The numbers are particularly impressive for YouTube, which was founded little over five years ago. Also, only last October, YouTube announced that it was serving one billion videos per day, a number that doubled in the last eight months.
YouTube has played an important role in recent years in making Internet video stars through viral videos. Susan Boyle and Justing Beiber are just a couple of names that might ring a bell with you. Right now, Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance video is the most viewed clip on YouTube, with more than 200 million hits.
Over the last five years, the site has become a place for public figures like President Obama or the Queen of England to share their videos, and was also used to disseminate information from areas inaccessible to the media, as in the case of the Iran protests.
YouTube is celebrating these milestones with a new video channel, where it allows people to upload videos describing how the video-sharing site has changed or shaped their lives. Embedded below is YouTube’s promo video about the project.
Despite the surge in popularity for its service, YouTube has not become a profitable venture for Google since the search giant acquired it in 2006. This was mainly due to the high costs involved in running the site, and not enough advertising revenue.
Google however, is saying that 2010 might be the year when YouTube will turn a profit. In January, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted in the Financial Times saying he expects YouTube to make it into the black at some point in 2010.
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