---
title: "Which came first, Harry Potter or YouTube?"
description: "Harry Potter vs YouTube: Harry Potter came first, by 8 years — 1997 against 2005. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/harry-potter-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Harry Potter or YouTube?

**Which came first, Harry Potter or YouTube?: Harry Potter**

1997 — 8 years before YouTube

Harry Potter came first, by 8 years. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.

## Side by side

|  | Harry Potter | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1997 | 2005 |
| Date | 1997-06-26 | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## Harry Potter

Bloomsbury published the first book in June 1997 with a print run of 500 copies, most of which went to libraries, after twelve other publishers had rejected the manuscript. The company's chairman gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter, who demanded the rest. It came out the same year as Netflix was founded and a year before Google.

## YouTube

The youtube.com domain was registered on Valentine's Day 2005, the first video — "Me at the zoo", 19 seconds of a co-founder at San Diego Zoo — was uploaded on 23 April, and the site opened publicly in the winter. Google bought it in November 2006 for $1.65 billion, about twenty months after the domain was registered. It is younger than Facebook by a year and older than Twitter by one.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Harry Potter or YouTube?

Harry Potter, by 8 years — 1997 against 2005.

### When did Harry Potter start?

1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.

### When did YouTube start?

2005. The domain was registered; the first video followed in April.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]