YouTube is celebrating its sixth anniversary today with an announcement that the popular video sharing site, a subsidiary of Google, is now getting more than 3 billion page views per day. The number is a 50 percent increase over last year.
Google also announced that more than 48 hours (two days worth) of video is uploaded to the site every minute, a 37 percent increase over the last six months and 100 percent over last year. The website is still pushing to improve the video sharing and viewing experience by making the processing of uploads faster, increasing the video lengths limit, tweaking the hompeage for all users, and so on.
YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005 and in May 2005, the company launched YouTube.com. The website has had its share of problems related to intellectual property infringement (the latest attempt to combat this is YouTube Copyright School), and despite its surge in popularity the service has yet to become a profitable venture for Google since the search giant acquired it in 2006.
Still, the future looks bright. This year in particular, YouTube has been pushing to expand its reach in many areas. Two months ago, the company announced that it wants to grow its staff by 30 percent this year. Last month, Google entered live streaming business wanted by launching YouTube Live, which integrates live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform. Earlier this month, YouTube began offering full-length feature films from major Hollywood studios, for rent.