YouTube told me to confirm my email and start uploading.
The welcome message also invited me to comment on videos. Those were the two basic choices: publish something or join the conversation under what somebody else published.
Before either one, YouTube wanted the email address confirmed. The registration was waiting on that step.
The site still used “Broadcast Yourself.” The welcome message did not include an upload or channel plan.
I had been building websites for years. Most of my work involved text, images, forms, databases, and downloadable files. Video was heavier. It took more bandwidth, more storage, and more work to deliver smoothly.
YouTube hid most of that behind an upload page and a player.
The registration put another publishing tool in front of me. The next required action was still email confirmation.
The welcome message itself did not include a video, channel, or comment from me.
The next required step was to confirm the address.
Until then, uploading and commenting were still instructions in the welcome email.
The welcome message made the public actions look simple. Confirm an address. Upload a file or comment on somebody else's video.
The email did not contain a video, a channel page, or an audience. It was the front door to those things.
My part was smaller. Open the message and decide whether to confirm the address.
The message did not ask for a content plan. It asked for one click to confirm the address.
For now, I had a YouTube registration waiting for confirmation.