YouTube Stats & Facts

There are some amazing YouTube stats in 2018 that shock most people when they first see them.

From humble beginnings, YouTube quickly grew into one of the most popular and influential websites on the internet.

It is not an understatement to say that YouTube has changed the world. Literally billions of people now consume more video than than ever before, and millions of ambitious creators have decided to become a YouTuber and find their own audience.

YouTube Founders

YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. In a classic tale of entrepreneurship, they did their first programming on the site in a garage, and sold if for a fortunte less than two years later.

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All three founders worked at PayPal before starting their own successful venture together.

The team received an early investment of $3.5 Million in November of 2005 from legendary Silicon Valley VC fund, Sequoia Capital who has also invested in tech giants such as Apple, AirBNB, Google, and LinkedIn among others.

Purchase by Google

Google famously acquired YouTube on Oct 9, 2006 for $1.65 billion.  They had only 65 employees at the time, and this was a mere 1 year, 7 months and 25 days after its original formation.

This resulted in over $300 Million in Google shares paid to Chen and Hurley, with more than $60 Million for Karim who was the third co-founder.

Sequoia Capital received a reported $442.3 Million in Google Shares from only an $11.5 Million investment over two rounds – this means roughly a 3646% return on their investment in under a year.

The first YouTube video is titled ‘Me at the zoo’, and was posted on April 23, 2005 at 20:27:12 PDT.  It was added to the site by the site’s co-founder Jawed Karim who had the user name “Jawed.” The quality of the video reminds us that there have been many advances in the level of equipment and cameras used for YouTube over the last decade.

The original video is still up and you can check it out below.

The first YouTube advertisements were rolled out in August of 2007.  Since then, ads have been the primary source of income for the internet giant.

The long-time record holder for most YouTube Subscribers is gamer and comedian PewDiePie (Felix Arvid Ulf Kjelberg).  In early 2018 he passed 60 million subscribers.

There has long been speculation that PewDiePie has purchased some of his millions of views and subscribers, but nothing legitimate has been proven to date, and many believe he earned his numbers organically.

The first YouTube channel to ever to reach the coveted 1 million subscriber mark is early YouTuber, Fred, who achieved the milestone in April of 2009.

Music videos historically reach the highest highs in terms of views, and the current record holder is Luis Fonsi’s Despacito which is approaching a whopping 5 billion views.

If you are curious, have a look and add your view to the pile!

Many YouTubers struggle to even achieve more than 1,000 views and often wonder how to get more.  While there are many useful strategies, most of the record setting videos tend to involve music.

Despacito has also soared past Wiz Khalifa’s ‘See You Again’ video to become the most liked YouTube video of all time, recently clearing 25 million likes.

Justin Bieber’s first music video ‘Baby’ has earned the dishonor of being the most disliked YouTube video of all time by a wide margin.

Considering the billions of views that Justin has on this video and his many others, we doubt this bothers him too much.

The YouTube video that reached 1 Billion views the fastest was Adele’s ‘Hello’ video which was published on Oct 22, 2015. It took her only 87 days.  Today, the original post has over 2.2 billion views.

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Despite massive usership, the statistics around YouTube usership continue to grow in remarkable ways every single year.  Here are some updated YouTube numbers and user stats that we know in 2018.

While he is not generally considered a ‘YouTuber’ it is entirely possible that the world would now know who Justin Beiber is if not for YouTube.  Justin was posting videos of his performances on YouTube as far back as 2007 when he was 12 years old, and was discovered by none other than Usher in 2009.

Here is a sample of Justin’s early pre-fame work in 2008.  Despite the low quality video, the talent is easy to hear!

Ever since Google Purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion, the world has woken up to the incredible financial potential of the online streaming giant.  Here are some YouTube stats on finances and the vast amounts of money generated through its videos and advertisers.

Although Google does not publicly share financial details from YouTube, here are some statistics that some credible sources have recently estimated.

The world of YouTube is an amazing thing in 2018, and the fact is that it will only continue to grow its users, the money generated, and the stars that it creates.