YouTube tops 4b views a day, 60 hours' new video each minute
updated 09:25 am EST, Mon January 23, 2012
YouTube sees big increase in video viewing
YouTube in a briefing Monday said it had pushed past four billion video streams a day. The milestone was explained to Reuters as a 25 percent boost over the three billion from just eight months earlier. A full 60 hours of new video was being uploaded every minute versus 48 hours at the earlier point.
The company didn't directly credit the expansion to any one factor. It did rework its interface to focus more on elements its upcoming original channels. It also has video rentals both on the web and on Android, although YouTube's share is believed to be small relative to iTunes or Netflix.
Most of the Google-owned site's videos are still user-generated and only sometimes make the company money through ads. It has been hoping to encourage major content both to get bigger-name advertisers as well as direct revenue.
