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FOR AGES 3 YEARS TO 18 YEARS
At Kidadl we pride ourselves on offering families original ideas to make the most of time spent together at home or out and about, wherever you are in the world. We strive to recommend the very best things that are suggested by our community and are things we would do ourselves - our aim is to be the trusted friend to parents.
We try our very best, but cannot guarantee perfection. We will always aim to give you accurate information at the date of publication - however, information does change, so it’s important you do your own research, double-check and make the decision that is right for your family.
Kidadl provides inspiration to entertain and educate your children. We recognise that not all activities and ideas are appropriate and suitable for all children and families or in all circumstances. Our recommended activities are based on age but these are a guide. We recommend that these ideas are used as inspiration, that ideas are undertaken with appropriate adult supervision, and that each adult uses their own discretion and knowledge of their children to consider the safety and suitability.
Kidadl cannot accept liability for the execution of these ideas, and parental supervision is advised at all times, as safety is paramount. Anyone using the information provided by Kidadl does so at their own risk and we can not accept liability if things go wrong.
YouTube is a video-sharing platform started by the three former employees of PayPal on February 14, 2005.
YouTube is a social website through which people watch the videos they like, listen to music they want, upload any content and share their videos and thoughts with friends, family, and the world. Google has owned the channel since October 2006.
Google reduced the copyright risks by making deals with entertainment companies. YouTube generates its revenue not only from advertisements but also from paid content like movies and shows. Through Google's AdSense program, YouTube started generating revenue for itself and approved creators. With growing technologies, YouTube expanded to mobile apps, network televisions, and linked with other platforms. Most of the content in the channel was generated by individuals. Slowly, it collaborated with media corporations like Disney, MGM, and Warner Media and created corporate YouTube channels to attract more audiences. Though YouTube has captured the minds of many, the channel is criticized for spreading wrong or misguided information, user's privacy policy, censorship, and child safety.
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, former PayPal employees, are the founders of YouTube. The idea behind the channel was that ordinary people could share their videos, and this idea was raised for friends at a dinner party. First, it started as a dating site with the name 'Tune In Hook Up'. Later, it was changed to a video uploading platform. YouTube was started with the domain name youtube.com. The name was the same as the domain name utube.com of Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, and later they changed their domain to utubeonline.com.
YouTube was registered on February 14, 2005. The company has its headquarters in San Bruno, California. The first YouTube video, 'Me at the Zoo', was uploaded by Karim in April 2005. Its beta site was launched in May 2005. In September 2005, a Nike ad video went viral and received one million views.
In October 2005, playlist function was added for content creators and users. Its official launch happened on December 15, 2005. Sequoia Capital became part of the business, which helped improve the bandwidth of YouTube servers.
In March 2006, YouTube set a limit of 10 minutes for uploaded videos. In May 2006, people were allowed to respond to these uploaded videos. The feature of uploading videos from cellphones was added.
In October 2006, along with 65 employees of YouTube, Google acquired YouTube in stock for $1.65 billion. In May 2007, Partner's Program was launched, and through this, content creators could make money off uploading videos.
In June 2007, usage of other languages was allowed for the first time. With 'Audio swap' function added in December 2008, content creators uploaded videos with music. In December 2009, automatic speech recognition was launched. In March 2010, 'Thumbs' rating system was added.
In April 2011, Live stream was launched on YouTube. With this feature, events and functions are streamed live. 'YouTube Analytics' tool launched in November 2011, helped content creators track their channel's performance. In July 2012, the Olympics streamed live on YouTube.
In October 2019, 'Two Ads' feature was added to increase the creators' revenue.
Since its release, YouTube has constantly been working to improve the accessibility of its content and localization. Accessibility is important to increase the number of users by including people who don't know English and people with disabilities.
Video technology:
YouTube primarily uses the VP9 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC for video compression and decompression. VP9 format offers better quality than H.264.
Since 2019, AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) video coding format is also used.
It uses Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) or MPEG-DASH for streaming high-quality videos over the internet.
In the beginning, computers needed to have an Adobe Flash Player plug-in installed to play YouTube videos.
In 2010, YouTube began using the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers supporting HTML5.
Since January 27, 2015, HTML5 has been the default playback method.
Lowest resolution for YouTube videos is 144p, and the highest is 2160p, also called 4K resolution.
The maximum resolution for live streaming is 4K at 60fps.
Accessibility:
Automatic speech recognition to add closed-captioning was introduced in 2009. This greatly benefited deaf and hearing-impaired people.
As of 2017, over a billion videos had auto-generated captions.
These auto-generated captions of YouTube are only 70% accurate. YouTube is constantly working to improve the accuracy of auto-captions.
YouTube offers auto captions in 10 languages. These are English, Russian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Localization:
The new localization system was launched on June 19, 2007.
You can add subtitles and descriptions for your videos in various languages. This helps audiences from various countries to consume video content.
The interface of YouTube is available in 76 languages. Bangladesh is the latest country to get a localized version of YouTube.
It uses users' locations to determine which local version must be displayed.
YouTube quickly became popular as a video-sharing platform. In July 2006, over 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day and were amassing 100 million views per day. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, 15% of all internet traffic was on YouTube. YouTube's popularity shows no sign of slowing down. It generates huge revenue and is considered to be Google's best acquisition.
Within three months, it attracted more than 30,000 viewers per day. Two million video views were reached at that time. The number was at an increasing rate. In January 2006, it was 25 million views, and in March 2006, more than 20,000 new videos were uploaded.
In 2007, Tony Blair created his account, and he was the world's first leader in creating a channel on the platform.
Jonathan Harchick uploaded the longest video for 596 hours in 2012.
In February 2017, about 400 hours of videos were uploaded per minute, increasing to 500 hours per minute by 2019.
Marketing statistics say that marketers focus on YouTube to reach a larger audience because of its growing popularity.
YouTube is the fifth most marketing platform, and 55% of marketers use it to market their videos. 70% of these people buy a product after watching these ads on YouTube.
YouTube earned a revenue of $19.8 billion in 2020.
As of 2020, 300 million people have subscribed to YouTube Premium.
'Gangnam Style' is the first YouTube video to reach one billion views.
222 videos on YouTube have garnered more than one billion views, and five videos have more than five billion views.
With 10.2 billion views, 'Baby Shark Dance' is the most-watched video.
Several statistics could explain the demographics of YouTube. These statistics help us know the usage of this video-sharing platform by people and provide information to marketers on reaching these users effectively. Demographics make us understand the reason behind the platform's popularity regardless of age, gender, and geography.
User statistics say that there are more than two billion YouTube users. YouTube ranks second as a popular social media platform and a search engine. Global male YouTube users account for 56% and females 44%.
53% of U.S. parents say that their kids under age 11 watch videos on YouTube at least once a day. The daily average time spent on YouTube by people aged over 18 is 41.9 minutes.
Geographical statistics say India comes first with 225 million active users, and the U.S. comes second with 197 million users. Brazil, Japan, Russia come next on this list.
YouTube is used by 82% male adults and 80% female adults in the U.S. A total of 77% of people in the U.S between the ages 15 and 35 use this platform. Americans between the ages 36 and 45, 46 and 55, and older accounts for 73%, 70%, and 67%, respectively.
Not only a video-sharing platform, YouTube also provides various other services. Some of them are free and some are subscription-based. Some of these services are listed below.
YouTube Community: This feature of YouTube allows content creators to interact with their channel subscribers and viewers using polls, GIFs, images, and text. It was launched in September 2016 and is available for channels with more than 500 subscribers.
YouTube Kids: It is a version of YouTube created for kids aged 3-13, with additional parental controls and age-appropriate content. It was released on February 15, 2015.
YouTube Movies: YouTube Movies is a service provided by YouTube that allows users to watch movies on their website. Many of these films are free to watch. However, they do contain advertisements.
YouTube Music: Released on May 22, 2018, it is a subscription-based music streaming service. It is a replacement for Google Play Music.
YouTube Premium: It was launched in June 2018 after splitting YouTube Red into YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. Users can watch videos without ads by subscribing to this service.
YouTube Shorts: Similar to TikTok, this feature enables people to create short videos of up to 60 seconds long. Its beta version was launched in India on September 14, 2020.
YouTube TV: For $64.99, you can watch live TV and cloud DVR (Digital Video Recorder) from more than 85 television channels. It was launched on February 28, 2017.
Q: Who was the first YouTuber?
A: YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim was the first one to upload a YouTube video in 2005.
Q: What is unique about YouTube?
A: YouTube shows content that is user-generated, unlike traditional video streaming services. It is also the second-largest search engine.
Q: Was YouTube a dating site?
A: Yes, YouTube was initially planned to be released as a video dating website, but it failed.
Q: What are the most subscribed channels on YouTube?
A: T Series is the most subscribed YouTube channel, with 260 million subscribers. Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes comes second with 128 million subscribers
Q: Who created YouTube?
A: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim created YouTube.
Q: Where is YouTube most popular?
A: India has the most YouTube users, with 225 million users.
Q: Who was the first YouTuber to get a million subscribers?
A: Lucas Cruikshank was the first YouTuber to get a million subscribers for his animated character Fred Figglehorn.
Q: How many YouTube Play buttons are there?
A: There are five YouTube Play buttons. These are the Silver Play button (for 100k subscribers), Gold Play button (for 1M subscribers), Diamond Play button (for 10M subscribers), Custom Play button (for 50M subscribers), and Red Diamond Play button (for 100M subscribers).
Q: How many hours of YouTube are watched a day?
A: Over one billion hours of YouTube videos are watched every day.
Q: Who has the oldest YouTube channel?
A: Jawed Karim created the first YouTube channel called 'Jawed' on April 23, 2005.
Read The Disclaimer
At Kidadl we pride ourselves on offering families original ideas to make the most of time spent together at home or out and about, wherever you are in the world. We strive to recommend the very best things that are suggested by our community and are things we would do ourselves - our aim is to be the trusted friend to parents.
We try our very best, but cannot guarantee perfection. We will always aim to give you accurate information at the date of publication - however, information does change, so it’s important you do your own research, double-check and make the decision that is right for your family.
Kidadl provides inspiration to entertain and educate your children. We recognise that not all activities and ideas are appropriate and suitable for all children and families or in all circumstances. Our recommended activities are based on age but these are a guide. We recommend that these ideas are used as inspiration, that ideas are undertaken with appropriate adult supervision, and that each adult uses their own discretion and knowledge of their children to consider the safety and suitability.
Kidadl cannot accept liability for the execution of these ideas, and parental supervision is advised at all times, as safety is paramount. Anyone using the information provided by Kidadl does so at their own risk and we can not accept liability if things go wrong.
Kidadl is independent and to make our service free to you the reader we are supported by advertising.
We hope you love our recommendations for products and services! What we suggest is selected independently by the Kidadl team. If you purchase using the buy now button we may earn a small commission. This does not influence our choices. Please note: prices are correct and items are available at the time the article was published.
Kidadl has a number of affiliate partners that we work with including Amazon. Please note that Kidadl is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.
We also link to other websites, but are not responsible for their content.
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