Earliest POD for an earlier Youtube?

The 1994 Facebook thread got me wondering, what would be the most plausible startup date for an earlier version of Youtube? 1998? 2000? Even earlier?
 
You could do Youtube earlier, the biggest thing is who would care? When the vast majority of people have dialup and it takes quite a while to load some guys' whatever video, that kinda hurts the popularity of this website.

You need better Internet first.
 
For a earlier POD for a earlier YouTube requires a earlier POD for High Speed Internet for a earlier YouTube to be possible likely starting with a more earlier widespread adoption of DSL starting in the mid 1990's if the infrastructure allows it for starters.
 
The ancient Greek steam engine gains steam (ha), resulting in an earlier Industrial Revolution, earlier computers, an earlier Internet & an earlier Eseísolína.
 
The ancient Greek steam engine gains steam (ha), resulting in an earlier Industrial Revolution, earlier computers, an earlier Internet & an earlier Eseísolína.
Best comment of the day lol.

But in all seriousness there was a few video hosting and sharing sites in the 90's. I don't remember the names of them though. But other than that though it would be possible for a site similar to YouTube becoming popular in the late 90's. I mean the first webcam was used for a coffee machine in the 1990's, so had people realize they could've of used it for daily vlogs, we could of had vlogs being invented a lot earlier (bear in mind vlogs been around since video cameras were created, it just that the term "vlog" was given recently)
 
The initial success of youtube depended on three things:

High speed internet to become the norm
The use of Flash as a video player that could be embedded in a web page and it would just work.
Footing the bandwidth bills so that video creators didn't pay them themselves.

To get an earlier YouTube, you need to have faster and earlier adoption of high speed internet, AND you either need macromedia/adobe to add video playback earlier.

an earlier HTML5 is also a possibility, but likely a non-starter because at the time, everybody was using IE6, which Microsoft was just sitting on and doing no development on.

Prior to google video in 2004 and youtube in 2005, watching video content online was done by downloading actual files and then playing them back locally. And any video content creator would usually have to self host their files, and would have skyrocketing bandwidth costs if they got popular. YouTube footing that bill removed a huge barrier to entry.
 
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You need to have an earlier, stronger investment in the internet, which I believe was proposed in the Clinton administration, and a possible POD with a stronger showing for the Atari Democrats (dare we say even "Atari Republicans") in the 80s.
 
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