YouTube: 66 years of video in a day!
YouTube recently celebrated its 10 years of international release. Indeed, on the 19th of June 2007, YouTube was officially launched out of the United States. France, UK, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and Poland became the first countries to benefit from the online video streaming platform. So lets have a closer look at this game changer platform.
The fastest developing market
YouTube origins are connected to former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim who started the platform in February 2005. The first video ever on YouTube was uploaded by Jawed Karim in April 2005. It is a 18 secondes video in which Jawed Karim is recorded by one of his friend talking about the elephants behind at a zoo. Who would have thought that this video will be the beginning of an online video empire? In November 2006, YouTube is officially acquired by Google for $1.65 billions and since then, YouTube is one of the fastest growing website. In 2010, 35 hours of video were uploaded by minute. 2 years later, the equivalent of 3 days were uploaded by minute. After 8 years, YouTube reached the 100 hours of video uploaded by minute. From the shortest videos to the 2h movies, you can find all kind of content on YouTube nowadays. Whether you are looking for music video clips, episodes and reviews of your favorite manga, makeup tutorials, or video gaming tricks, you can find it among the 400 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube. This constitutes 66 years of video uploaded each day! If we go even further in the reflexion, it means that the equivalent of 24,090 years is uploaded in a year. Besides YouTube gathers over 1 billion users and people watch 1 billion hour of video per day.
Therefore, you won’t be surprised to learn that YouTube has become the first online video platform in terms of visits and the2nd most visited site after Google worldwide.
How to explain such popularity?
Accessible to masses
Firstly, one of the reason why YouTube is so popular is its accessibility. YouTube is free even if some services such as YouTube Red and the brand new YouTube TV require a paying subscription. Otherwise you just need internet to watch a YouTube video, except for disturbing contents (vulgar language, violence, sexuallity and nudity, illicit and dangerous activities) which require to have a YouTube channel and be over 18. It also implies that anybody with a YouTube account can upload a video. YouTube is available in in 76 languages so it can be used by almost everybody on the planet.
Fast and Flexible
The uploading process is generally very fast and only depends on the size (length and quality) of your video. And precisely, you can upload files up to 128 GB on YouTube! YouTube benefits from the latest technologies directly developed by Google. YouTube displays HDR, 360°, 3D and virtual videos. You can upload videos from the lowest quality (144p) up to an amazing 4k, four times better than the full HD. Let’s say the possibilities are almost limitless.
Popularity on mobile devices
According to Tubular Insights, 70% of YouTube videos are watched on smartphones or tablets.
It is an important fact because the market of smartphones/tablets is also booming. More and more people have access to mobile devices in the world. The YouTube mobile interface is easy to use and offers many of its desktop functions. If your phone supports it, you generally have access to subtitles, HD and direct video, creative commons. You can visualize videos in 360° and 3D with a cardboard and for the best performing smartphones, videos are available in 1440p. Another interesting option of YouTube for mobile devices is the possibility to relate your phone or your tablet to a TV screen.
Everybody has a chance to succeed
From a regular guy who randomly recorded his cat while stealing his socks to a new singer who just signed with Universal records, anybody can become a superstar on YouTube. YouTube is the total contrary of the traditional industry. Having a role on a TV series requires a lot of skills, contacts, and luck that are not easily accessible. This does not mean, that YouTube stars are not talented or skillful — there is just less barriers and decision makers between them and their audience. On YouTube, with a good content and some promotion skills, you can attract enough visibility to enter a professional dream job.
Social empowerment
On YouTube, people can easily share opinions on their favorite videos and confront their ideas with other users. Let’s take an example! Wild Thoughts, the new DJ Khaled’s music video featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller did not only reached 26M views in 4 days, it also gathered 45 000 comments. This is not possible on a TV programme.
That being said, we understand why YouTube is THAT popular. But there is always a “but”.
How to stand out of this tremendous amount of daily video uploaded?
Imagine this: you go to the final of the Champions league in Cardiff and you record the moment when Sergio Ramos lifts up the Cup . If you are the only one to post it, everybody looking for Sergio Ramos lifting the cup will click on your video. Now if 10.000 people were in the same stadium and recorded a similar video, people may not pay attention to your video or they will skip to another one if they estimate that your video is not good enough.
Internet is technically limitless — however, it is limited by the time people have. When 66 years of video is uploaded every single day, it is extremely difficult to create an audience and retain it.
