The Vlogbrothers
The first time I became aware of “vlogging” was on July 18, 2007 when a video titled Accio Deathly Hallows (no spoilers) was featured on the front page of YouTube. The video was a man singing a song he’d written about the final book in the Harry Potter series and the excitement he felt to read the conclusion mixed sadness he felt about the series ending. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I immediately loved the song and was interested to learn more about this person making videos. And that’s how I was introduced to the Vlogbrothers.
The Vlogbrothers (that being their YouTube user name) are two real-life brothers, John and Hank Green. On January 1st of 2007, John and Hank started a year long video-blogging (AKA vlogging) project called Brotherhood 2.0. They ceased all text-based communication in favor of creating videos for each other every weekday. These videos were all posted publicly to YouTube. After Brotherhood 2.0 ended, they continued to make videos (albeit less frequently) and as of April 29, 2012 they have uploaded 957 videos and amassed 217,126,321 video views on their main channel, and created 4 subchannels: SciShow, in which Hank discusses science news, CrashCourse, an educational channel in which John teaches world history and Hank teaches chemistry, HankGames, in which both Hank and John play video games, and TruthOrFail, an online gameshow featuring other YouTubers. The Vlogbrothers are one example of popular video bloggers. With the rise of YouTube, users have been able make a living by creating online video content.
Beginnings of Vlogging and The Show With Ze Frank
Adam Kontras posted the first ever video blog on January 2nd of 2000 alongside a blog post. That video was the first post in the longest running vlog in history. In 2004, Steve Garfield started his own video blog. Shortly after, a video blogging group was created in Yahoo! Groups. In February 2005, three former PayPal employees founded YouTube, and the popularity of vlogging skyrocketed.
Although Kontras technically posted the first vlog, most vloggers today credit Ze Frank with inspiring them to start vlogging. On March 17, 2006, Ze Frank started a video-blogging project called the show with ze frank. The project lasted one year with Frank posting a video about 2-3 minutes in length every weekday (with very few exceptions). During the course of the show, Frank created many projects that got his audience to interact. This including things like asking viewers to dress up their vacuums and send in pictures to be featured on the show. On the May 16th episode of the show he challenged his viewers to create an “Earth Sandwich” by placing pieces of bread directly opposite one another on the globe. Amazingly, the task was completed.
On February 27, 2012, Frank announced that he wanted to start another vlogging project. The project was funded by his audience through crowd fundraising website Kickstarter. On April 9, 2012, Frank debuted his new project, a show on his YouTube channel, zefrank1.
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