After six years of existence Google’s social video king still remains on the thrown, as the YouTube team revealed a couple of impressive stats regarding the site’s popularity.

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. […]

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. (Official YouTube Blog)

Note: Emphasis theirs.

Despite fierce competition from rivals like Vimeo as well as Facebook, users and businesses continue to flock towards YouTube to power their videos online.

While YouTube has pioneered the path towards making videos more social, the service has yet to embrace live streaming en masse (although they do allow select partners to broadcast videos in real time).

Note: It will be interesting to see if rivals like Microsoft (who just purchased Qik) will make a second attempt to challenge YouTube in the future, or leave it up to Facebook to steal Google’s crown.

Originally posted on May 25, 2011 @ 12:57 pm

It looks like Google is on the verge of slaying another industry with reports that the search giant is attempting to live stream sporting events which include one popular sports league.

Google Inc.’s YouTube is in talks with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League to show live games, building on the popularity of cricket’s Indian Premier League last year.

YouTube aims to show more live sports in the second half of the year, said Gautam Anand, Google’s director of content partnerships for Asia Pacific, in an interview in Seoul yesterday. Google is in talks with “most pro sports leagues” including NBA and NHL, as well as soccer leagues in Europe, Brian Suh, head of YouTube Partnership at Google’s Korean unit, said separately. (Bloomberg)

Thanks in part to services like Hulu, Netflix and online live news (at least on CNN and Fox), I barely watch television as it is with the exception of American Football (which you have to see live in order to enjoy the game).

There is no word on whether YouTube will live stream events upon mobile devices and large touchscreen devices (at least upon Android tablets), which would make it easier to watch ones team when a TV isn’t readily available.

While live streaming games online will not kill off television entirely (as there are probably more people with TV’s than internet service, at least within the US), it could help sporting leagues reach a larger audience, not to mention generate more revenue via mobile ads as well.

Originally posted on February 23, 2011 @ 12:50 pm