You know that YouTube is already 15 years old? Well, it is. Fast forward to 2020, there’s around 2 billion active users each month and over 5 billion videos shared. That is how popular the video content giant really is, being the second only to Google in the list of the world’s most visited sites.
There are channels with over 100 million subscribers, and a video with over 6.75 billion views. That’s just one billion shorts of the entire world’s population.
Why YouTube is So Popular (Reasons)
Now we have a general idea of how hugely popular is YouTube. What are the reasons, though? Here are 7 top reasons why YouTube is so popular:
Money
To put it simple: While other popular social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, don’t directly pay the content makers and influencers, YouTube does it. Well, it does through ads and marketing, but way more directly.
When compensations begin flowing in, the creators get more and more involved and boost their creativity to develop new videos and ideas. Thus, popularity increases, the compensation is higher, and so on.
It’s free
The very best part of posting and viewing videos is that anyone can do it. Is free to post and to watch videos. OK, there is a very small percentage of YouTube TV paying subscribers, especially for premium streaming, but basically over 99% of the content is free.
There are not enough words to stress the importance of this reason for the channel’s popularity, but there is no secret that people do enjoy free quality stuff. With billions and billions of videos roaming, this should stay like this indefinitely.
A big and great community
With almost 2 billion active members, YouTube compares itself to Facebook in terms of the largest community in the world, at least in the social media. The thought that so many people gather in the same place is overwhelming. Just imagine that half of the YouTube users say they see at least a video a day.
And it isn’t just about videos and sharing, but also comments and maybe meeting the favorite YouTuber though meet and greet. All this make it a very dynamic community, which can very well translate in a hugely popular one.
Relevant topics for bloggers and influencers
YouTube is also good for bloggers because they can find relevant topics for their blogs based on the trending videos or on the most viewed ones. If you ask yourself how can I find blog post ideas? YouTube is one place to start your search.
Here is where you can see and understand what is trending, and then target it. This applies not only for bloggers, but to influencers also. Being so popular makes YouTube a very strong and reliable source of trends.
We have all listened music on YouTube, let’s face it. Most of the times, it is free. You just can’t have some song or any kind of music in your head and not find it nowadays on YouTube. The channel offers also live music.
And there are movie trailers and all kinds of official reviews, clips, sneak-a-peaks, interviews, documentaries, shorts. The same with videogames and much, much more. There are tons of educational videos and original videos to choose from. One particular thing is that more and more are beginning to be streamed in the very high video and audio quality.
Video content is still the king
Yes, it is. And YouTube is the ruler. Social media is the hottest trend there is among the Millennials and Generation Z, and soon the same for Generation Alpha. That’s counting already the three newest generations. And video content is at its very core.
More than half of the entire Internet traffic is represented by video content. In terms of marketing and commercial, YouTube and Facebook led the way, and they are followed by other very popular platforms.
Is new
Maybe YouTube is indeed 15 years old, but if there is an even slightly-important video being filmed somewhere in the world, rest assured that it will be uploaded as soon as possible on YouTube.
There is always some new content to watch, which is both entertaining and catchy. You can literally spend hours browsing through the videos, thanks to the great content diversity.