YouTube Fact Sheet
Overview and Features
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.
YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.
Everyone can participate in the YouTube community by watching, sharing, and commenting on videos. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, relive their favorite TV moments, find videos about their hobbies and interests, discover new artists and filmmakers, and even uncover the quirky and unusual.
As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to share their experiences, talents, and expertise with the world.
Some of the site's features include:
- Video embedding: Users can insert a YouTube video into Facebook and MySpace accounts, blogs, or other Web sites where anyone can watch them.
- Public or private videos: Users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with friends and family upon upload.
- Subscriptions: Users are able to keep track of their favorite users' new videos.
- Quick Capture: Users with a webcam and Flash software are able to instantly record video responses or normal videos onto the site rather than having to prerecord and then upload the video.
- TestTube: This is an area where YouTube engineers and developers conduct alpha testing for new features in development. Users are encouraged to participate in the development process and are welcome to evaluate the feature.
By registering, users are able to upload and share videos, save favorites, create playlists, and comment on videos. YouTube is building a community that is highly motivated to watch and share videos. The YouTube service is free and will be supported by advertising.
Part of YouTube’s goal is to extend its reach beyond the Internet browser and enable users to discover and share compelling video content. As part of this, YouTube continues to innovate and enhance its APIs and tools. This includes wholesale access to its extensive video library, worldwide audience, and the underlying video hosting and streaming infrastructure that powers the site, giving users yet another way to engage the world of video and actively participate in the YouTube community wherever they are, whenever they want.
The YouTube Community
YouTube is a place for people to engage in new ways with video whenever and wherever they want. YouTube began as a personal video sharing service, and has quickly grown into the world’s leading video community on the Internet.
YouTube offers a community for everyone, including personal video creators such as cooking, beauty, health and fitness experts; aspiring and professional musicians; amateur and established filmmakers; comedians; and professional content owners.
The community is truly in control on YouTube and they determine what is popular on the site. Discovery is at the heart of YouTube and we continue to create new features to help our users discover and share compelling content, for example through featured videos, related videos, and guest editors.
We are focused on building the best user experience and the best platform for people to broadcast their videos around the world. We want our users to continue to unleash their creativity and share their talents with a global audience.
The explosion in consumer devices with video capability continues to give people control over the videos they record, watch, and share, and YouTube is dedicated to making their experience as easy, seamless and entertaining as possible across the Internet and on any device.
YouTube will always be an open community and we encourage users to send in their thoughts and comments about their experiences on the site. YouTube understands that each and every user makes the site what it is and welcomes them to get involved to help create new features and be a part of new developments on the site.
YouTube also is actively exploring a variety of ways to help the community to monetize content through programs like the User-Partner Program and YouTube Nonprofit Program, and we are dedicated to continuing to create new and innovative programs in this area.
At the end of the day, it's all about the community and we will continue to do what we can to make the user experience a prosperous one.
Traffic and Stats
People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
Demographics
Our user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent of our users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues. With such a large and diverse user base, YouTube offers something for everyone.
Advertising on YouTube
Marketers have embraced the YouTube marketing platform and as an innovative and engaging vehicle for connecting with their target audiences, and they are increasing sales and exposure for their companies and brands in many different ways. In some cases they run video advertising, such as InVideo Ads or YouTube video ads, but they are also sponsoring contests, creating brand channels, and adding their own original content to the site. This model is a natural fit for our community because it follows one of the general philosophies of the site itself—user experience comes first. Our community has defined what works in this space, and we'll continue to innovate based on their feedback.
There are several other ways for users, partners, and advertisers to benefit from engaging with the millions of people who make up the world's largest online video community:
- YouTube Insight: A free tool offered by YouTube that allows anyone with a YouTube account—users, partners, or advertisers—to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site.
- The YouTube Partner Program: Original content creators have the chance to generate revenue from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube's other professional content partners.
You can learn about advertising on YouTube on our very own brand channel.
YouTube and Google
YouTube is an independent subsidiary of Google Inc., having been acquired by the leader in search and online advertising services in November of 2006.
Google and YouTube share the vision of enabling anyone to find, upload, watch and share original videos worldwide, and the dedication to innovate with video to offer compelling services for our users and for content owners.
The exciting and powerful platform YouTube has built complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.