Can you believe that YouTube is already six years old? It seems like only yesterday I was watching friends’ bands play local gigs recorded with crappy cameras, emo video blogs and footage of cats doing all kinds of weird things. But ever since Google bought the video-sharing service in October 2006, it has blown up in a big way.
Today marks its sixth anniversary, but there aren’t any big bashes or balloons to celebrate (unlike last year’s five-year anniversary). Instead, just a blog post that mentions its anniversary along with some facts and tidbits about the service. According to its blog:
Today, more than 48 hours (two days worth) of video are uploaded to the site every minute, a 37% increase over the last six months and 100% over last year.
And it is quick to add:
What can happen in two days, you ask?
- You could drive non-stop across the country from our office in San Bruno, Calif. to New York City
- You could undertake a massive movie marathon by watching the entire Back to the Future trilogy eight and a half times (we’d recommend you do that at YouTube Movies)
- An ambitious cheetah (the fastest land animal at an average running speed of 75 mph) starting in South Africa could traverse 3600 miles of the African continent and reach Egypt
The other great birthday present? Your views. We’re amazed that over this last weekend, you drove YouTube past the 3 billion views a day mark, a 50% increase over last year. That’s the equivalent of nearly half the world’s population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine videos a day.