Top of the week 1: YouTube turns five - and continues to grow
The video platform YouTube is growing in popularity. The number of videos viewed has doubled over the past six months. There are now over 2 billion videos that are clicked on every day by millions of users.
Analysts believe that YouTube could make a profit for Google for the first time this year. The portal is also increasingly streaming entire films, either as individual purchases or with commercial breaks. However, the selection is currently still very limited. So far, YouTube has not succeeded in entering into a partnership with American film studios or TV broadcasters. Although 24 hours of new video material are uploaded to YouTube every minute, the average user only spends 15 minutes a day on the portal. By comparison, the typical US television viewer spends over 5 hours in front of the TV set. But YouTube is using its growing popularity to be more aggressive in the advertising market. The portal is also likely to play a role in the latest plans of the parent company, which will present "Google TV" this week, a software platform for television that the internet company is developing together with Sony, Intel and Logitech.
