YouTube now serving up 3.5 billion videos a day

YouTube continues to grow the number of videos its viewers watch, with now more than 3.5 billion served up every day. That number wasnt part of any formal release, but was part of a presentation given by YouTube VP of global sales Lucas Watson at the Monaco Media Forum. (Hat tip to BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield for highlighting the video in a recent blog post.)

Prior to Watsons presentation, the last viewership milestone was announced in May as YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday. At that point, the site was delivering 3 billion views per day so its added about 500 million views a day in the past six months. A year earlier, in May 2010, YouTube broke 2 billion views a day.

The increase in videos served comes as YouTube is capturing more eyeballs around the world. It now has more than 800 million unique viewers per month, and more than half its views come from non-English speakers.

Already, some of the sites top producers have audiences that rival some cable networks. Thats important, as YouTube plans to introduce more of its own content, by launching 100 original channels to provide an alternativ! e to tra ditional broadcast and cable TV content.

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