People visit YouTube for various reasons — new music releases, movie trailers, gaming videos, to watch their favourite shows on the platform, stand-up comics and much more. YouTube has been around for more than a decade and has gained immense popularity, so much so that it has become a source of income for a lot of content creators. Millions of videos are uploaded to YouTube every month — a chunk of them are random shots — and billions of people are watching those videos. Let’s take a look at some amazing facts about YouTube.
People Watch Billion+ Hours of Videos Every Day
Earlier this year in February, the company announced that more than a billion hours of YouTube videos are being watched by millions of users every day. The billion hours, if put back to back together, would result in 100,000 years of time spent watching video footage.
1/3rd of Internet Population Uses YouTube
YouTube has a user base of more than a billion people worldwide, which account for almost one-third of the entire population on the internet.
More Than 50% Views Come From Mobile Devices
YouTube has over a billion users and a majority of them are watching videos on their mobile device — a testament to the rising popularity of smartphones as internet connectivity on cellular networks is improving.
Source of Income For Many
YouTube launched its partner programme in 2007, which allowed creators to earn from their hobby of creating videos and since the platform was growing at a rapid pace — meaning more views and increased revenues — people soon started quitting their full-time jobs to become creators on the video sharing platform. Currently, according to the company, the number of YouTube channels earning six figures per year increases by 50% year after year.
More Popular Than Cable TV
More people in the age brackets of 18-34 and 18-49 prefer watching videos on YouTube overall and on mobile phones, respectively, rather than on cable network.
Setting Records Gangnam Style
Psy’s Gangnam Style is the definition of viral in practical terms and currently sits north of 2.8 billion views on YouTube, making it the highest watched YouTube video ever. YouTube had a 2, 147, 483, 647 view counter limit in its code and Gangnam Style was going viral and looked like it’ll cross that threshold. The coder’s at the company quickly changed the code before Psy broke YouTube’s counter. The new limit is 9, 223, 372, 036, 854, 775, 808 views — let’s see who breaks this now.
YouTube is Serious About Copyright
There is no doubt that YouTube takes copyright seriously given the fact that three copyright violation strikes against your account can end up in its permanent termination. Up till July 2016, $2 billion have been paid to more than 8000 partners using Content ID, which was launched in 2007. Source
