YouTube turns seven: 72 hours of content now uploaded every minute

Think back to 2005. What were you doing then? Well Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim were getting ready to launch a site that would completely change the way we view video on the web.

Yup seven years ago, YouTube first buffered its way into the world’s imagination. Okay the company was actually officially founded in February of that year, but it was in May that its founders first decided to share the site with the world. Just over a year later, it would be bought out by internet giant Google.

Today YouTube is the world’s most popular video-sharing platform and YouTube Mobile is the second most popular.

In an official blog post Jessica Mason of the company’s Global Communications and Public Affairs unit said the company had “come along way in the past 7 years”:

What started as a handful of videos shared among friends has transformed into a global platform delivering the next generation of channels to anyone, anywhere, and on any device. This last year was especially big for us. We helped bring more great channels to YouTube and we redesigned the site, making it easier for you to discover, watch and subscribe to the videos you love. And all 800-million of you all over the world have shown us we’re on the right track by increasing subscriptions 50% and watching over 3-billion hours a month.

YouTube claims that “72 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute” today. Think you can watch everything on YouTube? Think again.