14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is, by far, the largest video site on the planet so if you want to know what were the hottest videos of 2009, there's no need to look any further. And since this was the biggest year for online video ever, with month after month of record-breaking audiences, there were some pretty big hits out there, most of them completely unexpected, showing that YouTube hasn't lost its touch.
“This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected ("New Moon"), some surprising (Susan Boyle) — but all of them inspired, entertained and connected millions of people around the world via YouTube,” Jamie Davidson, associate product manager at YouTube wrote.
The biggest video this year, without any shred of doubt was Susan Boyle's performance at Britain's Got Talent which went on to get more than 120 million views so far this year, easily overtaking any other popular video even from the previous years. A distant second came the David after Dentist video which was streamed 37 million times. This summer's most talked-about video, the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, got 33 million views. The New Moon trailer, perhaps the only expected video in the list, was watched 31 million times and, finally, the Evian Roller Babies commercial got 27 million views.
The first list features no music videos and for good reason, music videos is one of the most popular categories and would have completely taken over the top. Judged by themselves, the videos managed some impressive numbers with Pitbull – I Know You Want Me getting 82 million views, followed by a couple of Miley Cyrus videos with 64 million and 54 million views, respectively. And, seeing as Google is a search company at heart and since YouTube would be a major search engine on its own judging by the number of queries it gets, it's only natural that the site also released the fastest rising search terms for every month of the year.