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Over 100 Hours of Video Uploaded To YouTube Every Minute

Posted by samzenpus on from the looking-at-the-numbers dept.

jones_supa writes "Google's YouTube is celebrating its 8-year birthday, and at the same time they reveal some interesting numbers. 'Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That's more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That's almost one out of every two people on the Internet. Millions of partners are creating content for YouTube and more than 1,000 companies worldwide have mandated a one-hour mid-day break to watch nothing but funny YouTube videos. Well, we made that last stat up, but that would be cool (the other stats are true).'"

58 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Where's the obvious second half of this statistic? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many hours of video per minute are people watching?

  2. Have they hit a petabyte yet? by scottbomb · · Score: 2

    I wonder how big, in terms of storage, is the server farm to maintain this monstrosity.

    1. Re:Have they hit a petabyte yet? by joss · · Score: 1

      oh, my bad.. make that 30.. its only 6000 minutes per minute.. could be a lot worse

      --
      http://rareformnewmedia.com/
    2. Re:Have they hit a petabyte yet? by joss · · Score: 1

      oh, that's assuming shitty resolution of around 340p

      --
      http://rareformnewmedia.com/
    3. Re:Have they hit a petabyte yet? by Danathar · · Score: 1

      It's Google's infrastructure. THAT's how big.

      If I had to guess, youtube is just another app sitting on their distributed whatever it is.

  3. 100 hours of video / minute by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    In a way Youtube beats time... but that gives an idea of the bandwidth available upstream (downstream being even more monstrous)

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    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  4. Manual review by tepples · · Score: 1

    Some large and influential copyright owners are unhappy with the OCILLA safe harbor as interpreted in Viacom v. YouTube and have pushed for requiring each uploaded video to be reviewed by a person before it goes live. How much would it cost to employ people to watch 100 hours of video every minute?

    1. Re:Manual review by mcclungsr · · Score: 1

      How would you train all those people to recognize every copyrighted item? Just every copyrighted piece of music would be impossible. A computer is going to have a lower error rate on this than any group of humans.

    2. Re:Manual review by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      100 hrs/minute is 6,000 hrs/hr, so you'd need 6,000 people employed around the clock. It's probably close to minimum wage work, so $10/hr or so, puts that at $60,000 per hour or $1,000/minute.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Manual review by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      I've got an idea to fire back at them. Require all takedown notices to be reviewed by a human person before being submitted. Then in exchange, Google will promise to have a human review each takedown notice on THEIR end as well. If Google finds a violation - they take it down. If they don't find a violation - the people who sent the complaint are billed for Google's review time!!

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:Manual review by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      And just extending your calculations: 6,000 people employed around the clock at $10 per hour (or more people working shifts so you get 6,000 people working every hour for 24 hours a day-7 days a week) is $60,000 per hour or $1,440,000 per day or over $525 million per year.

      Total Google revenues for 2012 were $46,039,000,000 so the "Review Uploaded YouTube Videos" department would cost Google 1% of it's revenue every year.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    5. Re: Manual review by Redmancometh · · Score: 1

      Wow that actually seems fair

  5. Doing my part by WillgasM · · Score: 2

    I've been doing my part by uploading inane videos of myself eating at my desk in silence.

    1. Re:Doing my part by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      What amazes me are the 5 "likes".

      --
      I come here for the love
  6. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by WeatherForecast · · Score: 2

    And even scarier, how many hours of video on YouTube are WORTH watching?

  7. The Copyrobeast by tepples · · Score: 1

    myself eating at my desk in silence

    In other words, like Magibon. Unfortunately, such videos might be the only videos allowed on YouTube if Big Copyright gets its way.

  8. I keep on wondering by lesincompetent · · Score: 2

    How can this be a sustainable business model?
    No, i have no background whatsoever in economics and\or management.

  9. Good Buy by Andrio · · Score: 1

    It's safe to say that Google acted wisely when they bought YouTube, despite the fact that it was losing money (and continued to for a few years).

    I wonder how things have turned out if MS bought YouTube instead?

    --
    The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
    1. Re:Good Buy by oGMo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Same thing that happened with hotmail. They switch to Windows servers, it crashes and burns horribly, so they switch back. There's no quality control, no development, it goes to hell, and everyone switches to the far superior service Google offers (since they decided to grow their own and not acquire youtube).

      Then they switch everyone over to zune.com or something to try capitalizing on their name .. or perhaps trying to gain a name, it's hard to tell really .. complete with commercials about people deleting hundreds of hours of video in a single click in the middle of other unrelated activities, because you know that's the feature we've all really been missing.

      --

      Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

  10. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by robthebloke · · Score: 4, Funny

    But more importantly, how many cat videos is that per hour?

  11. More nines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Theodore Sturgeon once snapped at critics of science fiction by saying "90 percent of anything is garbage." This "law" has since been ported to other fields.

    But in the case of YouTube, Sturgeon's Law would need a few more (or a lot more) nines.

    1. Re:More nines by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      In my mind there is a curve of useful information which started out exponentially when the internet started and is now horizontally approaching an asymptote. The amount of total information, however has continued to grow exponentially. Thus the need for services such as google, bing, yahoo to help us to sort through the endless streams of junk to find the one or two nuggets of information worth having.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  12. So how long... by opusman · · Score: 2

    ...until the total length of video on YouTube is greater than the age of the universe?

    1. Re:So how long... by Zordak · · Score: 4, Informative

      The universe is approximately 13.7E9 years old. There are 8.766E3 hours in a year. Thus, the universe is approximately 1.20E14 hours old. So at a rate of 100 hours per second, it would take 1.20E12 second to exceed the age of the universe in YouTube videos. 1.20E12 seconds works out to around 1 million years. So we have a way to go still.

      --

      Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
    2. Re:So how long... by Pembers · · Score: 1

      About two million years at the current rate. Of course, if the rate of uploading continues to accelerate as it has been doing, they might get there a bit sooner.

      --

      Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...

    3. Re:So how long... by the_other_chewey · · Score: 1

      At 100 hours per minute, youtube is filling at a rate of 6000x real time (6000h/h).

      Age of the universe: About 13.8 billion years.

      13.8e9 years / 6000 = 2.3e6

      So, assuming a constant upload rate (a huge assumption): in 2.3 million years.

      (I should have includeed the additional age of the universe until this happens,
      but that's less than a rounding error at this precision.)

    4. Re:So how long... by Captoo · · Score: 1

      We may run out of cats before that. Then the YouTube upload rate will be negligible.

    5. Re:So how long... by fulldecent · · Score: 1

      Dont forget second order effects:

      http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-scott-over-35-hours-of-video.html

      Unfortunately (?) d^3/dt^3 showing acceleration in upload rate videos is flat

      --

      -- I was raised on the command line, bitch

    6. Re:So how long... by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      ...until the total length of video on YouTube is greater than the age of the universe?

      Considering the universe is 6000 years old, 6000/100 HPM= 60 minutes.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    7. Re:So how long... by shrikel · · Score: 1

      Ah, but you're assuming videos will continue to be uploaded at a constant rate. Extrapolate future upload rates based on the past 10 years' growth history (or an estimate, if necessary), and recalculate. I'd do it myself, but I'm too lazy and I'm pretty sure somebody else here will take it as a challenge.

      --
      Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
  13. What blows my mind by benjfowler · · Score: 2

    Even allowing for a "power law" access pattern for the videos (and perhaps, Google optimizing storage of frequently-accessed video in RAM or fast disks...), I do wonder how the hell you can access any video in their archive virtually instantly. Their data centres must be MASSIVE.

    1. Re:What blows my mind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You can always take a peek inside to find out.

    2. Re:What blows my mind by T-Bone-T · · Score: 1

      You say that, but I've looked at videos that buffered at low resolutions even though I could watch a popular, high-resolution video without buffering. So, yes, you can access any video but you probably won't enjoy it.

  14. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by alen · · Score: 2

    A LOT
    yesterday my son was learning origami via youtube videos. way better than a $20 book like when i was a kid

  15. there's something for everyone by HPHatecraft · · Score: 2

    I have to exert some willpower now and again to not become annoyed at all of the garbage on YouTube (or the Internet for that matter).

    The wisdom of George Carlin is immensely helpful in this regard: "Have you ever noticed that their stuff is **** and your **** is stuff?"

    RIP, sir.

  16. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by olau · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Agreed. And if you take a look at the top subscribed channels, it's not all complete crap or copyrighted-by-someone-else material.

    Of course, most of the stuff on that list is not something I'd like to watch, but take any list of commercial TV channels, and I'd feel the same way. :)

  17. "warp 39" in star trek terms by peter303 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    In original Star Trek the warp number seed was the cube of light velocity. 100 hours per minute is a 60,000-fold factor or 39-cubed. Even at that speed it would take a year and four months cross the Milky Way from one side to another.

    1. Re:"warp 39" in star trek terms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      peter303 doesn't explain well and is bad at arithmetic.

      The original Star Trek writers' notes from the 60s have an equation to figure out the Warp Factor (the 5 in "plot a course to Earth, Warp 5"). Divide the speed of the ship by the speed of light and take the cube root. So Warp 1 is equivalent to the speed of light (the cube root of 1) and warp 10 would be 1000 times the speed of light. it's a pretty simple scale.

      I think he is trying to say that if you took "hours per minute" as a speed(which makes no sense) it'd be warp factor 39. He starts off by saying that 100 hours/minute is "a 60,000 fold" factor. As near as I can tell from what he says he means 6,000 (change hours to minutes to get 6,000 minutes/minute). Then I think he is saying that to get a speed of 60,000 times the speed of light you'd need warp 39. This is correct enough, 39.15.
      So if you wanted 6,000 times the speed of light that'd be warp 18.17.

      none of this explains why he saw "hours/minute" and decided it was a speed to change into a warp factor...

    2. Re:"warp 39" in star trek terms by ModernGeek · · Score: 1

      They changed it to be a logarithmic scale where 10 was infinite velocity. This happened sometime in The Next Generation, as they did go "over warp 10" in one episode.

      --
      Sig: I stole this sig.
  18. mostly crap by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    100 hours a minute, and only .00001% worth watching.

  19. How many copied videos? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 1

    Seems like any time someone has a popular video, another user rips it and uploads under their username it to steal hits. The copies and compilations make it really hard to find original content when you're doing searches.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
  20. Reposts? by MaWeiTao · · Score: 2

    How many of those uploads are reposts?

    Many popular videos have numerous low quality reposts with appended logos, intros and captions so that individuals can glom onto the original popularity. It's so bad that it's often impossible to find the original video a year, sometimes months, after the original posting.

  21. How often do they add storage by gravis777 · · Score: 1

    Makes me wonder how fast they are having to add storage. For that matter, what type of storage are they using to use for the constant read / writes. And that is just for YouTube - forget Gmail, Google Earth, Google Docs and Google. Man, I would love to see pictures of Google's DataCenter. Oh, wait, I can Google it:
    http://images.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1536&bih=891&q=google+data+center&oq=google+data+&gs_l=img.3.0.0l9j0i10.648.2409.0.4177.12.11.0.0.0.0.297.1367.3j6j1.10.0...0.0...1ac.1.14.img.4Zg6ztnIvrI

  22. Re:News for Nerds by gagol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These days, the slow news days are as abundant as cheap crap videos on youtube...

    --
    Tomorrow is another day...
  23. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by noh8rz10 · · Score: 2

    this is all my bad, guys. I upload 100 hours of video about my cat every minute. Maru!

    -Magumogu.

  24. Use Mechanical Turk (Re:Manual review) by romons · · Score: 1

    They already have millions of reviewers looking at the crap all the time. Just put a 'is it copied?' button next to the video, and after 100 clicks have somebody look at it.

    --
    Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
  25. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · · Score: 1

    Well, the total in 2009 was 110,952 according to Yahoo Canada, fwtw. So 27,738 per year and 76 per day, assuming 4 years of non-stop uploading, slow at first of course but reaching high volumes soon enough. Meow, or should we say nyan? But 111k sounds wayyyyyyyyyy too low...

  26. Re:Advertising by tompaulco · · Score: 2

    Some folks have actual advertising deals where they get paid (less YOuTube commission) when you watch their video.

    And then there's the little side videos of "you may be interested in this.".

    And then there are the adverts placed in your search.

    Okay, I have a question. In all of internet history, has anyone ever clicked on an advertisement and actually purchased an item? Just wondering.

    --
    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  27. Flag button and disparagement of title by tepples · · Score: 1

    YouTube used to have "copyright infringement" as one option under the flag button until someone pointed out that it encourages users to commit disparagement of title against videos they dislike.

    1. Re:Flag button and disparagement of title by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      There's no harm to clicking the button as described. If it is taken down after the first 100 clicks, then yes, it's slander of title, but if it's not automatic, then there's no harm.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    2. Re:Flag button and disparagement of title by tepples · · Score: 1

      Better yet, call it the "Name That Tune" button and let people key in what song they hear.

  28. Re:Advertising by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · · Score: 1

    Thank you for supporting Slashdot.

  29. Re:Electrons Gone Missing by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

    At the rate youtube is expanding the electrons in this universe may soon vanish. Could data become so dense that a black hole is formed?

    well maybe...
    Data=Knowledge, Knowledge=Power, Power=Energy,
    Energy=(Mass*SpeedOfLight)^2 :. Data=(Mass*SpeedOfLight)^2
    assuming 1 bit it the basic unit of data,
    r=2gm/c^2 == (r(c^2))/g=m
    d=mc^2 == d/c^2=m
    (r(c^2))/g=d/c^2
    dg=c^2 r(c^2)

    oh wait you weren't serious...

    --
    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  30. Re:Advertising by FatAlb3rt · · Score: 1

    I bet you've never clicked on a television commercial either.

  31. Yup by justthinkit · · Score: 1

    I bought some web hosting by responding to a spam email.

    --
    I come here for the love
  32. The other second order effect by justthinkit · · Score: 1

    How long to upload videos totally 60 million years? You'll need another 416 2/3 days to cover that. And then another 4 days to cover that. Rounding up: 60,000,421 days.

    --
    I come here for the love
  33. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by Seumas · · Score: 1

    None, because 35 hours are chicks showing their tits and making vapid "replies" to popular videos. Another 25 hours are chicks with 20 minute videos doing makeup tutorials, 20 hours are chicks coming home from shopping trips and showing what they bought (I'm serious, this is apparently a fucking "thing", now). The remaining 20 are idiots attempting to make viral videos, but possessing no talent. Or jackholes in their basement trying to be the "next big star" like the other 800 obnoxious teenagers with cult following that always makeup the "top 100 of youtube", but just make you think less of humanity as a whole to know people watch them.

  34. Re:Where's the obvious second half of this statist by gronofer · · Score: 1

    Agreed. And if you take a look at the top subscribed channels, it's not all complete crap or copyrighted-by-someone-else material.

    To me, working through that list would be a spectacularly bad way of finding videos that are worth watching.