Much has changed for YouTube since it launched in 2005. But in 2011, we saw Google's video-sharing service undergo more tweaks, spit out more new features and reach more major milestones than in previous years.
Let's rewind and reminisce as I highlight key moments in YouTube's eventful year that involved a major facelift, eye-popping traffic trends, a barrage of new features, acquisitions and partnerships as well as significant success for advertisers and musicians. Which of these moments has affected your personal experience the most?
YouTube's New Look
Another year, another redesign. In its ongoing effort to make the site as seamless and uncluttered as possible, YouTube released a much-anticipated new look for its homepage on Dec. 1 and a revamped video manager days later.
The redesign emphasizes "channels." Google now gives the feature significant real estate on the left side of the homepage, including a prominent "add channels" button at the top of the page. Google also added four new channel templates, two of which were designed specifically with networks and bloggers in mind.
Year after year, it's fascinating to watch YouTube evolve from its empty interface from February 2005 to the online beast it continues to become. To refresh your memory about this year's changes, watch the video below or read the YouTube user manual.
What Is YouTube's Traffic Like?
YouTube has plenty to brag about as far as traffic trends. Here are a few it touts:
- 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day.
- More than 3 billion videos are viewed per day.
- Users upload the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week.
- More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the three major U.S. networks created in 60 years.
- 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
- YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages.
- YouTube's demographic is broad: mostly consisting of 18- to 54-year-olds.
- YouTube has 800 million unique users visit each month.
YouTube reached 1 trillion video views in 2011 (compared to 700 billion playbacks in 2010) with help from these 10 most-watched videos.
Fresh Features Enhance YouTube
YouTube rolled out a slew of new features that affected your user experience. Here's a sampling.
- Slam: YouTube's last feature release of 2011 is YouTube Slam, an interactive video-discovery tool that randomly spits out two videos at time for one-on-one battles.
- Google+ Hangouts: YouTube quietly added a Google+ icon under each video's "Share" button in August that allows you to launch a Google+ hangout and watch that video with friends.
- Search Options: YouTube revealed Filter & Explore in April. The added search options let users easily discover videos in several ways (see example below).
- Analytics: In November, YouTube unleashed Analytics, which gives users detailed stats about their videos. The tool replaces YouTube's previous stats service, Insights, and provides in-depth reports by content, date and geography.
- Politics Channel: Ahead of the 2012 U.S. presidential race, YouTube lifted the curtain of its Politics Channel. The page features popular videos (campaign ads, speeches, parodies, historical clips) and an ever-updating graphic comparison (see below) of how the candidates are doing as far as video views and subscriptions.
- Video Editing: YouTube gave video creators a handy feature to cheer about in September with the release of a simple video editing service. The tool lets you edit uploaded YouTube clips without changing the IDs, which means you can retain view counts and comments even if you want to go back and change things up.
- Copyright Offenders Training: More of a campaign than a new feature, "YouTube Copyright School" came out in April to educate copyright offenders about their mistakes. Infringers could remove a copyright offense from their personal YouTube record by watching this clip.
- Merch Store: Launched in October, the Merch Store gives musicians an outlet to sell their music, concert tickets and branded merchandise within their YouTube channels.
- Live-Streaming Content: In April, YouTube dished out a page dedicated to live-streaming content. The page shows what videos are live at the moment, will be live within 24 hours and will be starting within 7 days. It also houses recently broadcasted clips you may have missed.
- Creative Commons Content: Video creators got an influx of B-roll choices in June when YouTube gave them access to more than 10,00 Creative Commons videos from sources such as Al Jazeera, C-SPAN, PublicResource.org and Voice of America. Content can be edited and used within any user's own video.
- More Movie Rentals: YouTube's movie rental service continued to grow this year. For example, it brought in 3,000 more titles in May alone.
Ads Find Major Success on YouTube
YouTube monetizes more than 3 billion video views per week through pre-roll, promoted videos and other tactics. But YouTube is not the only one benefiting from its success. Countless advertisers have reaped public affection and revenue with on YouTube with videos and partnerships. All but six of AdAge's Top 100 advertisers have completed campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network.
In fact, commercials are among the most successful videos on YouTube (see gallery below). It comes as no surprise that more advertisers are planning to spend ad money on YouTube.
The infamous Star Wars ad for Volkwagen's 2012 Passsat was featured during the Super Bowl this year, and it became an instant viral hit. It's no surprise the video has the most views in 2011 -- it also held the highest number of shares.
The Super Bowl ad for the Chrysler 200 not only had Detroit buzzing, but everywhere else in the world too. The video, which features Eminem, leaves you looking at the city with a different perspective.
This nine-minute, action-packed short film/commercial was directed by Ben Conrad of Zombieland. The ad explains flesh-eating zombies, pyrotechnics and robotic sharks. Add the members of Epic Meal Time and you have a recipe for viral success.
Jennifer Aniston's naivety about the Internet world makes for a hilarious ad, which asks, "What makes a video go viral?" In this video, apparently it takes Keenan Cahill, cute puppies, dancing babies and the double rainbow guy -- oh, and of course, sex appeal.
The Yellow Driver of Team Hot Wheels, a group of four expert drivers who brought Hot Wheels to life, broke the world record for longest distance jumped in a four-wheeled vehicle. The driver soared 332 feet through the air at the Indy 500 this year. The real life Hot Wheels track was 90-feet long, and had a ten-story drop.
Old Spice's signature spokesman, played by former football plater Isaiah Mustafa, has been a viral sensation this year. In this video, he goes on an elaborate "scent vacation," complete with beaches, mountaintops, fireworks and chocolate fondue.
Apple's ad debuting Siri on iPhone 4S is a great example of how a product can become viral on its own. The commercial gives a rundown of how Siri is capable of using voice recognition.
For the French launch of the Galaxy SII, Samsung had "Finger Tutting phenomenon" JayFunk perform some interesting choreography.
Adidas featured D. Rose from the Chicago Bulls "like you've never seen before" to unveil the company's latest shoe. This scenic video features matadors in a bullring, circling around Rose as he tries to make a basket.
Acquisitions and Partnerships Abound
YouTube made several important acquisitions and expanded its partnerships in 2011.
- Key acquisitions: Delicious (social bookmarking), RightsFlow (music copyright), Green Parrot (video quality), Next New Networks (original programming) and fflick (social comments aggregation).
- Notable Partnerships: Disney (original video series), Mozilla Firefox and Nvidia (3D videos), Picnik (video editing), Storyful (Egypt project), HP (comedy show), MovieClips (20,000 film snippets), Topsping, Songkick, Amazon and iTunes (Merch Store), Newseum (journalists memorial), celebrities and vloggers.
More than 20,000 partners from 22 countries now are involved YouTube Partner Program. YouTube says hundreds of its partners make more than $100,000 a year. Additionally, partners making over $1,000 a month is up 300% since 2010.
YouTube Bodes Well for Musicians
It was a banner year on YouTube for celebrity musicians as well as cover song artists looking to strike it rich like YouTube-grown Justin Bieber has.
For example, Coldplay live-streamed a concert and Tom Waits conducted a private listening party.
On YouTube's end, the site relaunched its music page and unveiled a weekly Top 100 YouTube music videos chart.
YouTube's Social Prowess Grows
Aside from adding an option to spark a Google+ hangout from within YouTube, YouTube grew leaps and bounds in the social sphere.
- Nearly 17 million people have connected a YouTube account to at least one social service such as Facebook and Twitter.
- 150 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook.
- Every minute more than 500 tweets contain YouTube links.
- An auto-shared tweet results in six new YouTube sessions on average.
- More than 12 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network.
- Millions of subscriptions happen each day, and millions of videos are favorited each day.
- More than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community.
- 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc.) every week.
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