YouTube stars on YouTube’s 5th anniversary

Five years ago this week, the first video was uploaded to a new online video sharing site called YouTube. It was grainy, slow-paced, and featured elephants: hardly the sort of thing you’d forward to one’s coworkers.

Featuring YouTube co-founder Jawad Karim, it was soon joined by millions more video clips: some of them polished, controversial, mundane, irritating and laugh-out-loud funny.

Today, in honor of YouTube’s anniversary, we talk with two ordinary people who found international fame thanks to YouTube.

Since posting the video for his song “Chocolate Rain,” Tay Zonday has appeared on TV, in other artists’ music videos and, most recently, in an ad alongside Beyonce.

And Greg Breinberg is the director of the PS22 Chorus in Staten Island. Thanks to YouTube (and Perez Hilton, who re-posted some of his early videos), Breinberg may be the most famous elementary school music teacher in America.