People now watch enough YouTube videos in a single day to keep an individual viewer busy for 100,000 years. According to Google, that’s sufficient time to travel across the entire Milky Way, assuming you’re moving at the speed of light.
YouTube’s achievement indicates the lasting appeal of its platform. It has managed to remain the leader in online video sharing for years, gaining a strong grasp of the market. Its varied content adds to its appeal, ensuring you can find something interesting regardless of what your interests.
Spanning documentaries, talk shows, vloggers, gaming channels, music videos and everything in-between, YouTube has been more successful than most in attracting a diverse breadth of creators to its platform. YouTube’s regular viewers use the platform for very varied reasons, creating micro-genres on the site.
“That’s the great thing about this milestone. It represents the enjoyment of the fantastically diverse videos that creative people make every single day,” said Google. “Around the world, people are spending a billion hours every day rewarding their curiosity, discovering great music, keeping up with the news, connecting with their favorite personalities, or catching up with the latest trend.”
The company said the milestone belongs to “all” of YouTube’s users, including the video creators and audience members who’ve made the site the success it’s become. It suggested that today’s announcement wasn’t just a case of waiting for people to visit, noting it’s had to work hard in the background to continue growing the platform.
YouTube is still developing new features designed to attract and retain more users. Recently, it has begun to experiment with mobile live streaming, letting creators share their lives in real-time with their subscribers. The concept has led to significantly increased engagement on rival platforms, including Facebook Live.
While traditionally not directly comparable, Facebook has signalled it now views YouTube as a primary rival. The social network is embarking on an aggressive expansion into video, aiming to become a YouTube-style content destination within the next few years.
Faced with this emerging threat, Google has hastened to implement livestreaming, one of Facebook’s most popular video features. Today’s announcement suggests YouTube is in no immediate danger of losing ground to newcomers but that could change rapidly in the fast-paced apps and services market.
