It’s hard to believe, but it’s been five years since YouTube launched and changed the way people share video online (it was acquired by Google a year and a half later). To celebrate its birthday, YouTube has just announced a major new milestone: it’s streaming a whopping two billion views per day (the company notes that this is “nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined”).
To help commemorate the occasion, YouTube is also launching a new channel of videos called “My YouTube Story”, which includes a collection of clips featuring people around the world talking about how YouTube has changed their lives. The initial batch of clips were filmed by documentary filmmaker Stephen Higgins, and some of them are quite touching. YouTube users can upload their own video stories as well; YouTube will be plotting these videos on a global map, and will also offer an interactive timeline of clips.
We should point out that YouTube announced it had passed 1 billion views a day in October 2009, but that number was probably a bit lower than the actual figure — we had reported that it had crossed 1.2 billion views a day the previous June.
YouTube has also compiled some stats and timelines as it reflects on its first five years.
Here are the site’s most current stats:
2 Billion views a day
3rd most visited website (Alexa)
Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
15 The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
45 Million home page impressions every day
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
100 Years of video scanned by copyright managent technology, Content ID, every day
1700 Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of videos on YouTube
Here are some other goodies YouTube is sharing:
The First YouTube Homepage, 2005
A Brief History of YouTube
Key Milestones
First video uploaded to the site (April 2005)
Ronaldinho video is first to reach 1 million views(July 2006)
Google acquires YouTube (October 2006)
CNN/YouTube debates (June 2007)
YouTube mobile site launches (January 2008)
YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (April 2009)
Product Milestones
YouTube enables embeds on other sites (June 2005)
Partner Program launches (December 2007)
InVideo Ads launches (August 2007)
Content ID launches (October 2007)
YouTube videos available in HD (December 2008)
Shows and Movies (April 2009)
YouTube XL (June 2009)
YouTube Direct (November 2009)
HTML5 Supported Videos (January 2010)
Top 5 Most Viewed Videos of all time
Lady Gaga Bad Romance with 196,115,524 views
Charlie bit my finger with 185,714,255 views
Evolution of Dance with 142,679,738 views
Miley Cyrus – 7 Things with 117,413,641
Pitbull – I Know You Want Me with 118,410,161
Top 5 Most Subscribed Partners
nigahiga with 2,186,108 subscribers
Fred with 1,721,0095 subscribers
ShaneDawsonTV with 1,486,594
smosh with 1,461,046 subscribers
RayWilliamJohnson with 1,223,753 subscribers
