Who doesn’t know YouTube? Everyone does, particularly those who are so into internet surfing and has been using internet for many years. You can watch anything there, literally! Don’t know how to cook veg. pasta? Finding difficult to curl your hair? Want to find out how digestive system works? Getting curious of the world politics? Browsing for cute dog and baby videos? YouTube is your answer. Simply type a few words in the Search bar, press enter and get a number of results based on the search. The most viewed and closest to your keywords would show up. The Instant will also show up to help you. Now no one knows some of the interesting facts like how many of us visit this website and sit for how long, which videos are watched the most, etc. What if you get to read these mind blowing facts and wonder “Oh! That was surprising”? So, let’s start.
1. It was once a dating site – Yeah! You read that right. It’s name was Hot or Not, previously when one could introduce him/herself through making one’s own video so that others could see and proceed if interested. It all began when one of the founders, Jawed Karim, was searching for “Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction” and he couldn’t find anything on the internet. YouTube therefore came into the picture where anyone could upload and watch about any topic. The rest is history and this very website rules when it comes to watching videos.
2. The first video was “Me at the zoo” – It’s none other than one of the youtube co-founders Jawed Karim who uploaded his own video in which he was simply checking out some elephants. The video was uploaded on 23rd April 2005, soon after it was officially named as YouTube.
3. People mistakenly confused it with utube – There was an Ohio based company known as Universal Tube (utube.com) that had to face many confused visitors who would visit their website instead of the website they were supposed to visit. Universal Tube knocked the judiciary to sue YouTube but lost it. Later they renamed their site as utubeonline.com.
4. Gangnam style has the most views – Gangnam style actually hit the YouTube’s maximum limit of views, which was once approximately 2,147,483,647. The programmers had to re-write the code in which this limit could be exceeded to much more. It is now set to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 views which is too much and currently not possible for people to reach this far!
5. It has second highest dedicated users – Guess who’s the first. Of course, it is the Facebook that rules! Facebook covers 77% of the total American users and YouTube has 63%. Long way to go still! This is followed by LinkedIn (25%), Google+(24%) and Twitter (21%).
6. More than 80% of the views are from outside US – Though it is still a mystery which country tops the world with having maximum number of visits but this thing is clear that most traffic comes from outside United States, and that has its share of more than eighty percent.
7. The founders came from PayPal – All the three founders Steve Chen, Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley were once co-workers in PayPal and knew each other since then. They later had this startup and now everyone knows what it is!
8. 30% of the videos attract 99% of the total traffic – One of the engineers revealed this fact back in the month of April, 2011. This figure might be varying at present because the competition is too high and most people just upload to make their videos accessible to other family members.
9. “Hello” ranks first in reaching millions of viewers in just 5 days – In a survey conducted in 2015, this video has reached 100 million views in 5 days and crossed 50 million in first 48 hours! It still ranks second and comes right behind “Gentleman” that reached this figure in just 4 days.
10. “Charlie bit my finger”, the most watched non-music video ever – This video has maximum number of views in non-music category. It was uploaded in the year 2007 and since then its number of views has reached highest count and is still increasing. These children haven’t passed the school yet are earning! It has nearly 842,579,477 views.
11. Nearly 50% of the total YouTube users use mobile – The views are not just confined to desktop computers. Most users either user mobile phones or tablets at present the videos through the app, and it is surprisingly 50%. If just a few videos could reach millions of views can you now imagine how many users could be using YouTube at present? And how much just 50% would make?
12. An average session is 40 minutes – For those who use mobile phones spend an average of 40 minutes. Don’t think you have watched just 2 to 3 minute video today. The measure is the total time consumed in a day which takes so many different visits at different intervals; and so whether it is consistent or not, doesn’t matter. It could be an hour for a user and just a minute for another user, since we are talking about “average”.
13. Play snakes when it buffers – The internet connection at your place might not be supporting you fast buffering. What could be done now? Play the game – Snakes!
14. Minecraft rules – In the categories like music and movies it is the Minecraft (video game) which is the king of all, covering 75% of the total bill. It is then followed by Frozen, Drake, Beyonce, PewDiePie, Happy and lastly Eminem.
15. One-third of total internet users are on YouTube – One cannot imagine the popularity of YouTube. It is an estimation that about a third of YouTube users must be there out of total users who spend time on the internet.
16. Total upload of 400 hours in a single minute – During the end of the year 2015, the statistics claim that it is about 400 hours of total video uploads within just a minute, and this could have reached 500 now or probably more!
Enjoyed reading all these, eh? These are the latest ones as per the survey and the figures are subjected to change with time. Some popular videos did make much high number of views but are deleted for now. It is possible that the most popular ones might not be there later due to certain reasons. I would have chosen downloading them if those interest me. What about you?