Early this year, the most popular YouTube video of all time — a 2007 clip of a British toddler gleefully biting the finger of his older brother — was supplanted by a brash newcomer.The upstart was Lady Gaga’s slithering, sci-fi-themed music video for her hit single “Bad Romance.”The shift was symbolic: YouTube, a subsidiary of the search giant Google, is growing up. Once known primarily for skateboard-riding cats, dancing geeks and a variety of cute-baby high jinks, YouTube now features a smorgasbord of more professional video that is drawing ever larger and more engaged audiences.
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That cornucopia of content appears to be turning YouTube — considered by many to be a risky investment when it was bought for $1.65 billion at the end of 2006 — into one of Google’s smartest acquisitions. On Monday, YouTube will celebrate its fifth birthday by announcing it has passed two billion video views a day; YouTube said it reached the one billion mark in October.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/technology/17youtube.html
At YouTube, Adolescence Begins at 5
… That cornucopia of content appears to be turning YouTube — considered by many to be a risky investment when it was bought for $1.65 billion at the end of 2006 — into one of Google’s smartest acquisitions. On Monday, YouTube will celebrate its fifth birthday by announcing it has passed two billion video views a day; YouTube said it reached the one billion mark in October.