Whether they're offering a revolutionary service or a unique experience, the cream of the digital crop have earned themselves millions of users and in some cases, billions of dollars.
And of course, this isn't something that happens without incident. From awkward early starts to hidden features, there's all sorts of factual gems to take away from the rise of these giants. So let's go through 15 of the most interesting facts about the internet's biggest sites.
To really get in on the fun, don't forget to SHARE these facts to your Facebook friends.
1. YouTube tried to get its first video makers through a Craigslist ad.
They needed some stock videos to show how the site worked and offered to pay "beautiful women" $100 to post 10 videos of themselves. But the ad came off a little creepier than intended, so nobody responded to it.
2. Yahoo tried to buy out Google for $3 billion.
Although Yahoo's CEO was advised to up the offer to at least $5 billion, his decision made sense at the time. Google was taking in "only" $240 million a year back then and Yahoo would have to spend its whole market value to get them.
But the heads of Google refused the buyout and would go on to dominate the search engine market.
But the heads of Google refused the buyout and would go on to dominate the search engine market.
3. Facebook's notifications icon changes depending on your location.
The little globe that marks your notifications is probably showing you a picture of the Americas right now. But an Italian user noticed that his globe was showing him Europe, Africa and Asia and decided to alert the world to this little fact.
4. A man accidentally owned Google for one minute.
Thanks to a glitch with the company's Google Domains service, ex-Google employee Sanmay Ved was able to purchase the search engine's domain for $12. Google gave Ved a reward for finding the glitch, but he chose to donate it charity.
5. Ellen's Oscars selfie is the world's most retweeted Tweet.
The selfie's runner-up that year received about 600,000 retweets, but Ellen's tweet was retweeted 3.3 million times.
6. You can add an audio post to Tumblr by calling a toll-free number.
First you go into your account settings and set your phone up to your Tumblr blog. Then you call 1-866-584-6757 and leave a message. Within seconds of hanging up, the message will be posted for all of your followers to hear.
7. We finally learned the identity of Facebook's first "face."
Facebook's first logo was designed by a classmate of Mark Zuckerberg's and featured Al Pacino's face covered in ones and zeros.
8. The "I'm feeling lucky" button is rarely used.
So why is it still on Google's home page? It's because we're used to seeing it, so it remains as a kind of "comfort button."
9. You can blur your face on your YouTube videos.
If you'd like to remain anonymous, it's as easy as going into the visual enhancement tool, clicking on "additional features" and checking "apply" next to the "blur all faces" tab. And yes, the only catch is that you will blur every face in your video by doing this.
10. Sweden lets a new citizen run its Twitter account every week.
The Swedish government has been running this experiment to create the "world's most democratic Twitter account" for the last three years. Stephen Colbert campaigned for permission to curate the account, but was refused.
11. Iceland tried to reform its constitution with Facebook.
The constitution was rewritten by a council of 25 people, but the document was based on input from citizen messages on Facebook. It was a nice idea, but ended up stalling in parliament.
12. Google was originally called BackRub.
After the site got too big for Stanford's servers, they changed the name. They wanted to call it googol, as in a one with 100 zeroes in front of it, but it was misspelled as "Google" and the name stuck.
13. The longest video on YouTube is over 596 hours long.
Consisting of only shifting gray tones, the video is unfortunately not that exciting.
14. Instagram had only 13 employees when it was purchased by Facebook.
Yet somehow, those 13 people were able to manage 30 million user accounts before they were bought out for $1 billion by the social media giant.
15. You can change your language to pirate on Facebook.
The option was introduced on International Talk Like A Pirate Day eight years ago, but you can access it any time from your language settings.
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