YouTube Quick Facts:
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Third most visited site on the internet (behind Google and Facebook)
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2,000,000,000 Video views per day, worldwide
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829,440 Videos are uploaded each day
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The average internet users spends 900 seconds on Youtube per day
What is YouTube?
YouTube is a free video sharing site and social network. Anybody can watch and share videos on YouTube (the content ranges from music videos to how-to demos to amateur filmmaking) but to access additional features a person must register for an account.
Registered Users:
Registered users get a customizable homepage where for marking their favorites and queuing videos to watch later. They can comment on others' videos, subscribe to “channels” they like, or create a “channel” and post videos of their own. Their profile information is public by default, but can manually be set to private.
Content on YouTube:
YouTube requires videos to meet the community guidelines: no pornography or sex acts, no hate speech, no gratuitous violence, no drug abuse or underage drinking, no animal abuse, no copyright violation. But no one reviews videos to ensure that they meet these standards unless they are watched and flagged by another user.
Public or Private Videos on YouTube?
Videos are “public” by default, but users can opt to mark them as “private” (up to 50 invited YouTube users can see them) or “unlisted” (anyone with the URL can see them but they don't show up in YouTube searches.)
Communicating with YouTube:
YouTube users can communicate with each other in several ways. They can:
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Post comments on a video and respond to others' comments
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Record a video response to something they watched
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Share videos via email, embedding the video on their blog, or using Twitter or Facebook
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Post comments directly to a person's channel
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Privately message the owner of a channel
People must be at least 13 to get a YouTube account, but they can falsify a birth date to join at any age. YouTube's “safety mode” hides all comments and filters out some objectionable videos, but there is no way to keep kids from turning it off whenever they want.
