On YouTube’s 5th birthday, a look at the first video uploaded, but which was the first comment?

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Five years ago, the first video was uploaded to YouTube. Before the laughing babies and sneezing pandas, before being courted and acquired by Google, before the seemingly never-ending litigation with Viacom, there was ‘Me at the zoo.’

The simple 19-second video, shot in front of a couple of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, has gotten renewed attention around the Web because of the anniversary. It has jumped to more than 2 million views, adding an additional 100,000 or so in the course of a few hours.

There seems to be some dispute as to which is the first comment on YouTube’s premiere video. The system seems to be shuffling around older comments, and the last several ones are strangely marked as spam messages.

Among the early YouTube users who are being credited with the first comment, CobaltGruv, Schroeder182 and Zyrexoid have seen their channel profile pages flooded with congratulations for being the first to scrawl on the video. Because, really, the quality of comments on YouTube have only gone downhill from then.

We’re awaiting response from YouTube about who should officially be crowned the online video giant’s first commenter ever.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian