The Graphic Gaze: Decoding YouTube’s Factful ‘17 Narrative

Infographic - Mind Numbing YouTube Facts,Figures and Statistics

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Since YouTube.com domain was first registered more than a decade ago, it has become one of the most used video sharing platforms on the planet. Former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in 2005 and only a year later their platform was one of the world’s fastest growing websites, surpassing MySpace with more than 100 million video views in the July of the same year. It wasn’t long before YouTube was purchased by Google on November 13. 2006 and since then the world’s most popular video sharing platform has grown continuously.

In 2017, more than 500 hours of video content are being uploaded to YouTube each minute, and over 1.5 billion active users utilize it to share their memories, music they love, business ideas or anything else they feel strongly about. The following infographic will present some of the most interesting YouTube facts and statistics that will enable you to understand better one of the most popular websites ever created.

It’s hard to pick highlights from such an interesting and comprehensive read, but a couple of key stats shine out.

• YouTube has just 0,5 billion users less than Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps one of the best-known business geniuses who made his fortune by creating the social network everyone wanted to be a part of. With more than 2 billion active users Facebook is the largest online community on the Internet today. YouTube has 1.5 billion active monthly users which makes it the second largest platform of its kind, well ahead of Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.

• People aged 24 to 44 watch the most videos on YouTube

This information isn’t particularly surprising since younger generations use the Internet more frequently than the older ones. 49% of all YouTube users are aged between 24 and 44, but this statistic will likely change in the future since YouTube’s popularity can only increase. What comes in as a surprise is the fact that men spend 24% more time on YouTube than women. Could it be that men are more interested in music, short videos or promotional business videos than women or perhaps, women are simply more practical and thus tend to spend less time aimlessly going through endless video content.

• 9% of the videos are taken down because of the copyright infringements

At one point in the early 2000’s, it seemed as if the copyright laws will be changed forever by the Internet. Since then countless initiatives have prevented YouTube users to view, upload or share content that they don’t have the permission to use. In 2017, 9% of all videos uploaded on YouTube are taken down by the copyright holders. This means that YouTubers must make sure that all content they upload is unique or that they at least have a permission to use it.

• An average person spends 40 minutes on YouTube each day

YouTube is probably one of the best pastimes the Internet can offer, and for that reason, a common person spends 40 minutes on YouTube per day. When you add an average life expectancy into the equation the math shows that during their lifetimes, people spend nearly 2 years on YouTube, or 1 year and 10 months to be exact.

• Pop music singers are the most popular celebrities on YouTube

Naturally, music is the most searched term on YouTube, and celebrities like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry or Rihana have millions of subscribers with billions of total video views. Unlike Facebook where the most popular celebrities are Christiano Ronaldo or Vin Diesel, an actor and a football player, YouTube stars are mostly musicians and Pop Culture icons whose music is available to fans across the globe because of this platform. Some of the historically most viewed videos on YouTube are Luis Fonsi’s Despacito, Psy’s Gangnam Style or Tayler Swift’s Shake it Off that all have a staggering amount of views.

Let us know what you think about these interesting facts about YouTube in the comments below and feel free to share this article with your friends and colleagues.

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Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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