14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is celebrating its seventh birthday, more specifically, the date the site first went live to the public. It's been a tremendous seven years, but YouTube still has a lot of growing to do. YouTube is celebrating the occasion with some stats, impressive ones at that.
But those stats are becoming less and less important as the site shifts its focus towards more lucrative professional content rather than amateur stuff.
"Last year to celebrate our birthday, we wrote you, the YouTube Community, a thank you note for making our first 6 years so special. And on that birthday you gave us a great present by reaching a record rate of 48 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute," YouTube wrote.
"Well Community, this year, on our 7th birthday, you’ve outdone yourselves once again. Today 72 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute," it announced.
In just one year, YouTube went from seeing two-day worth of video uploaded each minute to three-day worth of video.
The site's more than 800 million users are more engaged than ever, subscriptions are up 50 percent, a hint that YouTube's drive to get people to stick around for longer is working.
More than a hint is the fact that people watch more than three billion hours every month. That works out to the average user watching some three hours and 45 minutes of video each month.
YouTube is less focused on growth these days than it is on getting people to watch longer videos, particularly more professionally produced ones that are more lucrative for the site. YouTube is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the projects of video production companies.
The site has been working with many such companies to finance new channels that produce several shows at regular intervals, several hours of video per week.