14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday with a dedicated channel and a lot of stats. The biggest one: YouTube is now streaming two billion videos every day, a number that is growing rapidly. YouTube’s actual birthday is debatable, but the site won’t let that get in the way of the celebrations. YouTube is arguably one of the biggest sites online today, one that keeps on growing in audience and scope, yet it still touches people on the individual level, which is what the just-launched My YouTube Story project tries to underline.
“Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world,” a post on the YouTube blog read.
“What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries. We bring feature films from Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers to far-flung audiences. Activists document social unrest seeking to transform societies, and leading civic and political figures stream interviews to the world,” it added.
Two billion views every day may be hard to put in perspective, but YouTube says it’s “double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined.” Also worth considering is the fact that YouTube only officially passed the one-billion-views-per-day mark in October of last year, so the growth is impressive. There is nothing online in the video market that even comes close to those numbers and, since YouTube seems to be going from height to height, nothing is going to change anytime soon.
The site was created five years ago in February, when youtube.com was registered. The first-ever video was uploaded in April 2005, but YouTube was still in private beta at that time. It went public in May, which is why YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday now.
YouTube has created the “fiveyear” channel to celebrate the occasion. There, you’ll find a very interesting timeline of some of the greatest YouTube videos over the years, everything from LonleyGirl15 to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, which makes it look like a lot more time than just five years has passed. The new channel also houses My YouTube Story with videos from various people about how the site changed their lives. You can upload your story as well, if you think you have something to say.
Website-Monitoring.com with the help of YouTube has created an extensive chart with a timeline and plenty of statistics and interesting numbers. As for the future, it’s hard to say what will come. YouTube has certainly evolved over the years and continues to do so. It’s constantly trying new markets, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Its rental program hasn’t proven a hit with its users, but live-streaming all of the matches in the IPL cricket exceeded all expectations.