YouTube. the third most popular site on this here internet, has surpassed one billion monthly unique visitors. With around 2.4 billion total internet users worldwide–regardless of how active they are, that means YouTube counts north of 41 percent of the entire Internet as active monthly users.Now, remember that YouTube is owned by Google, who bought the then-unprofitable for a record $1.65 billion in 2006. Google's sites (I'm assuming those based off of Google.com) passed the billion user mark back in 2011, and the firm also owns a number of ancillary sites like Google+, which boasts something like 105 million uniques on its own. It's no surprise that Google is the most powerful company on the web, but these numbers are astounding.For comparison, Facebook is the only other firm to pass a billion uniques a month. The Huffington Post, one of the most massive digital news properties on the web, only pulls in 39 million a month. "Only," of course, is relative. HuffPo is a giant. Yet Google has two sites that each pull in at least 25 times as many visitors. Is that blowing your mind yet?Why is YouTube working so well? Because it connects to users. I know that seems obvious, but it's a hard thing for a lot of media companies to figure out. Half of YouTube's general users watch videos on mobile devices, and two-thirds of so-called Gen C–the smartphone generation, if you will–do so.Compare that to just about any traditional media outlet: Most of the time it's outright impossible to watch traditional video programming legally online. While sites like Hulu and moves like NBC Sports' online streaming of Sunday Night Football are attempts to close the gap, they're all-too-often clunky, slow, and hard to share. YouTube, on the other hand, has worked hard to develop the platform, which is what's been instrumental to its success.That's not to mention the content. YouTube made its bones off of viral videos, delivered in a way that not even America's Funniest Home Videos could hope to achieve: clips that are heavily edited by peers and packaged so gratification is instant. But now that it's a behemoth, YouTube is moving towards becoming a premium content provider, with subscription channels quite possibly on the way. Original programming sits right alongside those lovely, quickie clips of squirrels water skiing.It's not a perfect model. YouTube's open platform is great for traffic, but not for honing content and pushing out the fluff. Single channels still don't have the reach of network TV, despite that billion users number, and if YouTube wants to compete in that realm, it's going to have to fundamentally change itself. But considering the clout it has and the way people's viewing habits have shifted away from their TVs, it probably won't have to.@derektmead
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