London's Victoria & Albert Museum Acquires First YouTube Video: 'Me at the zoo'

London's Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) has announced the acquisition of the first video ever uploaded to the YouTube service for its collection. The iconic recording titled 'Me at the zoo' features one of the platform's co-founders, Jawed Karim, standing in front of the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. The video, lasting just 19 seconds, was published on 23 April 2005 at 20:27 and remains a symbol of the birth of the video-based social media era. This purchase is part of the museum's new strategy to document the evolution of contemporary digital design. In addition to the video file itself, the museum, in collaboration with YouTube, has reconstructed the original playback page (watch page) from December 2006. This is the oldest available version of the interface that could be reproduced using web archives. YouTube's current CEO, Neal Mohan, emphasized that this initiative allows the public to go back to the moment of birth of a global cultural phenomenon. The exhibits will be presented as part of the new 'Design 1900 – Now' section, which focuses on the most important objects shaping the face of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Victoria and Albert Museum, founded in 1852, is the world's largest institution dedicated to decorative art and design, with over 2.3 million objects in its collection. „By reconstructing the original 2005 page, we are not just showing a video – we are inviting the audience to travel back in time to the beginning of a global cultural phenomenon.” — Neal Mohan The institution emphasizes that preserving early forms of digital media faces numerous technological challenges. The choice of the 2006 page version was dictated by the fact that earlier graphic layouts were not fully preserved in available databases. The exhibition aims to make visitors aware of how drastically the user interface and the way we consume online content have changed. Museum representatives note that what seems trivial today – like a short video from the San Diego Zoo – after two decades has become the foundation of a new form of human communication and deserves protection as digital heritage. 19 seconds — duration of the oldest video shared on the service

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