It is not until you leap into a plane and fly half way around the world to distant places that you start to realize the size and scope of the planet we inhabit.

Recently the earth’s population passed the 7 billion mark and over 2 billion of those are connected to the internet and more than 5 billion have a mobile phone.

When you start connecting that many people with global social networks such as Facebook (with over 900 million users), then opportunities and access to markets that were local become global.

Markets for business that were measured in thousands and millions suddenly scale to billions.

It is not only the size that expands but the velocity of the market accelerates as information is transferred and shared at light speed on optic fibre and wireless networks.

Social Media is Unlocking Opportunities

I recently finished reading an insightful book by Susan Cain. The book titled “QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking“, highlighted for me the power of the social web to provide everyone with a voice.

The connected and global knowledge economy is providing the quiet introvert with media platforms that provide a soapbox to shout at the world.

The creative spirits that were locked in urban and rural islands are now free to be heard, read and viewed in milliseconds on fixed and mobile devices.

YouTube since its inception in 2005 is one of many social media channels that allow anyone with passion and purpose to display and spread their ideas and express themselves.

There are hundreds of YouTube partners earning 6 figure incomes from their presence on a free video channel.

To provide some perspective on what the social and multimedia web has unleashed here are the latest YouTube facts, figures and statistics.

YouTube Traffic

60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.

Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day

Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month

Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube

More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years

70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US

YouTube is localized in 39 countries and across 54 languages

In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views

In 2011 there were almost 140 views for every person on Earth

YouTube Partner Program

Created in 2007, the YouTube partner program now has 30,000+ partners from 27 countries around the world

YouTube pays out millions of dollars a year to partners

Hundreds of partners are making six figures a year

Partner revenue has more than doubled for four years in a row

Making Money from YouTube

YouTube is monetizing over 3 billion video views per week globally

98 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network

Hundreds of advertisers are using TrueView in-stream and 60% of our in-stream ads are now skippable

YouTube Product Metrics

YouTube has more HD content than any other online video site

There are thousands of full-length movies on YouTube

10% of YouTube’s videos are available in HD

YouTube mobile gets over 600 million views a day

Traffic from mobile devices tripled in 2011

The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites

Content ID

YouTube created the technology to detect uploaded videos that infringe copyright in 2007. Content ID technology creates a ID File for copyrighted audio and video material, and stores it in a database. When a video is uploaded, it is checked against the database, and flags the video as a copyright violation if a match is found. When this occurs, the content owner has the choice of blocking the video to make it unviewable, tracking the viewing statistics of the video, or adding advertisements to the video

Content ID scans over 100 years of video every day

More than 3,000 partners use Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label

There are more than eight million reference files (over 500,000 hours of material) in YouTube’s Content ID database. That number has doubled in the last year

Over a third of YouTube’s total monetized views come from Content ID

More than 120 million videos have been claimed by Content ID

Social

The rise of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks has accelerated the growth of YouTube as it enables discovery and sharing of online video.

500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook

Over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute

100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc) every week

An auto-shared tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions on average

There are 500 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link

Millions of subscriptions to YouTube 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)

More than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community

Millions of videos are favorited every day

Infographic by TechWelkin.com

What about you?

How do you use YouTube and video in your marketing?

Has social media opened up global opportunities for you? What is the most exciting and inspiring business or personal event or connection that has been instigated by social media?

Look forward to hearing your stories.

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