YouTube – The Evolution

YouTube has really come out of nowhere in relative terms. As compared to the old giants, HP, IBM and GM to name a few… it is in flight.

To provide some perspective, there are 1 billion unique users monthly, and 6 billion hours of video watched each month. Of note, 70% of traffic comes from outside of the US, and YouTube has set up shop in 56 countries and in 61 languages. There are millions of subscriptions each day and that is doubling annually. It’s also reported that YouTube’s reach exceeds any cable network for the 18-34 age range.

If that doesn’t begin to give you a sense of the scope and reach, you might note that mobile makes up more than 25% of the YouTube watch time.  You can access much more info on the YouTube.com Statistics Link.

A mere eight years and here are the major events according to what was provided by Fortune Magazine:

• 2005 – First video upload to YouTube.com, April
• 2006 – Google purchase, $1.65 Billion, October
• 2008 – First video to hit 1 million views, September
• 2009 – YouTube has 1 billion views daily, October
• 2010 – Launch of TrueView video ads, December
• 2011 – 100 new original channels, October
• 2012 – Psy’s “Gangnam Style” most viewed video of the year, December
• 2013 – Celebrates 8^th birthday, 100 hours of video uploaded per minute, May

Evolution or Revolution, however you want to define YouTube’s development, you can be sure we are entering the introductory phase. As the Beatles would say, “We all want to change the world”.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, Oakville Ontario, November 2013

 

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