YouTube Records 1 billion Daily Views Milestone

YouTube users now watch more than a billion hours of videos daily according to the company which also said this translates to 100,000 years of footage. In the actual sense though, YouTube reached this milestone last year but probably decided to report this after carefully monitoring the trend. YouTube has gradually transformed from just a video-on-demand tool into a live TV and a subscription based platform where you can stream all manner of content from music to games. But along with its success, it has managed to make itself attractive to advertisers as well besides the numerous advantages it has over others because of the Google. YouTube is believed to have a higher standard for views count than its contenders like Facebook, Snapchat and now Instagram such that it only records a view after 30 seconds unlike 3 seconds count that Facebook reportedly uses. But it’s been a long time coming for YouTube and the stat below was from two year ago as provided by the company.

• YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and everyday people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.

• YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.

• The number of hours people spend watching videos (aka watch time) on YouTube is up 60% y/y, the fastest growth we’ve seen in 2 years.

• The number of people watching YouTube per day is up 40% y/y since March 2014.

• The number of users coming to YouTube who start at the YouTube homepage, similar to the way they might turn on their TV, is up more than 3x y/y.

But to make YouTube the place of choice for viewers, YouTube says it want to make the platform more interesting to viewers and content creators. YouTube provides a way through which you can know if viewers enjoyed your videos and now has a true social media face where you are notified of new videos from channels you like. They launched “Community” last year which with aim of connecting content creators to fans easily.

One billion is a milestone and besides putting it back-to-back in the 100,000 years representation, YouTube also says;

“If you were to sit and watch a billion hours of YouTube, it would take you over 100,000 years. 100,000 years ago, our ancestors were crafting stone tools and migrating out of Africa while mammoths and mastodons roamed the Earth. If you spent 100,000 years traveling at the speed of light, you could travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other (and you wouldn’t age a day!). And if you searched for 100,000 years on YouTube, you’d find a really killer KISS track.”

But on the paid side, YouTube still has a lot of work to do convincing users to pay under its subscription service, YouTube Red. According to last year reports, the service had only 1.5 million customers.