.

BARACK OBAMA: How are you? GOZELLE: Good. How are you?

BARACK OBAMA: Good to see you. GOZELLE: Great to meet you.

BARACK OBAMA: Thank you.

HANK: I don't really feel like I'm having you,

this is your house. BARACK OBAMA: I know. Well,

it's the people's house.

This is a...

NARRATOR: Obama's YouTube campaign proved once and for all

that anyone could get their message to the world.

PROF. JONAH BERGER: The value of a channel like YouTube is

it allows for the democratization of content.

Before, only the media outlets could decide what news we saw.

GOZELLE: Can you take a selfie with me?

PROF. JONAH BERGER: But now, each one of us can create news.

GOZELLE: All right!

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: In 2007, YouTube underwent a seismic change

MAN: No!

NARRATOR: The modern smartphone hit the mass market

and this technological evolution created a new way

of capturing and sharing news, called citizen journalism.

MAN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) here.

This is not a war.

We want our rights.

PROF. JONAH BERGER: One individual that shoots a video

on their camera phone, thousands of people can view it

in a few minutes

and it can be shared to thousands more in the next hour.

PROF. RAMESH SRINIVASAN: Anybody with a mobile phone and access

to the internet can become a journalist with the advent

of YouTube.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

JASON TANZ: Having YouTube clips of disasters

as they're happening lends them this intimacy and this reality,

that otherwise it would feel fairly abstract.

It's very hard not to be touched and not to care.

NEPALESE EARTHQUAKE: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: In the hands of citizen journalists,

the power of the viral video can turn personal stories

into global stories.

PROF. RAMESH SRINIVASAN: YouTube allowed people all over

the world to actually create their mechanisms

of sharing their own stories,

so you can take a story that might be very personal

all of a sudden, using virality, make it something

that has a level of global sympathy.

PEOPLE: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: In June 2009, during protests in Tehran,

26-year-old Neda Agha Soltan was shot in the street.

PEOPLE: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: These images from Iran went viral on YouTube

and shocked the world.

PROF. RAMESH SRINIVASAN: It wasn't just the fact that

she was brutally killed, it was the fact that a video in very,

very visceral and graphic detail showing her killing actually

was being captured at that very moment and they used YouTube

to make that story much more global.

MAN: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: Viral videos began to drive social change.

MAN: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: Change that was spreading across the Middle East

in what became known as the Arab Spring.

JASON TANZ: Abuse can't happen in secret any more.

Whether its autocratic governments in the Middle East,

whether it's police abuse here in the United States,

in the era of YouTube and Smartphones,

everybody is a potential journalist.

You can't kick every potential journalist out of the country

because you'd have to kick everybody out of the country.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

PROF. RAMESH SRINIVASAN: Every form of social change has always

had a media component to it.

The fundamental media propaganda tool of our time today

is YouTube.

So that doesn't mean that it's a truth-telling,

storytelling mechanism.

It means it's a tool, like any other,

that can be used by different parties for different types

of political and social aims.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: YouTube has helped create presidents,

topple regimes,

PROTESTORS: (FOREIGN DIALOGUE).

NARRATOR: and create worldwide phenomena.

Now things have come full circle as ordinary people would cash in

big on YouTube fever.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Today, YouTube has given birth to a new generation of media

creators - and their fan base is huge.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

SUSAN WOJCICKI: Variety just did a study among teenagers

and asked them who are their top stars,

and the top five stars were all YouTubers.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: YouTubers are ordinary people creating content

for their own channels.

TODD WASSERMAN: They're trying to make YouTube

more like a TV network

and they're promoting their stars with ad campaigns,

which is something that you only have seen media properties

do before.

WOMAN: Yeah. Ah!

KEVIN ALLOCCA: When we think about the early days of YouTube,

we think about the individual viral video,

the person who captured that one moment and shared it

with the world.

I think one thing that's changed dramatically is that more

and more people have been producing things regularly.

NARRATOR: These homemade YouTube channels are drawing

billions of views,

creating a new generation of bedroom millionaires.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

NARRATOR: Two of the most successful content creators

on YouTube started off

on the live comedy circuit, then created...

Epic Rap Battles of History.

NARRATOR: Epic Rap Battles pits two famous icons against

each other in a rapping competition.

PETER SHUKOFF: I stopped playing live concerts and started

performing live concerts in my bedroom for a camera.

It's still performing live, but you're through

a camera lens instead.

You can still say hi and thank you and see you next time,

but the people watching are just through their own computer.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: Yeah, you get clicks instead of claps.

PETER SHUKOFF: Yeah. That's nice.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: Thanks, brother.

You're pitiful lyrically, lucky for history you didn't write

the Art of Rapping.

NARRATOR: Their Epic Rap Battles are produced out of this

tiny studio in LA.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: I get these headaches

in the back of my neck.

I'm like, Why do I have these headaches and strains

in the back of my neck?

And then I look at the behind the scenes videos and it's me

like (MAKES NOISES) and I was like, Yeah that makes sense.

JOHN LENNON: ♪ Help, you're making my ears bleed, ♪

♪ you need a muzzle. ♪

♪ Why you pissed off all the time? ♪

♪ Didn't your mom give you a cuddle? ♪

NARRATOR: Their first featured

John Lennon versus Fox news anchor Bill O'Reilly.

JOHN LENNON: ♪ For an hour. ♪

♪ Every time I watch your show, all you do is scream at me, ♪

NARRATOR: The video had a budget of 50 dollars.

JOHN LENNON: ♪ I'm John Lennon, I'm a legend. ♪

♪ I can see through all your tricks. ♪

PETER SHUKOFF: I talked, you know,

through the lens to the audience that was watching my videos

on YouTube, there's was few thousand people,

and asked them for suggestions of who we should do

and they came back with John Lennon versus Bill O'Reilly.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: Mmm.

PETER SHUKOFF: And we both saw that and were like,

this is, yeah, this is funny.

BILL O'REILLY: ♪ Stop your presses, Lennon, ♪

♪ you call me Mr. Bill O'Reilly ♪

♪ When it comes to squashing Limeys, ♪

♪ I can recommend it highly. ♪

♪ You reek. ♪

♪ Between you and me, there's no comparison. ♪

LLOYD AHLQUIST: The John Lennon and Bill O'Reilly video got

about 150,000 views, which was enough to be like,

this is great.

We should do another one of these,

so we read through the suggestions and we saw

Darth Vader versus Adolf Hitler

and we both again knew, we were like,

oh, this is, that's funny.

For some reason, Hitler was super popular on the internet

right then.

PETER SHUKOFF: Huge on the internet then.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: And then that one went really big.

Back then, you could get on the front page of YouTube

and it was, like, a big deal.

PETER SHUKOFF: It meant a million extra views.

It could change your whole life.

NARRATOR: Soon, their witty and inventive clashes

would start drawing millions of viewers on release day.

Epic Rap Battles is now

one of the most successful channels on YouTube.

WOMAN: Ok, all right.

NARRATOR: So. What is the key to its success?

LLOYD AHLQUIST: I think that people like competition

and they like getting behind a side, you know?

So people. PETER SHUKOFF: Yeah.

LLOYD AHLQUIST: Like to root for their favorites;

and then I think a big thing about it was at the end of

the video, we asked who won

and who's next and people wanna participate.

Epic Rap Battles of History.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: With amateur channels like these now making millions,

YouTube is investing heavily by building its own studio

in LA and major channels creators get to use it for free.

YouTube has become the new Hollywood for the average Joe.

BRENDAN GAHAN: You look at the top 100 channels on YouTube,

there's not a single consumer packaged good

or power brand there.

JUSTINE EZARIK: Hey, guys, how's it going?

So I'm super excited to make this video for you today.

BRENDAN GAHAN: There's only a handful of media companies,

but it's really individuals that have been incredibly successful

on the platform.

NARRATOR: YouTube creators are a new kind of celebrity,

forging one on one relationships with their fans

through their computer screens.

LILLY SINGH: I think it's a feeling I never get used to.

Every single time I have a fan meet up,

I feel extremely overwhelmed.

It's like a very, you can't explain the feeling.

BRENDAN GAHAN: The individuals that have become incredibly

successful are those that have been able to cultivate

an audience.

JAMES KIRKHAM: A lot of what you can see which is successful on

YouTube is about humanity anyway,

it's about people and faces.

It might be making you laugh, it might be emotionally charged,

it might be very sad, it might be,

there's probably human storytelling at its heart.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: But what if the biggest stars on YouTube

aren't humans at all?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

By the time you've finished watching this programme,

over 18,000 hours of video will have been uploaded onto YouTube.

On Planet YouTube you decide what you share

and the content you post in the virtual world can have an impact

in the real world.

BARACK OBAMA: Yes we can.

CROWD (CHANTING): Obama. Obama.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: But did YouTube's founders have any idea

their little start-up would make such an impact?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

STEVE CHEN: It certainly has surpassed any goals

that we had set when we first started YouTube,

looking ten years back.

We never expected, I think, videos to reach

the hundred thousands, millions, billions of views.

NARRATOR: YouTube owes its success to its phenomenal

viewing figures,

but how much does Steve himself know

about what makes a clip go viral?

STEVE CHEN: Frequent videos that I put up always featured my cat.

(MEOW)

And it's not that my cat videos were of any particular interest,

other than it being the first cat video on YouTube.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: But what even Steve couldn't predict was that cats

would become the viral superstars of the internet.

PROF. JONAH BERGER: What makes the internet go round?

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Cats.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: There are more than two million cat videos

posted on YouTube.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

With over 24 billion views, cats are one of YouTube's most

popular genres.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

JASON TANZ: Cats are a little standoffish.

They don't beg for your attention,

they don't beg for anything, they could pretty much take you

or leave you, and there's something about that in an era

where everybody is clamoring for your attention and dying for you

to look at them and approve of them that's actually

very compelling.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: So who are some of YouTube's top feline stars?

If you ever hear a snarky reference to YouTube as

'cats playing pianos', chances are this is the cause.

Keyboard Cat's original video has been viewed over

40 million times.

But one cat has gone a step further and turned viral fame

into money.

Grumpy Cat, real name Tartar Sauce,

is now a bona fide celebrity worth millions,

with her own YouTube channel, book deals and merchandising.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

But, why cats?

TODD WASSERMAN: My theory with cats is that people started

to get this ability to make videos very easily,

so they're sitting around and looking around their house

and that's the only thing that's interesting.

Now why cats versus dogs? I don't know.

That's a debate for the ages.

NARRATOR: With even cat videos proving lucrative business,

it's no wonder people are keen to unlock the secrets

of the viral video.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

TOM STANDAGE: I think if you could put your finger

on what viral videos have in common,

then you'd make a fortune.

It's like playing you a whole load of pop songs and saying,

these have all been hits. What do they have in common?

You know, you can sometimes find some commonalities between them

but it really is trying to nail jelly to the wall.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Whatever the reason some of YouTubes' earliest stars

have had their lives transformed.

STEPHEN VOLTZ: Now we have Eepybird Studios and we make

viral videos for brands like Coke and Office Max and,

FRITZ GROBE: McDonald's. STEPHEN VOLTZ: McDonald's.

FRITZ GROBE: All kinds of things. It keeps going.

The madness continues.

STEPHEN VOLTZ: So these nozzles hold the Mentos

on top of the soda bottle.

NARRATOR: They even have a viral manifesto.

STEPHEN VOLTZ: There's certain characteristics

that make a video go viral.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

FRITZ GROBE: Don't waste our time,

make sure you get down to business right away.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

Be unforgettable, do something we've never seen before.

[APPLAUSES]

FRITZ GROBE: But really ultimately,

it's all about humanity.

[APPLAUSES]

CHARLIE DAVIES-CARR: (MAKES NOISES).

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Recognize these guys?

You should do.

♪ [MUSIC] ♪

NARRATOR: Harry and Charlie's video has now been viewed,

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: It is just less than a billion.

CHARLIE DAVIES-CARR: A billion? Oooh!

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Which is about a sixth

of the world's population.

Ow! Ouch, Charlie.

NARRATOR: And what does Charlie credit for its success?

HARRY DAVIES-CARR: Ah!

CHARLIE DAVIES-CARR: I think it's so popular for the laugh.

[GIGGLES]

PROF. JONAH BERGER: If I see something funny

and it makes me laugh, that's great.

But if I share with you and it also makes you laugh,

together we have that shared experience.

NARRATOR: The viral video has become a social phenomenon,

a contagion to which none of us has been immune.

SCOOTER BRAUN: YouTube, I realized,

was the same feeling of self-discovery for kids

that my dad had with vinyl and I had with mix tapes.

It was this feeling of, Oh, I saw it on YouTube first,

I have ownership in that.

NARRATOR: And with the power

to rewrite the rules of pop culture,

TOM STANDAGE: There were these gatekeeping

industries and they are no longer controlling

what comes out of your computer screen.

You get to decide.

PSY: My biggest wish?

Maybe I can make another viral video within 50 years.

(LAUGHS).