YouTube has revealed it is receiving 3 billion views per day in a week that it celebrates its 6th anniversary.
In a blog post the video-sharing website, owned by Google, also revealed that it has now surpassed the 3 million mark for views per day. This is an increase of a half since last year. Little over a year ago we reported that it was receiving 2 billion views a day and in its 6th year YouTube has continued to see staggering increases.
In addition to the high volumes of viewing traffic, this content driven site that encouraged the development of web 2.0 now sees 48 hours of footage uploaded every minute. Again, this is a huge increase from last year. Back in November, after reporting 35 hours a minute of uploads, YouTube set the challenge to its users to increase this to 48 hours, and they succeeded. March 2010 saw the site increasing in content by 24 hours each minute and since then this figure has doubled to 48 hours.
In 48 hours you could watch a whole series of 24 - twice, fly to Australia and back or watch 1 minutes worth of uploads from YouTube. The sheer volume of content currently shared on the site, and the ever-increasing uploads, means it would be impossible to view all the footage in a lifetime.
YouTube also proves an exciting platform for advertisers with the volume of viewers it is obtaining. Although increased uploads are good in their own right, it is views that increases revenue for both YouTube and Google through advertising. In its 6 years YouTube has advanced its services to offer users whole TV series and YouTube Movies. Increased availability of smartphones and tablets has also helped YouTube to witness a healthy rise in viewers.
The first ever YouTube video was uploaded on 23 April 2005, titled Me at the Zoo, and was a 19 second clip of YouTube's founder at San Diego Zoo.