YouTube Hits 1 Billion Monthly Users

PSY - Gangnam Style

YouTube just announced a major milestone.

It now has more than 1 billion monthly unique users.

Here's what that means, courtesy of the YouTube blog:

• Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visit YouTube.
• Its monthly viewership is equivalent to the size of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
• If YouTube were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India.

YouTube, which launched back in 2005, has evolved from a site dedicated to amateur videos to one that distributes original content. Google bought YouTube for $1.25 billion in 2006.

For context, Facebook hit 1 billion monthly active users back in October 2012, about eight years after launching. Twitter, on the other hand, only has 200 million active monthly users after about seven years in operation.