A Very Brief History of Web Video

From lonelygirl15 to billions of viewers

December 1995-January 1999

After seeing Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s short Spirit of Christmas, TV exec Brian Graden commissions a second video he distributes to friends on VHS. The video—and Graden—help Parker and Stone land a development deal at Comedy Central that gives rise to South Park. Soon the video starts turning up in unexpected places, notably as an AVI file on the PlayStation game Tiger Woods ’99. From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to bulletin boards and burnable CDs.

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