YouTube moves past 3 billion views a day
More than two days' worth of video gets uploaded to the site each minute.
YouTube may have initially gone viral thanks to the proliferation of cute cat videos uploaded by users attracted to the novelty of self-broadcasting. But the technology has since moved on to become a central tool used by protesters across North Africa and the Middle East.
So it is that YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday with the stunning announcement that it moved past the 3 billion views-per-day mark last weekend. That's a 50 percent increase over the previous year.
Put another way: it's equal to "nearly half the world's population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine videos a day," the company pointed out on its corporate blog.
Another tidbit offered up by YouTube: More than two days' worth of video gets uploaded to the site each minute.
Meanwhile, take a gander at the following April 2005 video from one of the service's co-founders, Jared Karim. It's the first clip ever uploaded to YouTube.
This post initially appeared on CBSNews.com.