Online video streaming platform YouTube has launched a new shopping affiliate program in India. Through this, creators can directly link to other e-commerce websites including Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra in their videos, shorts and live streams, through which they get a chance to earn commission. The purpose of the affiliate program is to provide creators with another source of income along with traditional ad revenue, YouTube Premium and brand collaborations. Along with this, brands can easily reach their viewers by working with creators. Creators can access this program through YouTube Studio. Eligible creators can access the shopping affiliate program through YouTube Studio, which allows tagging products in all content formats including videos, shorts and live streams. Viewers can see the tagged product and through it can reach the e-commerce website and purchase that product. A new option for product discovery Travis Cates, general manager and vice president of shopping at YouTube, said – In 2023 alone, more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos have been watched on YouTube, which shows the global success of YouTube Shopping, the power of connecting creators, viewers and brands in a new way. He said that this new step of YouTube gives a new option for product discovery, which will strengthen the connection of creators and viewers through personalized shopping. How did YouTube start? In 2004, three friends Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Javed Karim, who had worked in the online payment system – Paypal (American multinational financial technology company), met at a dinner party in San Francisco. The three planned to start an online dating service. In 2005, on Valentine’s Day, on February 14, the domain Youtube.com was launched. Its first office was built in a garage. When the dating service failed, it became a video streaming platform, time passed but no video was uploaded in it. After the idea failed, Javed Karim, one of the three founders, uploaded the first video on 23 April 2005. The title of this video was ‘Me at the Zoo’. In this 19-second video, Javed Karim himself was seen talking about elephants in San Diego Zoo. By September 2005, YouTube’s first video had received more than 10 lakh views. Today that video has 26 crore views and 1.3 crore likes. Javed had created the channel for trial, in which Me at the Zoo is the only video uploaded in 18 years. It was from here that YouTube became a video platform from a dating site. It became the fastest growing site in a year. Seeing the initial growth, Paypal’s CFO Roelof Botha also invested money in it and YouTube started getting investors continuously. By May 2005, just a month after its launch, more than 30 thousand users started coming to Youtube.com every day, in just 6 months this number reached 20 lakh users. YouTube was the fastest growing site in 2006.
