I never would have thought that I would ever see the day in which online video would be more popular than actual television, yet here it is. On its fifth birthday, YouTube has announced that it gets over 2 billion video streams per day, which is more than the Big Three US broadcast networks–combined! It’s hard to imagine a world without YouTube; since the site began, it has become an indispensable source of entertainment, promotion, website content, and education for people throughout the world, and it’s only going to grow.
“Two billion video streams is a large number but on average people are only spending 15 minutes a day on the site compared to five hours a day watching TV, said YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley in a BBC interview. “I don’t think we could have ever planned or imagined we would get to the scale or the size we are today. We were mostly trying to create a video solution for ourselves based on our own frustrations. We are proud of what we have achieved so far but we have a lot of work ahead.”
For starters, there’s YouTube’s move into the video rental business. There’s its partnership with parent company Google in a bloody war on Viacom, one of those traditional TV powers we discussed earlier. Then, there’s its mission to expose new talent to the world.
Tags: YouTube, television, videos, Youtube draws more viewers than all US broadcast networks, YouTube gets 2 billion views a day, YouTube’s 5th Anniversary, YouTube’s 5th Birthday, Chad Hurley