For many years YouTube is a huge platform with millions of videos and literally anyone can find what they want on it. A single search will lead the user not only to exactly what they are looking for, but also to many other similar videos that they may be interested in – until one click leads to another and the user does not “drown” on the platform for hours, potentially.

But long before the algorithm became YouTube’s “invisible hand”, back in the mid-2000s when the platform was taking its first steps, things were different.

Youtube started it 2005 a time when most of those who accessed the platform did so through some link that was sent to them, and only a few went directly to its home page. Its summer 2006 YouTube has now become more mainstream, considering 100k views per day. Now someone had to take over his role content curator video platforms.

That’s when YouTube hired her Mia Cagliarello, which hired a team of journalists, radio producers and YouTubers to manage the platform’s content and topics such as sports, comedy, politics. That is, they became community managers, or otherwise, cool hunters YouTube.

Don’t forget that we’re talking about a completely different era when it comes to internet content. Creators and influencers were not yet terms that were “played” in the marketplace. Instead, YouTube videos mostly come from hot young directors, comedians, musicians, etc.

Every one of the original cool hunters on YouTube your own way of “catching” creators and content. Some searched in the recesses of blogs, others in the wider pop culture networks. Just to find something interesting. Like a track from a band called Peter, Bjorn and John (yes, Young People).

In short, it was “coolhunters” who started the trends on YouTube, and their taste largely determines a significant part of the platform based on “weird” videos. And the viruses were not long in coming. Like the track “Chocolate Rain” which was released in 2007 and saw so many covers that YouTube decided to dedicate their homepage to a tribute to the track.

OUR google, as the parent company of YouTube, decided to watch the evolution of the platform from behind the scenes until it took action at some point. And Google’s way of solving problems is based on “in machines, not in people.”

So, while cool hunters continued to hunt for content, developers and technicians worked on its “magical” properties. algorithm.

Of course YouTube algorithms have existed before, but in a rather early form. Now the platform has started working on its logic “If you like this, you’ll like that.”

Code, filters, “auto” logic have become more and more of a takeover of the YouTube universe. In 2009, it was ready for prime time. And coolhunters, judging by the way the platform now looked, were losing more and more the first syllable of their name and their usefulness. Youtube is now chasing profit (and sponsored videos), not some interesting DIY video.

YouTube continued to grow, reaching more and more countries, while some of its superiors expressed their doubts about cool hunters more and more insistently – to the point that in every country YouTube reached, a new group of cool hunters formed. Eventually, software became cheaper, and social networks such as Facebook helped to further personalize (and YouTube) the content available to each user. On top of that, the coolhunter philosophy was at odds with the “clinically” measurable logic of companies like Google.

Something like that, 2010 marked the end of YouTube coolhunters, who once and for all passed the baton to machines and algorithms. But YouTube would never have become what we know without the early but very important contributions of hardcore hunters and the character they gave to the platform with their “manual” approach.

With information from the Atlantic.