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In late 2005, when YouTube was just a few months old, one its co-founders announced that the sites users were consuming the equivalent of an entire Blockbuster store each month. Today, 300 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. And Blockbuster Well, kids, Blockbuster was a video rental shop offering films on DVD and VHS. VHS tapes were like giant cassettes. Cassettes were Oh, never mind.

The online video behemoth has become the worlds third most-visited website, after Google and Facebook. According to Jawed Karim, he and two of his PayPal colleagues, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, launched the site after becoming frustrated that they couldnt find footage of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and, er, Janet Jacksons wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl the same year.

This high-and-low ethos is baked into YouTubes culture. Its been lauded for promoting democracy and reenergising education, while being disparaged for its endless cat videos and nasty user comments.

What is beyond debate is YouTubes influence (spotted by a far-sighted Google in 2006, when it bought the site for $1.65 billion). Almost anyone can upload almost anything to YouTube, for free, and be in with a chance of reaching its one billion monthly users whether theyre activists, terrorists, politicians or pop stars (or just the proud owner of a mutant giant spider dog). It has changed our world.

The 40-year old MP for Witney scrapes plates into a bin, while his wife helps their children get ready for school in their handsome kitchen.

Watch out BBC, ITV, Channel 4. We're the new competition. We're a bit wobbly, but this is one of the ways we want to communicate with people properly, says David Cameron. It is October 2006 and WebCameron, a new YouTube channel, is born.

Ten months earlier Cameron had won the Conservative leadership on a platform of reaching the voters others could not. The expenses scandal was brewing and Steve Hilton, his top adviser, realised the new website offered a chance to by-pass the television broadcasters and win over voters whod never touched the Tories.

In the eight years since, YouTube has become a raucous town square for those who aspire to power, good and evil. Isil and KKK propaganda videos jostle for attention alongside English town council candidates and teenage pranksters. The veteran Middle East reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, recently wrote that extremists no longer bother meeting with journalists. They dont need a middleman anymore. Journalists have been replaced by YouTube.

Obamas 2012 re-election campaign included 30 staff working on YouTube

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How YouTube changed the world