Arguably the most infamous moment in Super Bowl history didn't happen during the game. Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday marks the 10-year anniversary of Janet Jackson's notorious wardrobe malfunction and a decade later we can still see the effects.
YouTube was founded in 2005 and just one year later, sold for $1.6 billion to tech juggernaut Google, but co-founder Jawed Karim says the idea of YouTube partly came from Janet's Super Bowl moment. (Via YouTube / YouTube Spotlight)
"People who missed it, they really wanted to be in on the joke ... So they would try to find it online." (Via dotsub / catarinacostaf) (Via Wikimedia Commons / Robin Brown)
Also, at the time of Nipplegate, TiVo was just five years young. According to Forbes the nip-slip heard around the world pushed a whopping 35,000 people to subscribe bringing in about $3.5 million. Also, it became the most replayed moment in TiVo's history at the time.
And unsurprisingly, Janet Jackson's name dominated the Internet in the days following.
According to the BBC, "People using Google searched for "Janet Jackson" almost 10 times more the day after the game than they did on Sunday ... And by Wednesday Jackson broke records on Yahoo, accounting for nearly 20% of all terms searched on the site."
So, why did the so-called "NippleGate" have such a dramatic effect on our media? Well, not too long ago viewers either saw a moment or didn't. But some moments, like an R&B super star's breast popping out on live television, demand a replay. YouTube and TiVo provided that option.
Some other notable, changes that corresponded with the 2004 Super Bowl; the term "wardrobe malfunction" being permanently added to American verbiage, five out of the next six Super Bowl performances were all middle aged white men and Janet Jackson started taking her acting career a lot more seriously. (Flickr / musicisentropy / kubacheck) (Via Wikimedia Commons / Mario Escherle / Bill Ebbesen / Oli Gill) (Via Lionsgate / "Why Did I Get Married")
