YouTube has turned eight years old today. Back in May 2005, the founders of YouTube Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim would have never suspected that their website would grow this big and get acquired by Google $1.65 billion. Now over 100 hours of video footage is being uploaded to YouTube per minute, according to the YouTube blog. This is over four days of video uploaded each minute. YouTube is also hitting 1 billion unique visitors per month.
Ray William Johnson runs a popular YouTube channel that has around 8.75 million subscribers and hit around 2.3 billion views total. Ray William Johnson’s YouTube show is called “=3″ and due to his popularity, he has signed a script deal with FX Networks. Johnson had the most subscribed channel on YouTube for a period last year. He ran into a major contract dispute with Maker Studios and walked away from the multichannel network to set up his own production studio called Runaway Planet.
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Google is not happy about the way that the YouTube app was designed on Windows Phone 8. This is why Google sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Microsoft withdraws their redesigned YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 because it violates their Terms of Service. The Terms of Service says that the Microsoft YouTube app violation has to do with the way that ads are being blocked and how the app allows videos to be downloaded.
YouTube Live is a live streaming service that the company launched in beta over two years ago. The service is now expanding to every YouTube channel that has over 1,000 subscribers. These channels will be able to broadcast live video content to their viewers on all devices. YouTube previously made this feature available for select partner accounts and for video game developers.
There are over one million channels generating revenue on YouTube and these producers have been asking Google for more flexible ways to monetize and distribute their content. This is why YouTube has decided to roll out paid subscriptions for certain video channels. The subscription rates will range from $0.99 to around $7.99 per month. Early participants in this program will include Sesame Workshop (Sesame Street), Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and the Young Turks (talk show). Currently there are over 50 paid channel partners.
The YouTube Trends team has created a new feature that lets you see what today’s most popular videos are in major markets across the U.S. You can also see what is popular with women or men as well as different age groups. The YouTube Trends map details the most popular trends from the last 12-24 hours.
Fullscreen is a company that helps new channel and networks thrive when producing high-quality online video. Founded in January 2011 by a former Strategic Partner Developer executive at Google, George Strompolos, Fullscreen recognizes that online video will soon become a viable alternative to TV and cable. Today Fullscreen has 80 employees and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. On Friday, Fullscreen released the first YouTube application for Google’s smart-glasses product, Google Glass. The new YouTube-focused Google Glass application is called Fullscreen BEAM.
YouTube announced this week that they have hit 1 billion unique monthly visitors per month. These 1 billion people spend 6 billion hours of videos every month. This is up 50% during the same time last year.
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