1 Billion Views On YouTube.com And What Gangnam Style Did With Our Time.

I just became aware that Gangnam Style by PSY has hit a major milestone for YouTube.com. It reached 1 billion views.  That’s with a “b”.

But as a data maniac, I wanted to see what that meant for our personal time.  YouTube.com self-admittedly doesn’t release how they score a video ‘view’ for purposes of the count but for the sake of the argument let’s propose that a count is a complete viewing of the video.

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Since July 15, 2012, the video stats above state that just in the past 6 months this video has gone over a billion views.  It’s an amazing feat,but let’s look at the numbers.

If you assume that the entire video at 4 minutes and 13 seconds (or 253 seconds) was viewed one billion times in it’s entirety, this is how it measures up.

253 seconds * 1,000,000,000 = 253,000,000,000 seconds

253,000,000,000 seconds = 4,216,666,666 minutes

4,216,666,666 minutes = 70,277,777 hours

253,000,000,000 seconds = ~2,928,240 days

2,928,240.74074074 days = ~418,320 weeks

418,320.105820106 weeks = ~96,207 months

96,207.0893723932 months = ~8,017 Years

Ok, so don’t hold back the gasps.  Let me generalize one last time.

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In summary, the world-wide audience spent more than 8000 years worth of time in the past six months watching this video.  It’s like the conversation about the speed of light.  The concept of time is relative and often needs to compared to something linear like the time live in.  For example, take each video view and tie it end to end.

It would take one person 8,000 years to get to the end of it.

Maybe one day we will produce a video with this much weight.  I look forward to watching this video milestone of one billion views being broken in a shorter amount of time but couldn’t even imagine what would be better than a dance style video that I can’t even understand the words.  Yet, I have watched it several times myself.

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Here is a list of Top 6 Videos on YouTube.com of All Time (as of 12/21/2012).  Justin Bieber seems to be popular too.

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Lucas Shaffer

With 15 years of digital creative experience and work in dozens of major industries, Lucas writes to communicate the importance of digital strategies useful for every company from Startup to mature Brand. He currently is Creative Director at @StandAndStretch, a TEDx Speaker, SEO Expert, Father to 3 boys and married to his lovely wife, Whitney. Schedule a consult today!