YouTube hits 1 trillion playbacks in 2011

That's a whole lot of Nyan Cat

YouTube hits 1 trillion playbacks in 2011. Online, YouTube 0

20 December 2011 14:31 GMT / By Paul Lamkin

Google has announced that, in 2011, there were more than 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) playbacks on YouTube. That works out at roughly 140 for every person on earth.

If that doesn't blow your mind then perhaps the news that, excluding major record label music videos, Rebecca Black's Friday was the most watched video will. Why? Just why?

"To compile these lists, we looked at global view counts of popular videos uploaded throughout this year, and, in some instances, we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video," said Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager.

"2011 was a year of amazing new channels and new stars being discovered, awesome creativity, and of course, Rebecca Black. It was also a year of powerful news stories playing out on YouTube, as people witnessed and documented uprisings and natural disasters, touching personal moments and moments of protest."

None of those historical significant videos made the top 10 most viewed chart though, the list is dominated by cats, dogs and babies. And Michael Bolton.