---
title: "Which came first, Mario or YouTube?"
description: "Mario vs YouTube: Mario came first, by 24 years — 1981 against 2005. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/super-mario-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Mario or YouTube?

**Which came first, Mario or YouTube?: Mario**

1981 — 24 years before YouTube

Mario came first, by 24 years. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

## Side by side

|  | Mario | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1981 | 2005 |
| Date | — | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## Mario

Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong in 1981, credited as Jumpman, four years before Super Mario Bros. of 1985 made him a household name. He wears a cap because animating hair at that resolution was impossible, and dungarees because they made his arm movements legible against his body — the design is entirely a consequence of an 16×16 pixel sprite.

## 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, Mario or YouTube?

Mario, by 24 years — 1981 against 2005.

### When did Mario start?

1981. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

### 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]