YouTube celebrates one billion monthly unique users

While most of us deal with "dozens" or even "hundreds" on a daily basis, YouTube deals with numbers in the billions. It appears the eight year-old video service has hit its latest milestone of one billion unique users each month.

Attempting to add perspective to this number through the power of analogy, YouTube notes that if it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world during any given month -- only China and India have larger populations.

Or, put another way, PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance more than 200,000 more times. "That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!" YouTube notes.

Perhaps the most useful way to visualize a billion monthly unique users though, is this: nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube. That's pretty impressive.

Google thanks, in part, what it labels as "Generation C" for YouTube's tremendous success. Gen C is defined as individuals who are constantly switching between devices (smartphones are a huge part of this) and are deeply engaged with YouTube's underlying community. More information about Gen C can be found on Google's Agency Blog.

A little over a year ago, YouTube announced it had surpassed a whopping four billion video views daily. In 2006 -- just a year after the service started -- YouTube was "only" serving up 100 million videos per day. Google acquired the startup in 2006 for $1.6 billion.