YouTube celebrates a billion views a day

YouTube has reached a momentous milestone, say founders

YouTube has announced that it is now serving one billion videos a day to clip-happy internet users.

Chad Hurley, chief executive and co-founder of YouTube, said in a blog post entitled Y,000,000,000uTube that the milestone represented a great moment in the firm's short history.

"Three years ago today [YouTube co-founder] Steve [Chen] and I stood in front of our offices and jokingly crowned ourselves the 'burger kings' of media," read the post.

"We'd just made headlines by joining with Google in our shared goal of organising the world's information (in our case video) and making it easily and quickly accessible to anyone, anywhere.

"Today I'm proud to say that we have been serving well over a billion views a day on YouTube. This is great moment in our short history and we owe it all to you."

Hurley credits a number of factors to his firm's success, including a commitment to two basic principles that he said had become fundamental tenants in the world of online video. These are that videos should load and play quickly, and be hosted on an open platform.

"We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer and an internet connection can share their life, art and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so," he said.

"There are now more ways than ever to make and consume content, and more of you are looking to turn your hobby into a real business. We're working hard to keep up with the fast pace of technology to bring you everything you would expect from the world's largest video site."