SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — YouTube has evolved from a dinner party lark 20 years ago into a modern lifestyle staple poised to overtake United States (US) cable television in paid viewership.

PayPal colleagues Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim conceived YouTube in 2005, reportedly during a dinner party. The domain YouTube.com launched on Valentine’s Day that year.

Video uploading capabilities were added on April 23, when Karim posted the first video, titled “Me at the Zoo”. The 19-second clip showing Karim at the San Diego Zoo’s elephant exhibit has garnered 348 million views.

Over the next 20 years, the site has expanded beyond what was imagined possible back in 2005.

“YouTube was started by tech bros who wanted a video hosting service to watch reruns of Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ during the Super Bowl,” said eMarketer analyst Ross Benes.

“Now, it’s the world’s largest digital video service in terms of time spent and ad revenue — it’s an utter behemoth.”

YouTube reached more than 2.5 billion viewers globally last year, with its music and premium tier subscribers hitting 100 million, according to market tracker Statista.

Users worldwide watch more than a billion hours of YouTube content daily on television sets alone, Google reported.

“If you go back 20 years, it would have seemed laughable that this website with kids making parody videos would become a threat to Disney, ABC, and CBS,” Benes said.

“That’s what they were able to accomplish.”