Amazing facts about YouTube

Pewdiepie is the most popular YouTube channel with 58 million subscribers and 16 billion video views. Pewdiepie's real name is Felix Kjellberg and he dropped out of college to start his YouTube channel which he funded by working at a hot dog stand. However his hard work paid off since Pewdiepie now has a networth 80 times larger than Bernie Sanders $528014 net worth, this is impressive for a 27 year old. In December 2016 after over 6 years of making videos Pewdiepie finally hit 50 million subscribers and was rewarded with a custom made Ruby Play Button shaped like his

channel logo which is a hand in the process of giving a fist bump.

There are four YouTube Play Buttons which are rewarded to YouTubers once they pass a certain milestone

YouTube Play Buttons

Silver Play Buttons =100,000 subscribers

Gold Play Button = 1 million subscribers

Diamond Play Button = 10 million subscribers

Ruby Play Button = 50 million subscribers

It takes lots of hard work and determination to get so many subscribers meaning that only very good channels get a Silver Play Button while it takes a truly exceptional channel to get a Diamond Play Button. Pewdiepie is currently the only channel with a Ruby Play Button and since the second most subscribered YouTube channel has only 32 million subscribers it may be quite a while before this Play Button is awarded again.

Clickbait is a derogatory term for web content whose goal is to interest viewers enough to click the link. Many YouTubers do this to gain more views, however it is a sneaky tactic and very annoying since it causes people to waste time looking at things they thought were interesting. There has been much backlash against clickbait with many people urging YouTube to stop it, however it's not illegal and it makes them money so YouTube continues to allow it. YouTubers clickbait by putting images on their video covers that really have nothing to do with the video subject or by impersonating famous youtubers who more people want to watch.

The very first YouTube video was uploaded in April 2005 and is entitled Me at the zoo. The 19 second long video was made by YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and features Karim standing by an Elephant enclosure. The video now has 40 million views and 300,000 comments although its production quality has been labelled “poor”. Nowadays 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube each minute, almost 5 billion videos are watched each day and the most popular youtubers have tens of millions of subscribers.