YouTube Gets 1.8 Billion Logged-in Viewers Monthly

On stage today at Radio City Music Hall, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made a surprising revelation: the service gets 1.8 billion logged-in viewers every month. And that doesn't include people who aren't logged in -- which means the actual number of people watching YouTube is definitely much higher. From a report: Last June, the service had 1.5 billion logged-in watchers. On TVs alone, people are now watching 150 million hours of YouTube every day. The latest figures are yet another sign that YouTube's reach is staggering, something that Wojcicki wanted to make crystal clear for the audience of advertisers and potential partners at its annual BrandCast event.

And if it charged 1 cent per view

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd have zero viewers.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Comprende much? PER VIEW!

250 million actual real people

[Anonymous Coward]

1.25 billion bots inflating view counts, spamming comments and uploading bogus content.

YouTube is a radicalization engine

[sinij]

I try to avoid Google tracking as much as possible, as such when using YouTube I can easily see what effects their algorithms have on recommended videos as it is stark contrast with defaults recommendations for when they know nothing about you.

Almost universally, they suggest extreme versions of content you just searched for. For example, searching anything related to climate gets you to doomsday, the end is next year videos. Searching anything related to religion lands you on most radical versions of that content. Searching anything political lands you into directly into conspiracy videos.

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[foxalopex]

Are you sure that isn't because you tend to view too many conspiracy videos to begin with? I haven't seen anything unusual with say SciShow's presentation on Climate Change or any of the other legitimately well done science channels. It sometimes helps to see what other videos are on the same channel. If they are political, religious and or wild personal topics then you know you're not on a real science channel. And Climate change will lead to doomsday, thou not all at once nor will it be in a year. It

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[sinij]

Are you sure that isn't because you tend to view too many conspiracy videos to begin with?

I can be reasonably sure. a. I don't normally watch conspiracy videos. b. I am hard for Google to digitally fingerprint.

Here how I browse. Spin up Windows in a VM, use Chrome browser not logged in. Connect via DSL that frequently changes assigned IP addresses and truncates in major metropolitan area. At most, they have a couple day's search history coming from what looks to them like different generic PCs. If they can reliably track that, there isn't anything they can't track.

That actually puts you into a pretty small bucket

[raymorris]

I can't say for sure how Google's tracking works, but I know how mine works, and we can be pretty sure that Google's is better than mine. Mine would "recognize" you pretty well.

Basically, you'd be lumped in with all of the other people who use that exact same VM, on the ISP, in the same area, and visit the same sites - basically just you. :) Here's a bit about how it works.

First we have your IP address/24, which puts you in a group of a couple hundred people. We ignore the last octet of the IP because tha

To clarify, they don't care about your name

[raymorris]

I may have been a little unclear about one point. You might ask how does that identify me. It doesn't give them your name of course, but Google doesn't care about your name.

They put you in a group, and profile that group. The smaller the group, the more specific the profile, the better that profile represents exactly you.

Imagine an "advertiser might say "Mac users tend to buy _____, so show these ads to Mac users". Then we start to get more specific, "Mac users in North East Chicago. How about "Mac users

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[sinij]

I am perfectly content staying menial and unimportant. However, there are factors outside of my control that may change that. For example, I can say something stupid on the internet and get the ire of an online lynch mob.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Almost universally, they suggest extreme versions of content you just searched for.

I have that same problem on Pornhub.

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[mikael]

I suspect that all videos get linked together into their own web rings. Given that when anyone clicks on a video in the sidebar of the currently playing video, that's going to strengthen a particular link. So that would create lots of small clusters. Then there videos that have been uploaded and never viewed. I imagine if all the video links were visualized, they would look like the universe, with the most popular videos at the centre of large clouds of similar videos

No Surprise Here!

[foxalopex]

Everyone I know has tried Youtube at least once and usually more. Bandwidth wise it probably has some of the heaviest usage on our Internet usage aside from Torrenting. YouTube is basically the go to place for virtually anyone who wants to view a quick video for laughs, repairs or even documentaries. I probably watch more YouTube than I do regular TV now.

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[suman28]

This is not drivel. This is ME in a nutshell. I catch up on news bits, comedy and just yesterday evening while repairing a light switch, pulled up a how-to video. I don't have a Tele at home, and this is how the rest of the family watches random stuff. I am not a YouTube paid member, not a Netflix paid member and I don't steal or stream content illegally.

Too bad. I don't see any ads.

[devslash0]

Adblock Plus + http://someonewhocares.org/hos... [someonewhocares.org] make sure of that. If they can't connect connect to their CDNs they can't serve ads. Simple. I only see the "real face" of the Internet when someone asks me to fix their computer but that doesn't happen much anymore. Thank deity_of_choice.

Does the number include

[bobstreo]

youtube-dl downloads?

I get bored sometimes and watch Russian Car Crash videos of the month...

Content

[sheph]

I wonder how much of their ad revenue they give back to providers of that content. I'm not necessarily talking about up-loaders, but content creators. Because without them there would be no audience. I watch music videos mostly. I add stuff to my playlist so I can click and fall asleep to it. I'm constantly running across videos that have been taken down. If youtube was fairly treating these content providers rather than trying to see what they can get away with the service would be more valuable, the

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[spacepimp]

What the music industry deems fair, and what is actually fair to the artist, and fair to YouTube, and fair to the end user are very different things. If you think the difficulty here is google not giving enough compensation directly to the artists, you are no paying enough attention to the RIAA and why people call them an organized crime ring.

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[Leuf]

Youtube pays 55% to the uploader. If someone claims ownership of the music in a video they can either have it taken down or take all of that 55%. So if you want to talk about being fair to content creators, if you make a video and there's a section where there's music playing in the background the owner of that music can take all the money that video gets as if the rest of the video has no value. Music copyright owners are treated as being far more important than people actually making videos for the vid

Logging in

[cascadingstylesheet]

What's the advantage of being a logged in viewer? Yet another reimplementation of bookmarks?

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[jetkust]

Ever wonder how YouTube stars have millions of subscribers? That's right? Millions of logged in users subscribe to them. And those same users favorite videos, leave comments, upload their own videos, have their own channels, like videos, create playlists etc... So yes there is an advantage to logging in. YouTube is kind of a big thing.

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[drinkypoo]

What's the advantage of being a logged in viewer? Yet another reimplementation of bookmarks?

What's the advantage of logging into Slashdot? Same for Youtube, plus another reimplementation of bookmarks. I actually have people who follow me just to see what I'm liking. Are they creepy stalkers? Who cares! If I want to watch something without a public record, I'll log out first or I'll use a downloader.

YouTube's Algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a comment from an anonymous Google/YouTube employee admitting that their recommendation algorithm has "gotten away" from their control. Its job is to increase viewership and it does that by suggesting videos that its systems consider most relevant. Unfortunately, it's is a mathematical judgement, not a values judgement. This is why so many videos being suggested are extreme: they get lots of views (which suggests to the algo that it's a "good video") and but they're often distasteful.

Re:

[jetkust]

So basically, in other words, the algorithm works correctly, for all parties involved.

rubberneck bounce

[epine]

This is why so many videos being suggested are extreme: they get lots of views ...

The problem is that many of these views amount to "OMG, what is this shit, anyway?

People need to be way more aggressive on the thumbs down button after sizing up the moral car wreck.

I also find the "not interested" button works wonders after some initial persistence.

Google would fix something in the larger scheme if the viewing population normalized their rating habits to a 66% baseline rejection rate. Everyone should just pos