YouTube is celebrating its 5^th birthday this year. Needless to say they have done more in their first five years than most. Not the least of the accomplishments is the sheer enormity of the following point of interest (I refuse to say fact): YouTube is streaming 2 billion views per day currently. To put some perspective on this, albeit that the company is proclaiming it, that “nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined”.

TechCrunch gives us a little more info into how YouTube is celebrating:

To help commemorate the occasion, YouTube is also launching a new channel of videos called “My YouTube Story”, which includes a collection of clips featuring people around the world talking about how YouTube has changed their lives. The initial batch of clips were filmed by documentary filmmaker Stephen Higgins, and some of them are quite touching. YouTube users can upload their own video stories as well; YouTube will be plotting these videos on a global map, and will also offer an interactive timeline of clips.

The world of online video continues to explode and marketers continue to try to build the next great viral piece. If there are this many eyeballs looking for something to look at on a daily basis, that quest is likely to accelerate. Of course, unless you can tie yourself to some freakish celeb or you want a “stupid human trick” to promote your brand or product there might be limitations.

Here are a few fun facts that YouTube is sharing on their special occasion.

2 Billion views a day
3rd most visited website (Alexa)
Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
15 The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
45 Million home page impressions every day
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
100 Years of video scanned by copyright managent technology, Content ID, every day
1700 Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of videos on YouTube

Now the real telltale sign of just what purpose YouTube may be serving can be seen in the most viewed videos of all time.

Top 5 Most Viewed Videos of all time

Lady Gaga – Bad Romance with 196,115,524 views
Charlie bit my finger with 185,714,255 views
Evolution of Dance with 142,679,738 views
Miley Cyrus – 7 Things with 117,413,641
Pitbull – I Know You Want Me with 118,410,161

So while 2 billion is a big number how this milestone contributes to any progress the human race has made is left for others to debate.

Happy 5^th birthday, YouTube! Thanks for the great time wasters! Here’s to many more years of serving up the least common denominator of human capabilities!