YouTube on Sunday said the number of videos watched daily at the Web site has broken the 2 billion mark as the service begins celebrating its fifth birthday.
“Thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone and now exceeds over 2 billion views a day,” YouTube team members said in a blog post.
“That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined,” they wrote.
The news came with the launch of a YouTube 5 Year channel devoted to the service’s history and cultural influence.
The YouTube 5 Year channel features a “My YouTube Story” project compiling tales by people from around the world describing how YouTube has changed or shaped their lives.
A documentary film maker has chronicled stories ranging from an Iranian protester using YouTube to get news to the world to a man sharing a video journal of his battle with cancer.
The channel has an interactive timeline of important moments in YouTube history.
“We never could have predicted what YouTube’s first five years would bring and it’s difficult to imagine what the next five will look like,” the YouTube Team said.
“Five years ago in May, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com,” they said.
San Bruno, California-based YouTube was the brainchild of then PayPal coworkers Chad Hurley, Steve Chen (陳士駿) and Jawed Karim.
Google bought YouTube in a US$1.65 billion deal about 19 months after the online video-sharing service was founded in February of 2005.
The Internet giant has been carefully transforming YouTube into a money-making stage for enjoying works ranging from backyard videos to independent films.
“Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself,” the team said.
Renowned figures such as Vint Cerf, often referred to as the father of the Internet, and TV news anchor Katie Couric have been enlisted to curate playlists of videos in their areas of expertise.
In the scant time since the first video was uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005, the Web site has rocketed to global stardom and become a key player in a shift to Internet TV.
“YouTube has the potential to be a very instrumental part of Google’s future TV plan,” Gartner technology analyst Allen Weiner said.
An average of 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute in an amount of content equal to 150,000 full length films over the course of a week.
The Web site boasts content deals with more than 10,000 partners, including entertainment titan Disney, and has a fledgling online movie rental service.
YouTube was started to provide bloggers a way to easily put video in their blogs and blossomed into a hotspot for people to share digitized snippets, Weiner said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique