YouTube turns 7

MANILA, Philippines – Video-sharing website YouTube turned 7 today, and it has its users to thank for its success.

If you look back to a decade ago, being able to watch an home video shot in some distant country was unheard of, amateur cover recordings of popular hits or funny lip dubs weren’t popular, and if you wanted to watch a music video you’d have to do it on MTV. YouTube has made all of this possible. 

A tweet from the official account of the video-sharing website says “7 yrs ago we introduced YouTube to the world and now you upload 72 hours of video every minute.”

It’s our birthday! 7 yrs ago we introduced YouTube to the world and now you upload 72 hours of video every minute. Wow! youtubeshare.com/5O0

— YouTube (@YouTube) May 21, 2012

Statistics

According to YouTube’s statistics, more video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than what the 3 major US networks have created in 60 years. One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second, over 4 billion videos are viewed a day, and over 800 million unique users visit the site each month.

Localized in 39 countries and across 54 languages, YouTube is now monetizing over 3 billion video views per week globally. 

YouTube has also grown its social initiatives through the years with over 100 million people taking social action on YouTube (likeing, sharing, and or leaving comments on videos) every week. 500 years worth of YouTube video are viewed every day on Facebook, and over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute.

History

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.

The first YouTube video, entitled Me at the Zoo, is only 19 seconds long and shows co-founder Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 and now has over eight million views. 

Singer Lady Gaga, also known as the “Queen of Monsters,” was the first to hit one billion views on YouTube around October 20, 2011, Mashable reported. 

What’s your favorite YouTube video of all time? Send us a tweet on @rapplerdotcom use the hashtag #iLoveYouTube.

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