In July 2006, YouTube announced that it was receiving 100 million video views per day.
The figure marked a remarkable rise for a website that had launched publicly only about a year earlier. YouTube began as a simple way to share online video, but faster home broadband, improving digital cameras and the popularity of embedded clips helped it spread rapidly beyond its original audience.
The same announcement said more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded each day. Those numbers help explain why YouTube quickly became one of the web’s fastest-growing services—and why bandwidth, storage and copyright enforcement soon became major business challenges.
A common mix-up is confusing views with uploads: 100 million was the daily viewing figure, while 65,000 referred to new videos uploaded per day. Google acquired YouTube later in 2006 for about $1.65 billion.