YouTube hits two billion views a day

YouTube is five years old this month

YouTube has celebrated two milestones: generating over two billion views a day, and turning five years old.

The California-based video sharing site, now a subsidiary of Google, was launched in beta five years ago this month with a mission to provide people with a place to upload and share their videos with the world.

YouTube started very much as a site for tech-savvy video bloggers, but has since evolved into a global platform used by Hollywood studios and broadcasters to reach a huge audience.

Its use in the corporate world has also grown, as companies exploit the site to push marketing and other material to customers, as well as internal video communications such as training videos and addresses by senior executives.

YouTube has also become a valuable tool for media companies such as V3.co.uk parent Incisive Financial Publishing. The V3.co.uk YouTube channel, for example, features all the latest video news debriefs, reviews and interviews.

YouTube was bought by Google towards the end of 2006 for around $1.65bn.

The site has launched a dedicated Five Year channel to celebrate the anniversary.