YouTube Hits A Billion Unique Views A Month

In the 8 years since YouTube has been with us, it's grown to be the second largest search engine in the world and the biggest online video portal by many a country mile. It's YouTube's world, we just live in it and now that fact has been confirmed by YouTube itself with the announcement that they have hit a staggering 1 Billion unique views every single month. Google Inc bought YouTube for $1.76 billion back in 2006 when the video site had an estimated 50 million global users. It's since grown into a formidable vehicle for user and brand generated content and is estimated to make its parent company $4 Billion this year alone from advertising revenue.

So what does 1 Billion unique views actually mean? Well, that translates into roughly 15% of the world's current population or, to put it another way, nearly half of those who have access to the internet will visit YouTube at least once a month. If YouTube were a nation state, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India. With the growth in second screen devices and video recording as standard on most smartphones and tablets, it can only be a matter of time before today's record is smashed out of the water again.