This February marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of YouTube, a website that is now as integral to our modern lives as the phones that we view the platform on.
Back in February 2005 the first ever video was uploaded - 'Me At The Zoo' - a shaky, grainy 18 second clip of Jawed Karim, one of YouTube's co-founders, talking about elephants - certainly not a clip that seemed to herald the launch of, what is today, the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search.
Skip forward two decades and the richest YouTuber (a popular term that Karim and his pals would probably not have dared to dream of) is raking in an outstanding £1 billion fortune.
You might have guessed that the top dog could be Jake Paul, who first shot to fame on the now-defunct platform 'Vine', where he amassed millions of followers. After Vine bit the dust, he hopped over to YouTube, where he continued to flourish with his prank and music videos. Jake Paul's net worth stands today at a mighty £65m.
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(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images))Or perhaps it could be someone like PewDiePie, famed for his gaming videos, with his debut video on the platform amassing over 21 million views. The content-maker, real name Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg is currently worth $45 million (just under £37 million).
In fact, the wealthiest YouTuber's net worth eclipses both Jake Paul and PewDiePie's combined. He also surpasses them significantly in subscriber numbers, with Jake Paul boasting 20.9 million, and PewDiePie claiming 110 million - the richest YouTuber trumps them both with a staggering 344 million.
If you've figured out that it's MrBeast, also known as Jimmy Donaldson, then you're spot on. He's the one who holds the title of the world's wealthiest YouTuber with his staggering net worth.
MrBeast first hit YouTube back in 2012, where he shot to viral fame with his gruelling challenge videos, including a clip of him counting to 100,000 which took a whopping 40 hours to finish. Ironically enough, some of his first videos also centred around guessing the net worth of other YouTubers.
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(Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Youtube))Today, Donaldson also runs the YouTube channels Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast 2 and Beast Philanthropy, and has invested much of his fortune into commendable charity projects, such as Team Seas, a fundraiser for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup that has raised over $30 million.
And to top it all off, MrBeast has been revealed as having officially joined the bid to buy TikTok's US operations, a move which could spell further world-wide success and admiration, certainly from fans of the temporarily vulnerable platform.
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