YouTube is a modern phenomena. The social media platform’s original concept is rumoured to have been inspired by the idea of being a video dating site with the unlikely title of “Tune In Hook Up”. In the end it launched as a simple video sharing site that has helped reinvent the web from a one way static channel to an interactive web eco-system (along with social networking channels such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) that has enticed and compelled us to engage globally with other internet users using a variety of rich multi-media and social sharing platforms.

YouTube after initially being about viral videos that just entertain is now much more than that, with the “How To” category being the fastest growing segment on the social video sharing channel. YouTube is even being used as a tool to teach high level mathematics and other academic and tertiary subjects with Salman Khan of khanacademy.org revealing at a recent Ted Talk, how his 2,000 plus YouTube videos are assisting students pass university degrees.

50 YouTube Facts & Figures

YouTube was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 who were all employees of Paypal YouTube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buy-out of PayPal The founding trio didn’t come up with the YouTube concept straight away. Legend has it that YouTube began life as a video dating site dubbed “Tune In Hook Up,” said to be influenced by HotorNot. The three ultimately decided not to go that route The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two different events. The first was Karim’s inability to find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine’s Day in 2005 The domain name caused a huge misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment. Its company domain, “utube.com,” was overwhelmed with traffic from people that tried to spell the video site’s name phonetically The first video on YouTube is of one of the co-founders Jawed Karim talking about elephant’s trunks titled “Me at the Zoo” shot at the San Diego Zoo. The first video has received over 4.8 million views Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in November 2006 Google serves over 6 times more videos than its next closest competitor according to Nielsen Google’s auto speech recognition technology translates 51 languages including captions The longest Video ever on YouTube is 48 hours (2 days!) The ‘how to’ video category is the fastest growing vertical on YouTube YouTube has 490 million users worldwide (unique visitors per month) It generates an estimated 92 billion page views each month. The average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month The average user spends an average of 25 minutes on the site each time they visit. The average user spends 5 hours and 50 minutes per month (not as much as Facebook) Together, we spend 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month. That’s 326,294 years. More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010 and 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute. The amount of video uploaded in 2010 is the equivalent of 150,000+ full-length movies in theaters each week More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010 They have signed over 10,000 advertising partners to date, including Disney, Turner, Univision and Channel 4 and Channel 5 Hundreds of partners are making six figures a year There are over 7,000 hours of full-length movies and shows on YouTube YouTube is monetizing over 2 billion video views per week globally 94 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network The number of advertisers using display ads on YouTube increased by 1,000% in the last year YouTube has more HD content than any other online video site 10% of YouTube’s videos are available in HD Automated Content ID (which detects duplicate content to prevent copyright infringements) scans over 100 years of video every day More than 1000 partners are using Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label Over a third of YouTube’s total monetized views come from Content ID Over 4 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network An AutoShared Tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions Over 5 million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube using friend-finding tools Millions of subscriptions happen each day. Subscriptions allow you to connect with someone you’re interested in—whether it’s a friend, or the NBA—and keep up on their activity on the site. Users like Machinima, MysteryGuitarMan, Fred, collegehumor, and UniversalMusicGroup have millions of subscribers More than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community Millions of videos are favorited every day YouTube mobile gets over 100 million views a day The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link The most watched video (that is not a music video) is “Charlie Bit My Finger” with currently 317 million views The most watched music video is Justin Bieber’s “Baby” which currently has over 536 million views In 2009 the US Congress and President YouTube channels were launched

So how do you use YouTube and how could you creatively apply it to your business or organisation?

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