YouTube Hits One Billion Monthly User Milestone

YouTube now has more than one billion unique users every month, the video sharing website has revealed in a blog post, with almost one in two internet users visiting the site each month.

The billion monthly users is roughly equal to ten Super Bowl audiences and if YouTube users were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India.

The company said: "In the last eight years you've come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences."

But YouTube is not only about funny cat videos with advertisers also taking notice of the huge global audience. Accoridng to the company all of the Ad-Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube.

Founded on 14 February 2005, YouTube was created by PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, and the first video, called Me At The Zoo, was uploaded on 23 April 2005. By July 2006 more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day and the site was receiving more than 100 million views daily.

In October 2006 Google announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65bn (£1.1bn) and it is now the third most visited website in the US, according to web analytics company Alexa, behind Google and Facebook.

The blog post went on: "From the aspiring filmmaker in his basement and the next great pop musician, to the fans all around the world who tune in, subscribe and share their favourite videos with the planet, thank you for making YouTube what it is today. You have truly created something special."

In December 2012 the Gangnam Style music video by Korean rapper Psy became the first YouTube video to pass the one billion views milestone, and three months later it is now at more than 1.4 billion views.