16 Mind Blowing Facts about YouTube

Video blogging is a culture that is on the rise. Creating a YouTube channel is the new enticing idea for millennial and young adults that are tech-savvy. You will not only be a popular online personality through uploading creative content, this will help you meet new people, get freebies from companies, and make some good income of it as well.

In this article, we will be covering some fun facts about YouTube that is informative and you will enjoy learning new stuff about YouTube!

1. Three Former Employees Of PayPal Founded YouTube

YouTube was founded by three gentlemen Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. The three were working for the American e-commerce company PayPal. Hurley studied design while Chen and Karim studied Computer Science. YouTube’s headquarter was in San Mateo, California and was above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant.

Their initial concept was to create an online dating service that failed. And in place they had an excellent video uploading platform. At the time there was a super bowl halftime show by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake but there were no videos online available. It was this gap they exploited and created the first video sharing platform.

2. About Susan Wojcicki The CEO of YouTube

Susan Wojcicki is ranked #41 in the list of America’s self-made women. It is interesting to note that she rented her garage to Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for $1,600 when they were creating Google. She later became Google’s employee number 16 and the first marketing manager.

She was handling Google videos when she stumbled on YouTube and was amazed at how it was growing in leaps and bounds. When YouTube flaunted the idea of looking for a buyer, Susan convinced Page and Brin to purchase YouTube, which they did in 2005. In 2010 she was promoted to a senior vice president overseeing ad products at Google. Later in 2014, she replaced the 9th Google Employee Salal Kamangar to become YouTube’s CEO. 

3. $1.65 Billon is the Amount Google Paid to Buy YouTube

After launching the YouTube on Beta in 2005, its growth was exponential and the team started facing some challenges. For example, they needed to upgrade their equipment, they needed more internet bandwidth and there was an increase in copyright infringement issues. At this point the founders decided to sell YouTube.

In November 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, just 18 months after the creation of YouTube. Google purchased YouTube as a way to leverage its search and organization capabilities with YouTube’s huge video library. Google is doing fairly well managing YouTube and there is significant growth in its revenues each year; $15.1 Billion in 2021 a 36% increase from 2021.

4. YouTube Provides Free Production Spaces If You Have 10000+ Subscribers

If you are looking for inspiration, a place where you can make your videos, or collaboration with other artists and YouTube content creators, YouTube space got you covered. You also get access to pop-up events across the world. The spaces are absolutely free for creators that have over 10,000 subscribers.

The YouTube spaces can be found in most parts of the world that are exciting and artistic. You may find us in Berlin, Germany a very vibrant community in Europe, at the crossroads of the most vibrant neighborhood in London, we have a creative community. And in Los Angeles home to an LA legend, we have a space that will help you bring your ideas to life. We have YouTube spaces in Paris, Rio, New York, Tokyo and APAC.

5. The Oldest Video Of Cats On YouTube Dates 1894

Thomas Edison had a film production studio known as Black Maria Studio located in West Orange, New Jersey. In one of its earliest film produced, it featured two cats that were boxing. The video was recorded in July 1894 and was uploaded in YouTube in 2012.

This particular video is evidence enough that at the dawn of cinema which is a century before YouTube happened; cats ruled the production of moving images. The very first recording of a cat in motion was done by Eadweard   Muybridge in 1887. He successfully did this by setting up multiple cameras in sequence to record continuous movement.

6. 2005 The First Ever Video Was Posted On YouTube

It is exactly 15 years now since the first ever video was posted on YouTube. It was uploaded on April 23^rd 2005. It was video by YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim from San Diego Zoo. The video is 18 second long and titled “Me at the zoo.”

The video has more than a 100 million views. And it is interesting to note that on Jawed’s channel to this date, this is the only video he has uploaded.

7. YouTube Has Over 2 Billion Logged-In Monthly Users

YouTube ranks second in the number of monthly users behind Facebook. This tells you that YouTube is very popular among internet users. The 2 billion monthly users represent a third of all the people who are on the internet. 

To emphasize, the monthly active YouTube users accounts for people who log in to the site at least once per month. I mention this since you can watch Videos on YouTube without logging in to your Google account. Quite a number of people do that. These statistics will come in handy when planning to implement your digital marketing.

8. 1 Billion Hours Of YouTube Content Is Watched Daily

In the world, YouTube is the second most visited site. It attracts over 44% of all internet users. Every minute 500+ hours of videos are uploaded on YouTube and the content watched daily is an average of 1 billion hours. With all these videos being uploaded daily, there is something for everyone.

Most users prefer watching YouTube videos using their mobile phones and this translates to 37% of all mobile internet traffic. It is interesting to note that every YouTube user spends a minimum of 40 minutes on the platform.

9. YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm Determines 70%+ Of What is Watched

Social media platforms use human behavior to develop algorithms that will help them improve and be the best, and YouTube is no different. It uses a recommendation algorithm that was developed in 2016 to track viewers’ satisfaction and YouTube will create personalized streams of videos that it has recommended.

Based on the users’ history, the algorithm will filter videos to see if they are good for the viewer. The goal is to have the users spend more time on the platform by matching viewers with videos they want to watch. The more time they spend on YouTube, the more ads they are likely to watch. The algorithm has an effect on the places where your video will surface on YouTube; your video could be in the search results, the recommended streams section, YouTube homepage, trending streams, and channel subscriptions or in the notifications section.

10.  YouTube Is The Second Largest Search Engine

Google and YouTube dominate the first two slots for the largest search engines. YouTube is the second largest search engine considering the number of users, the searches done and minutes individuals spend on the site. On YouTube you get to learn new skills every day.

Apart from gaining knowledge from its vast collection of ‘How to’ videos, YouTube has unlimited videos that will entertain you; from music, inspirational videos, historical and even political videos. It processes 3 Billion searches every month more than Bing, Yahoo and Ask combined!

11. 80 The Number Of Languages That YouTube Uses

YouTube has developed a product interface and the YouTube Help center that are available in different languages. You can actually navigate through YouTube using more than 80 different languages. This is strategic for YouTube so as to increase viewership across the world.

As a content creator, this is a plus for you as 95% of the internet population is well covered. This will help you planning and to strategically reach your audience globally. You have three best options for this; you can have one channel with content in multiple languages, create separate channels for different languages or create one global channel and support local channels.  95% of the internet population is well covered.

12.  2012 Gangnam Style Video Broke Youtube’s Video Counter

In the summer of 2012, Psy’s ‘Gangnam style’ video was so popular that it was the first video to hit the billion mark in the number of views; to break YouTube’s video counter. The views continued rising and YouTube would be unable to count further if the number of views were to reach 2,147.483,647. This is a prime number and a standard in 32-bit computer binary programming.

It was at this point that YouTube programmers made some tweaks and so much more has improved since this incident. Right now, every other video is safe and their views can comfortably go beyond nine quintillion; that is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to be exact.

13. $ 22 Million The Amount Paid To A 7 Year Old YouTube Star In 2021

Ryan is a 7 year old ordinary first grader who is a YouTube star. He (his parents) run hos Ryan Toysreview channel on YouTube. Like your everyday 7 year old, Ryan loves to play with toys; he loves trains, he enjoys Disney characters among other toys. What makes him a star is that when he plays with his toys, he does it in front of a camera and the video uploaded into his channel.

He commands 17.3 million followers and almost 26 billion views from the time his Ryan Toysreview was launched in March 2015. He is ranked among the most popular online influencers. This means he gets lots of toys to play with and also make money. In 2021, he was the highest paid YouTube star, earning $22 million.

14. 90% YouTube Users Are Between 18 And 44 Years

This age group is more familiar in using YouTube as they own phones, a medium preferred to access the social platform. For this generation of YouTube users, the videos have a large reach compared to any TV network. 

This young age group love YouTube as they are at an age where learning new things excites them. To be precise, two thirds of millennial refer to YouTube as they can get ‘how to’ video content for almost anything they would wish to learn. The use of YouTube goes to show how visual content is a preferred choice for this age group.

15. 8 Out Of 10 Marketers Would Choose Using YouTube

YouTube has become a very popular marketing platform among marketers due to its reach. 78% which represent 8 out of 10 marketers consider YouTube to be very effective in marketing because of its ads popularity. In fact, YouTube ads get 62% attention compared to 45% television ads.  

Having this number in mind, marketers will have to plan their marketing strategies and increase the marketing budgets significantly. It is a good investment as a marketer as you are assured of viewership. But it will be all dependent on you to create compelling content that will convert views into real sales.  

16. 90% Discover New Products and Brands Through YouTube

If you are thinking of a great marketing tool, think of video. People will forget what you said, but will remember what they saw. 90% of YouTube users discover and learn about new products through the platform. It may not translate to real sales as quickly as you would want as a marketer, but this will help you popularize the product.

Since the platform is quite competitive, be as creative as you can get and create content that will show the benefits of your products, and enjoy the exposure you will get from the views. The more creative your content is, there are high chances of getting your audience hooked, curious for more and will end up loving your style. Always ensure the videos you create trigger your viewers to take some action.

For a few years now, YouTube has been leading in entertainment. This does not seem to change and has grown overtime to position itself at the top of the most preferred entertainment platform. We have discussed a number of facts that are both fun and compelling so you can have a new outlook about YouTube. Where, you should not view it as just an entertaining social platform, but a site that has more capabilities; where you can exchange knowledge freely and even make money.