What You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 2009

This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected ("New Moon"), some surprising (Susan Boyle) — but all of them inspired, entertained and connected millions of people around the world via YouTube.

For these lists, we looked at view counts of YouTube's most popular videos this year (in some instances we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video):

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):
1. Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent (120+ million views)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)
5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global)*:
1. Pitbull "I Know You Want Me" (82+ million views)
2. Miley Cyrus "The Climb" (64+ million views)
3. Miley Cyrus "Party in the U.S.A." (54+ million views)
4. The Lonely Island "I'm On a Boat" (48+ million views)
5. Keri Hilson "Knock You Down" (35+ million views)

Then, to determine the fastest rising search terms for each month, we examined the billions of queries that people searched for on YouTube (through December 15):

Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (Global):

January: inauguration

February: christian bale

March: the climb

April: susan boyle

May: pacquiao vs hatton

June: michael jackson thriller

July: michael jackson

August: usain bolt

September: kanye west

October: paranormal activity

November: bad romance

December: tiger woods

Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (U.S.):

January: obama inauguration

February: on a boat

March: watchmen

April: susan boyle

May: pacquiao

June: michael jackson thriller

July: wedding

August: send it on

September: kanye west

October: paranormal activity

November: adam lambert

December: tiger woods

There are a lot of interesting nuggets in here. The fastest rising U.S. search term in July was [wedding], clearly related to "JK Wedding Entrance Dance," the third Most Watched YouTube video of the year. And while [michael jackson] was Google's fastest rising search term in 2009, [michael jackson thriller] was the faster rising search on YouTube. Movie trailers ("New Moon," "Watchmen," "Paranormal Activity") and inspirational moments (Susan Boyle, Usain Bolt) were popular, as were sensational celebrity scandals (Christian Bale, Kanye West and, most recently, Tiger Woods).

We hope to expand these lists in the future, so if there are any "Most Watched" categories you'd like to see in 2010, let us know by leaving a comment below.

Jamie Davidson, Associate Product Manager, recently watched "Top 10 quirky science tricks for Christmas parties."

*Note: Some music videos may be unavailable in your country due to copyright restrictions.

The Davos Debates 2010: Your Pitch To The World

This year’s iteration of The Davos Debates is up and running, offering one YouTube user the opportunity to attend this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to put forward the cause they are most passionate about at a specially convened panel.

Our candidate will get the opportunity to engage and debate with the world’s leaders and take the opportunity that Davos offers to elevate the cause that is closest to their heart. As you can imagine: we’re looking for someone a bit special. Someone like you? See below for more details:



What sort of person are we looking for?
The winner of the Davos Debates will be someone with knowledge and passion for a public cause, who can demonstrate they're able to interact with the world's leaders. We want to hear real stories from people working on local issues, with a view to offering the opportunity to make these concerns global. Maybe it's fighting for human rights, or the environment, or against poverty? Maybe it's world fishing, education, or political freedoms? Whatever it is, we're looking someone who isn't afraid to get their voice heard, and give them the chance to be at Davos.

How does it work?
From today until the January 4, we're asking YouTube users to submit their video entries. Five finalists will be selected by a judging panel comprised of Paolo Coelho, Arianna Huffington and Muhammad Yunus. These finalist videos will then go to public vote on January 8, with a winner announced on the January 19.

Beyond that, and the information at the World Economic Forum channel, it's over to you. So get filming, rally some support and Make Your Pitch To The World.

Have fun,
Jamie Dolling, Community Editor, YouTube UK, recently watched “The Web For Beginners”.

YouTube UK: Five Joins Shows

On November 19 we announced the launch of the Shows area of the UK site, containing full-length programming from partners including Channel 4, BBC Worldwide and ITN. Today we are happy to announce that Five has been added to that list.

Under the terms of the deal, Five will make its Demand Five video-on-demand catch-up service of new programmes available via YouTube shortly after they air on TV, including shows such as “Neighbours”, “Home And Away” and “The Gadget Show”.



Five also intends to use YouTube as a platform to engage with fans of its shows. For example, plans are afoot to offer YouTube users the opportunity to audition for a guest appearance on “Neighbours”. Stay tuned to the UK blog for more information – you’ll hear it here first.

Have fun,
Jamie Dolling, Community Editor, YouTube UK, recently watched “SB.TV F64 – Wretch 32”.

A Live Stream to Save Lives: Alicia Keys and YouTube Team Up to Fight AIDS

It's no secret that AIDS is one of the deadliest diseases facing our world today. Since the beginning of the epidemic, almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV and 25 million people have died of HIV-related causes. But did you know that some of those hardest hit by AIDS are children? The disease has killed over 2 million children, and in sub-Saharan Africa it has orphaned close to 15 million.

That's why, today, on World AIDS Day, we're partnering with Alicia Keys and hers, Keep a Child Alive, to present a live-streamed benefit concert at 8 p.m. (ET). We're also encouraging everyone to donate $5 to provide the life-saving medication, support, and orphan care to keep these children alive. Learn more from Alicia herself about this important effort:



You can make a difference today. Please tune in here at 8 p.m (ET)/4 a.m (GMT) to watch Alicia Keys and donate to help save the lives of millions of children living with HIV/AIDS.

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, and Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits Manager, recently watched "The Lazarus Effect."

Innovation In Accessibility

Creating captions for your videos on YouTube has become much easier thanks to the introduction of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology.

Auto-Timing: Upload a transcript (a simple file with the text of what's said in the video), and through speech recognition technology we'll turn it into synchronised captions. Timing is the toughest part of creating captions, but now this should be much easier. The technology works best for videos with good sound quality and clear spoken English.

Auto-Captions: We use the same speech recognition technology to create machine-generated captions (which can then be translated into 51 languages). You can see auto-caps in action right now on a range of educational channels, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google channels, including YouTube's. Click on the menu button at the bottom right of the video player, then click CC and the arrow to its left, then click the new "Transcribe Audio" button. In time, we hope to expand this feature for many more YouTube videos.

Auto-caps is a continued step towards YouTube's goal of making video accessible everywhere (web, mobile, TV) and to everyone (other countries, languages, alternative access modes). It's also an example of using technology to enhance the video experience. For more details, please check this post on the Google Blog.

To learn more about how to use auto-caps and auto-timing, check out our help centre article and this short video:



Hiroto Tokusei, Senior Product Manager, recently watched "(HD) 夜のゆりかもめ（新橋→豊洲） 01."

YouTube UK: The Shows Go On

Today YouTube UK launches a new area of the site: Shows. This addition is one of many efforts underway to ensure that the YouTube community has access to as broad a range of video as possible, from vlogs to citizen journalism to major label music videos to full-length offerings from TV.

YouTube users in the UK will be able to click on the Shows tab on the homepage, or go directly to youtube.com/shows, to discover the programmes currently made available by YouTube's partners. The full-length programming available today includes the first set of content made available from Channel 4 under the recently announced partnership between the broadcaster and YouTube. Think of this as an early stage of the partnership: the full range of Channel 4 content will be available early next year.

Other partners who have made their videos available in Shows include BBC Worldwide, Turner Broadcasting, ITN, Guinness World Records, Classic Media, Fremantle, North One and Al Jazeera. However, rather than list the shows available here we suggest you head for the Shows page and have a look around. Over the coming days we will also be Spotlighting some of the new programmes that you will find – starting today with episodes of "The IT Crowd", "Father Ted", "The Inbetweeners" and "Peep Show".

As ever, once you've got a handle on what this new area of the UK site has to offer, feel free to furnish us with your feedback below.

Have fun,
Jamie Dolling, Community Editor, YouTube UK, recently watched "Streetmate".

How We Think About Social

Social features like commenting, rating, video responses and even just emailing or IMing a video's link have always been a part of the YouTube experience. So that's why we spend a lot of time here thinking about how to make the site an even more social place. We're especially focused on wanting to make it as easy as possible for you to find the people you know on YouTube and to follow their activity (what videos are they rating? favouriting? commenting on?) by subscribing to their channel; it's a great way to stay up on what they're into as well as discover new content yourself. As you consume these videos and start sharing your own, you in turn "feed" your friends a tasty helping of video goodness. It breaks into this virtuous distribution cycle:

As we've built these tools directly into YouTube itself, with things like friend suggestions based on your Gmail address book and connecting your YouTube account to social networks via our AutoShare feature, we've started to see people becoming even more social. Some of this activity is hard to quantify -- every day millions of YouTube links are sent via email, IM, Twitter and other communication methods -- but we can tell you that:

• Over one million people are AutoSharing videos to Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader
  
• Each AutoShared Tweet you send out from YouTube turns into an average of seven new sessions on YouTube.com
  
• Over a million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube based on our Friend Suggest feature
  
• Most Tweeted video yesterday? Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"
• More than one million new subscriptions are created every day
  

We hope these numbers will only rise as we focus on giving you the tools you need to connect with the people who matter most to you. In the process, expect to be entertained and informed by the videos circulating amongst your most trusted friends, subscribers and networks. You can get started today by ensuring that you're discoverable on YouTube (click here and check off "Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address") and by connecting your account to your external networks via AutoShare (click here to set that up).

What do you think "social" on YouTube means, and where would you like to see it go? Leave a comment below.

Brian Glick, Product Manager, recently watched "Michael Jackson - Beat It," and James Phillips, Software Engineer, recently watched "New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less."