YouTube

Performance indicators

2021: Ranked eighth on the list of most visited sites

Business and audience in Russia

Main article: YouTube in Russia

The Russian version of video hosting appeared 2 years after its foundation - at the end of 2007.

Video bloggers and their income

Main article: Video bloggers

History

In mid-February 2024, it became known that the body of 19-year-old student Marco Troper, the son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found on the Clark Kerr campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The young man died of a drug overdose. Read more here.

2023

Google launched a free music generation service for YouTube videos

On November 16, 2023, YouTube video hosting announced the launch of two free tools based on generative artificial intelligence to create music tracks. Dream Track for Shorts and Music AI services were developed in collaboration with specialists from the AI division of Google DeepMind. Read more here.

Underage surveillance charge

American video hosting YouTube was accused of spying on minors. According to the specialists of the analytical company Adalytics, the platform shows children targeted advertising in violation of the American law on the protection of children's privacy on the Internet (COPPA). This was announced on August 22, 2023 by the press service of the State Duma deputy RFAnton Nemkin.

In particular, according to Adalytics, YouTube places in browsers those users who view videos marked "video for children," "long-playing" special cookies, and the YouTube mobile application for iOS installs and transfers a unique advertising user ID to third parties.

The report also indicated that when you click on an advertising link related to "video for children," the YouTube application automatically opens the advertiser's site in the "built-in browser," after which Google installs identifiers on the user's device for advertising and surveillance. After that, video hosting allows you to receive data about identifiers and share such information to data brokers and other organizations.

Google, which owns the video hosting company, denies the allegations. According to company representatives, cookies are needed only to combat fraudsters, for official purposes, and in general to organize the service.

At the same time, in 2019, by agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission, Google was ordered to pay a multimillion-dollar fine on charges of illegally collecting children's data on YouTube.

2022

YouTube channels in Africa with the highest incomes

Google will pay $515 thousand to an official for a YouTube video with a false accusation of bribes and fraud

In early June 2022, it became known that Google would pay AU $715 thousand (about 515 thousand US dollars) to former Deputy Prime Minister of New South Wales John Barilaro. The company acknowledged that videos posted on the YouTube platform about Barilaro contain false allegations of corruption and fraud. Read more here.

2021: YouTube Shorts launch in Russia

From July 12, 2021, YouTube Shorts (beta) will appear in Russia. The service started among creators in India and the United States: daily short videos gain over 6.5 billion views around the world. YouTube Shorts will allow you to create short memorable videos on your smartphone and immediately publish them.

From the very launch of YouTube Shorts, various useful features will be available to authors and performers. For example, you can shoot several excerpts and combine them into one video, record video with music and change the recording speed.

Reactions to jokes, a different look at comedy sketches, following recipes are just a few examples of videos that can be created in YouTube Shorts.

2020

In the top 50 largest Internet sites in the world

Youtube will ban the distribution of content about conspiracy theories

Youtube will ban the spread content of conspiracy theories. This became known on October 16, 2020.

In particular, we are talking about according QAnon conspiracy theories to which the president USA Donald Trump and special prosecutor Robert Muller are conducting a secret operation to expose the allegedly existing network of pedophiles, some of whom are members of the US Democratic Party.

In this case, we are not talking about blocking channels, but about removing videos that thus violate the rules of the video service.

Managing misinformation and harmful conspiracy theories is difficult because content is constantly changing and evolving. We are taking another step to curb hate and abuse by removing more content with conspiracy theories that are used to justify real-world violence, "the video hosting said in a statement.

It's about blocking videos that use conspiracy theories to promote or justify violence. The video hosting noted the importance of the context of each video. Thus, the introduced rules will not affect news or discussion of these theories, which are not aimed at specific users or groups of people.

Youtube also recalled that two years ago the service updated its recommendation system in an attempt to limit the spread of harmful misinformation. Such a move led to an 80% reduction in the number of views of QAnon-related content. The statement indicates that since then, video hosting has removed tens of thousands of QAnon videos and blocked hundreds of thematic channels in accordance^[1] service^[2].

2019

YouTube dominates Android smartphones

YouTube has captured 70% of the time spent on OS smartphones Android watching videos, the study says. App Annie Interestingly, the growth of the other four streaming applications was provided by Chinese users.

The average price of a paid publication is growing rapidly

The highest cost of an advertising post on YouTube. A post on this platform costs an average of $6,700 - four times more expensive than the nearest competing format (Instagram, $1,642 per post).

Permission to delete "commercially unprofitable" user accounts

On November 11, 2019, it became known that the YouTube video service gave itself the ability to delete the accounts of any users for no apparent reason. In the updated terms of the user agreement, a corresponding clause has appeared, and it applies to all countries where the service performs its work, including Russia.

The updated user agreement will enter into force on December 10, 2019. It states that YouTube reserves the right, at its discretion, to delete the profiles of any users that "do not have commercial meaning" for the service. Due to the fact that the wording of the condition is blurred, the danger looms over everyone who has a YouTube account.

In the international version of the user agreement, an item that expands YouTube's ability to delete user accounts is:

YouTube may terminate the account's access to the entire service or part of it if it considers that providing access to the service does not make commercial sense

The original text is as follows:

YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable).

This clause is absent in the agreement in force on November 11, 2019.

In the Russian version of the agreement, the clause on the absence of benefit as of November 11, 2019 is present, but sounds even more vague. It said YouTube could shut down a user's access to the service in case it was "no longer commercially feasible." The updated wording fully coincides with the international one. The updated conditions will come into force in Russia on December 10, 2019, as well as throughout the rest of the world.

Google does not comment on the amendments to the YouTube user agreement in any way and does not specify what exactly is meant by "commercially unprofitable accounts." In other words, it is not known who will be on the "hit list," and how to avoid this fate^[3].

ESET: Banking Trojan used YouTube to steal cryptocurrency

An international company ESET has studied the bank trojans Casbaneiro family. This became known on October 10, 2019. To malefactors managed to hide traces of the manager servers on official sites, as well as in the descriptions of the video on YouTube. More. here

Thematic structure of content on YouTube

As of mid-2019, video games are the largest category of content, with popular channels downloading just under a fifth of the video on the topic. Additionally, YouTube video game content is usually longer than other video types.

Political content on the streaming video platform was not necessarily US-centric. More than one in ten videos spoke of non-American current affairs or politics.

Google will pay $200 million to collect children's data on YouTube

At the end of August 2019, it became known about a fine of up to $200 million, which the American authorities imposed on Google for collecting children's data on YouTube. Read more here.

Companies waste $1.3 billion a year on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube: bots "watch" ads

At the end of July 2019, researchers reported that companies are wasting more than $1.3 billion a year on targeted marketing on social networks, since many unscrupulous users of social networks buy fake subscribers or use services to cheat on likes, views and comments. Read more here.

YouTube refuses to develop a paid service and create its own premium content

YouTube has stopped accepting projects of expensive series and shows, which indicates the company's refusal of ambitions to develop a paid service with premium content content. Earlier in this field, Microsoft and Yahoo failed.

Among the programs that the Google owned service abandoned were the science fiction drama "Origin" and the comedy "Rethinking with Kat & June," according to Bloomberg^[4] March 2019^[5]

Existing YouTube series and shows will switch to a free version, and the company is currently developing a strategy for creating and using content according to the advertising model.

Bloomberg analysts note that recently two more tech giants have failed in their attempts to squeeze video into the market Netflix. Amazon Microsoft Corp. created into the Angeles studio and commissioned a show based on its popular game "Halo," but the project closed before the series was released. Yahoo spent 42 million dollars to make the original series, after which it abandoned its plans.

2018

YouTube opposes Internet copyright directive

On November 13, 2018, information appeared that YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki opposed the copyright directive in the Internet era, which is expected to be adopted in the European Union. In her opinion, platforms like YouTube cannot comply with the proposed adjustments, which Wojrzytski wrote about in her blog.

The outrage of the top manager was caused by article 13 of this directive, which blames copyright infringement on the platforms, and not on the users themselves. That is, Internet companies must find and remove all such materials, otherwise they themselves will be considered violators. According to Wojrzytski's statement, YouTube has neither the technical nor the financial capacity to meet European Parliament requirements.

The platform's implementation of EU adjustments could hit YouTubers in Europe. According to her, users from the European Union will be cut off from the videos, which they have watched more than 90 billion times in the last month alone. Among them are such useful things as foreign language lessons and scientific guides, as well as simply music videos.

As an example, Wojicki cited the video for the song Despacito by Puerto Rican musician Luis Fonsi, which is the most watched video on YouTube. Wojwicki writes that the video carries a large number of different copyrights, from sound recording rights to publishing rights. At the same time, YouTube has agreements with many organizations to license and pay for this video, but some copyright holders remain unknown. This uncertainty and may lead to the fact that the platform will have to block Despacito and other similar videos in order to comply with the requirements of Article 13,. In addition, copyright holders often themselves cannot agree among themselves who owns what rights, and open platforms like YouTube in such cases simply cannot make any certain decisions.

Users upload more than 400 hours of videos to YouTube every minute, Vojitski said, and requiring the company to remove all videos that potentially infringe copyright would be dishonest because it would cost too much. "Potentially the liabilities could be so large that no company would take on such financial risk," the manager believes.

The final vote on the adoption of the directive will be held in January 2019. At a preliminary vote held in September 2018, the European Parliament approved it. Article 13, unofficially called the "load filter," several times became the reason for the revision of the document, but in the end it was voted on. Experts believe that the directive is unlikely to be rejected.^[6]

Google slows down YouTube in Firefox, Edge, Safari browsers

Technical program manager Mozilla Chris Peterson accused the company in the summer of 2018 Google of slowing down the YouTube service on everyone browsers except. Google Chrome Peterson made this statement on the social network. Twitter According to his observations, the problem affected browsers and. Firefox Microsoft Edge The Verge also notes the slow work of YouTube browser in Safari Google^[7]

Peterson explained that the reason is the use of a Google Chrome API called Shadow DOM v0, which is generally used not only in Chrome, but is already outdated. The Polymer library, introduced on YouTube in early 2017, works with the API. Firefox and Microsoft Edge Shadow DOM v0 do not apply, which slows down YouTube in these browsers.

"YouTube uses the Shadow DOM polyphile in Firefox and Edge, and this comes out, unsurprisingly, slower than the native implementation in Chrome. On my laptop, loading the start page takes five seconds with a polyphile versus one - without it. Subsequent page navigation is comparable, "Peterson writes. Google has not yet responded to his statement.

The Verge also notes that Google could update YouTube to Polymer 2.0 or even 3.0, which also support the outdated API, but the company stopped at Polymer 1.0, which was released in 2015. The publication calls this a strange decision in light of the fact that Polymer is an open JavaScript library created by Google Chrome developers.

Morgan Stanley estimates YouTube at $160 billion

In May 2018, analysts at Morgan Stanley investment bank estimated the value of YouTube at $160 billion, which is more than the capitalization of such giants as General Electric ($132 billion), IBM ($132 billion), PepsiCo ($141 billion), Netflix ($145 billion) or Comcast ($151 billion).

As noted by Business Insider, Google does not disclose the financial performance of YouTube, so analysts give only an approximate estimate, which corresponds to multiplied by seven estimated video hosting revenues for 2019. Google acquired the service for $1.65 billion in 2006 and in 12 years has made it the most expensive media company in the world.

Experts believe that YouTube's valuation could continue to grow, and one of the drivers of this rise will be subscription revenues - in particular, from services such as YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium, the launch of which was announced in May 2018. Morgan Stanley estimates they will generate significant revenue for the company.

Music is the most consumed type of content on YouTube, analysts said. For the sake of music, 36% of users go to the site every day, while for the sake of cinema, 22% of the audience does it, for the sake of TV content - 20%. Every million users who subscribe to a paid subscription to a music service will add 1% to YouTube's revenue, experts predict.

In early May 2018, YouTube's audience reached 1.8 billion people, which is 300 million more users than ten months earlier.

Business Insider writes that ten years before the cost of YouTube rose to $160 billion, the platform could be "crushed" by the Viacom media conglomerate (owns the MTV music channel and Paramount Pictures studio), which sued Google's subsidiary for copyright infringement. YouTube has held out and is worth 13 times more than Viacom by May 2018.^[8]

Removing Cisco Ads from YouTube

On May 10, 2018, Cisco announced the removal of its ads from YouTube, as the company fears that its ads began to appear in inappropriate videos. Read more here.

Human rights activists accused YouTube of illegally collecting data on children

23 human rights organizations sent a joint complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission against the YouTube service due to the illegal collection of information about persons under 13 years old. This was reported by CNN^[9].

According to the complaint, video hosting violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting confidential information about subscribers of popular channels without the consent of their parents. Thus, in several years, the rights of more than 23 million children were violated. Human rights activists demand to fine the owner of YouTube, Google, at least $41 million.

"Google profits from the collection and use of children's personal data on YouTube. This has been going on for many years and affects tens of millions of children in the United States, "follows from the text of the complaint.

Headquarters shooting

On April 3, 2018 USA , a shooting occurred at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. One person was killed and three injured.

The incident occurred at about one o'clock in the afternoon local time (23:00 to To Moscow). The shooting in the office was arranged by a local resident named Nasim Aghdam. Her motives are unknown, the woman committed suicide before the police appeared.

According to police, the woman opened fire on an open patio near the YouTube headquarters building, where employees dined. Naseem Aghdam shot three people with a pistol. One of the victims (a 36-year-old man) as a result of the shooting is in critical condition, the second is in serious condition and another is in satisfactory condition.

 ABC News , citing law enforcement sources, reports that the 39-year-old woman who started the shooting lived in Riverside, and, according to preliminary data, had nothing to do with YouTube. The agency Reuters reported that among the wounded, perhaps, was a young man shooting a girl, and the cause of the incident was a domestic quarrel.

After the incident, authorities told CBS that the police do not yet have details of what happened, as there was "panic" around the YouTube building. The authorities ruled out a connection between the incident and terrorism.

Earlier, messages from YouTube employees appeared on social networks that they heard shots and began to barricade in the rooms. Later, these same people talked about quickly leaving the building and going home.^[10]

The situation in San Bruno was commented on by US President Donald Trump. He thanked the "outstanding officers" of law enforcement who work at the scene.

We pray for those who suffered in San Bruno, - wrote the American leader in his Twitter blog.

How much video bloggers earn

So much money making video bloggers from your YouTube channels from advertising? A study commissioned by Bloomberg, a professor at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Matthias Bärtl, found that nearly 97% of professional YouTubers receive less than the living wage in USA More. here

2017

Plans to increase the staff of moderators

In early December 2017, it was reported that Google plans to increase the number of employees of the tracking service on YouTube of content promoting violence and extremism in 2018.

Next year we will continue to increase the number of specialists. We aim to bring the number of Google employees working with content that may violate our rules to more than 10,000 in 2018, YouTube chief executive Susan Vozhitsky wrote in a Google blog post.

As you know, in June 2017, Google has already taken a number of measures to combat extremism on YouTube. In particular, the company's blog announced plans to expand the use of video content recognition technologies, through which terrorism and extremism are promoted, as well as an increase in the number of independent experts in the YouTube Trusted Flagger program.

Google's other plans included introducing tougher content policies aimed at stoking religious enmity and the superiority of one group over another, and increasing YouTube's role in confronting radical currents.^[11]

YouTubeTV - live broadcast of TV channels

YouTube announced in March the launch of the YouTubeTV service, which will broadcast TV channels by subscription. The service will soon become available in the United States, while those wishing are offered to subscribe to alerts.

A monthly subscription to YouTubeTV will cost $35, for this money you can watch the air from six different accounts. Up to 40 American channels, both cable and on-air, will be available in the package. The subscription also includes YouTube Red content, which is produced by popular vloggers.

Chromecast can be used to view channels on the TV, in the future the list of compatible devices is planned to be expanded. Users will be able to record any number of on-air programs for later viewing.

Users view 1bn hours of content on YouTube every day

YouTube management has calculated how much time users spend watching videos in total. Vice President of Engineering Christos Goodrow said in February that similar statistics were obtained in 2016.

According to him, users around the world watch 1 billion hours of content daily. To view such a number of videos, one person would need more than 100 thousand years.

At the same time, according to analysts, the most active consumers of online videos, including YouTube, are millennials - young people aged 18 to 34 years. They spend more time watching video content and learn more about certain brands when it comes to advertising.

2016: YouTube introduces HDR support into its services

After introducing 4K video, live broadcasts, 3D, 360 ° video, media giant YouTube offered support for high-resolution HDR video. The company is confident that this will allow you to get the most impressive image quality that has ever been presented on the platform - with more contrast, accuracy and detail.

At the same time, users can watch YouTube videos on HDR-supported devices such as HDR TV with Chromecast Ultra, and in the near future - on all Samsung SUHD devices and Ultra HD TVs.

According to analysts, the number of HDR TV deliveries will reach more than 4 million units worldwide by the end of 2016 and will exceed 30 million by 2020. The market for HDR-compatible TVs, including format-compatible devices but having displays with a standard dynamic range, will be four times larger. By 2020, almost 112 million HDR-compatible 4K TVs shipped globally are projected, but only about 30% of them will have true HDR playback capabilities.

2015

A programmer from Kazan saved YouTube from chaos

On April 2, 2015, it became known about the participation of a programmer from Kazan in eliminating a vulnerability on the YouTube service. Kamil Khismatullin discovered a bug that allowed removing videos from the channels of any user of this video hosting^[12].

YouTube specialists promptly eliminated a vulnerability that allowed users who did not have privileges to delete any other people's videos. A logical error in the hosting management mechanism could lead to the loss of unpredictably large volumes in a very short time.

Kamil Khismatullin, a specialist from Kazan, was able to detect the vulnerability. He is one of the experts Google engages in through Vulnerability Research Grants.

While researching YouTube Creator Studio, Camille discovered a logical error in the video broadcasting system: its existence allowed deleting any video on the service, using only the token of his session as an authorization key. As confirmation of the vulnerability found, he published a video showing the process of deleting his own video without an authorization procedure on YouTube. According to Camille, he overcame the desire to remove the video from the channel of the popular Canadian artist Justin Bieber.

The expert himself assessed this bug as simple, and his search was initially aimed at CSRF or XSS vulnerabilities. YouTube security specialists quickly responded to the bug-report and made the necessary changes.

Kamil Khismatullin regularly takes part in Google Vulnerability Research Grants vulnerability search programs. As part of the program, experts receive messages with a proposal to search for vulnerabilities on several resources offered by Google. The main goal of the program is to support research and search for vulnerabilities, and the expert's work is rewarded (Camille received $1337), even if not a single vulnerability was found. However, if a vulnerability is discovered, the finder receives not only compensation, but also a grant as a prize. Google eliminated the vulnerability in a few hours and paid the researcher a reward of $5 thousand.

Video showing how to delete video content, 2015

Testing video from different angles

YouTube video hosting began testing a new feature in February 2015 that will allow users to watch videos from different angles. The option is called Choose Your View. So far, this opportunity is present only on one of the channels of the video service, which belongs to the performer Madilyn Bailey. One of the videos of her concert was taken by the Youtube team and turned into a video that can be viewed by switching to different viewpoints.

When viewing a movie, you can switch the angles from which the survey was carried out. At the same time, video playback is not suspended. It should be mentioned that at the moment the technology created by the developers of video hosting cannot extend to all users. If the company manages to make it available to a wide audience, then this function may become quite popular.

The idea of ​ ​ providing the ability to switch between different angles when watching video is not new. In the past, other services such as Streamweaver and Switchcam have tried to implement this feature.

Full Flash to HTML5 migration

Since January 2015, YouTube video hosting, owned by Google Corporation, has abandoned the use of Adobe Flash as a technology for playing videos in default web browsers. Flash was replaced by HTML5 technology, Richard Leider, head of technical work at YouTube, said in a hosting blog.

In 2010, Google introduced HTML5 support to YouTube along with Flash. However, if the user wanted to receive videos in HTML5 format, until now he had to follow the link for this YouTube.com/HTML5. The company did not make HTML5 the default standard due to some restrictions present in it. The most important of these was the lack of support for the Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) method.

ABR allows you to reduce the buffering time on a slow connection and open more videos at the same time by automatically adapting video parameters such as resolution and bitrate. According to YouTube, ABR made it possible to reduce buffering time by 50% on average and by 80% in congested networks. In addition to the lack of ABR support, there were other shortcomings in HTML5. "Over the past four years, together with browser developers, they have been eliminated, and now YouTube uses the default HTML5 tag<video> in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and Firefox beta versions," said Richard Leider, head of technical work at YouTube.

2014: Balancing on the brink of breaking even

At the end of 2014, the service attracted more than a billion visitors a month, but has not yet brought profit to its owner, Google. About this writes The Wall Street Journal with reference to two sources familiar with the financial performance of YouTube. Google itself, despite the fact that it is a public company, does not disclose the performance of its divisions separately.

According to WSJ sources, in 2014 YouTube received about $4 million in revenue, compared to $3 billion in 2013. YouTube earns on advertising. Revenue growth was facilitated by changes in the service, after the introduction of which large brands began to spend more on advertising.

YouTube brings about 6% of annual revenue to Google, but is still not profitable, WSJ sources know. After payments to copyright holders and the purchase of equipment, this business balances at the level of break-even, says one of the interlocutors of the publication.

This data reflects YouTube's attempts to expand beyond its main audience - teenagers, writes WSJ. Most users of the service use it only as a hosting for storing their files. While top YouTube managers want to turn this service into television: so that users can receive entertainment content, habitually "switching" channels.

This problem is faced by Susan Wojcicki, who has been running YouTube for the second year. In addition, traffic sources such as Facebook and Twitter are also starting to offer advertisers to post video ads from them. Also, Facebook and startups such as Vessel are trying to lure YouTube stars to them. At the same time, Amazon and Netflix are starting to license Hollywood content and create their programs.

There's a lot of trash on YouTube, says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Weiser. If a company wants TV budgets, it will have to invest in content, he said.

One of the problems is that YouTube is designed primarily for a young audience, among which mainly music content is popular. But most YouTube stars who like this audience aren't known outside of this service. The most famous YouTube star is Felix PewDiePie Kjellberg, he has 35 million subscribers. Wojcicki was unaware of its existence before joining YouTube, she said at a recent conference.

Advertisers want a young audience, says Accuen chief executive Josh Jacobs. But it's a narrow segment of the audience, and that means advertisers here have less reach than television, observes Brian Weiser of Pivotal Research. According to him, approximately 9% of viewers provide YouTube with 85% of video views.

2013:1 billion visitors per month

In March 2013, YouTube's video hosting audience reached 1 billion unique visitors per month. About one in two internet users visit YouTube; if YouTube were a country, it would be the third most populous state after China and India.

2012: Download 72 hours of video per minute

According to the company in May 2012, 72 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute. "This is already as much as three, not two days of video per minute," the company said in a statement. Over the year, the number of subscriptions to YouTube increased by 50%, and 800 million people watch three billion hours of videos on the service per month.

In 2012, YouTube paid hundreds of millions of dollars to content producers, trying to create a kind of television channel. But many of these channels have not gained popularity. The company's management instructed to improve search on the service, which would help users find content faster. But YouTube is still trying to attract an audience directly, writes WSJ.

2011

Trillion views of videos for the year

Google in its official blog YouTube published in December 2011 video hosting statistics for 2011. Thus, the number of reproductions of videos from YouTube video hosting in 2011 exceeded a trillion. In 2010, 700 billion views were recorded on YouTube. The most popular channel was recognized as the Machinima studio channel. The leader in the number of views was the video of the American singer Rebecca Black for the song Friday. In the ranking of clips posted on YouTube by music labels on the first line of the video On The Floor by Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull. In the category of news stories, in the first place is a video taken from a helicopter, which shows tsunami waves approaching the coast of Japan. It was posted on Russia Today in March. Among the trailers, the winner was the video for the film "War of the Gods: Immortals," and among the teaching videos - a video called "25 Ways to Tie a Scarf." The most popular videos of the year in different categories can be viewed on the Rewind channel created by Google.

Download 48 hours of video per minute

According to May 2011, more than 48 hours of new video are uploaded to the site every minute (which demonstrates 100% growth from year to year). According to Yutyubovtsy, such rapid growth has at least three reasons: more broadcasts have become available, the duration of the videos has increased (over the past year, the company has increased the duration of the videos from 10 to 15 minutes, allowing single users to download videos without time limits), and also loading has become easier.

Research company comScore in a report by Video Metrix, ranked YouTube first USA among online video content sites. YouTube has 142.7 million unique visitors, followed by VEVO with 55.2 million visitors, followed by Yahoo with 53.2 visitors Facebook and 46.7 million. YouTube has become so significant that many companies run the promotion through this popular video service. The parent company, Google realizing the importance of the development of the project, invested 100 million dollars in order to stimulate the creators of low-budget films to post their new items on YouTube.

Bet on professional content

In April 2011, Google announced that it plans to make significant changes to its YouTube video service as part of a strategy to increase competition with large television networks, which are increasingly expanding on the Internet. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing informed sources.^[13]

To compete with major cable networks, the world's most popular video service will need to increase the amount of time users spend on the site, as well as convince advertisers that they will be able to convey their messages to target consumer groups. First of all, YouTube management plans to make a number of changes on the main page of the site, highlighting a set of "channels" dedicated to certain topics, such as art or sports. About twenty of the most popular channels will be replenished with several hours of professional video content per week. The rest of the channels will show the content that is already on the site.

According to sources, Google plans to spend about $100 million on creating inexpensive professional video content filmed specifically for demonstration on the Web.

Thus, analysts say, YouTube intends to balance between the niches of user content that initially made the service popular and expensive professional television shows that many other sites rely on. YouTube representatives declined to comment on this information, noting only that the audience of the service increased significantly last year and management is very optimistic about the future.

2010:2 billion views per day

During 2010, users viewed an average of about 2 billion videos on YouTube daily, uploading more than 35 hours of video content per minute to this site.

YouTube's revenue began to grow after YouTube introduced the ability to skip ads after a few seconds in 2010: users liked it, as they could not watch ads that they were not interested in. Advertisers rated the feature because they were only able to pay for ad views.

In August 2010, the new mobile site Youtube began operating simultaneously around the world. It is built on HTML5 and, according to the developers, is supported by more mobile devices than the previous version. Other features of the updated version include larger and more touch-friendly elements, which make it easier to access video, enable functions familiar to users of the classic version, including tips, the ability to create playlists, place videos in Favorites, or mark them with 'liked' or 'disliked', as well as expanded communication opportunities for users of social networks Twitter, Facebook and "Live Magazine." The developers also promised an almost synchronous update with the site Youtube.com.

2009: App audience - 100 million users

2006: Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion

Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, but in the early years received almost no revenue from this company.

2005: Ex-PayPal employees create YouTube

Three former employees of PayPal, a well-known payment system, took part in the creation of the project. To implement the idea, the founders used Flash Video technology, with the help of which a web resource was organized. This format made it possible to achieve good quality video recordings, while maintaining a small amount of data. Video hosting, which provides users with the ability to share their own videos with the world around them, comment on other people's videos and like them, quickly gained popularity among a wide audience.

On April 23, 2005, the first YouTube video was uploaded to 20.27 American time.

In the frame - one of the creators of the video hosting Javed Karim against the background of an aviary with elephants in the zoo of the city of San Diego. Another co-founder of TooTube, Yakov Lapitsky, shot the 19-second video. The video does not represent any artistic value - it is of historical value.

Notes