Eight years ago, a little phenomenon called YouTube was born. The video streaming site was purchased by Google and ever since it has never looked back. In the last eight years the world has changed wildly. We live in a world where mobile phones are probably more powerful than the PCs that were prevalent when YouTube was founded. We live in a world where a K-Pop star has broken all sorts of records and has become a global music sensation.

In a blog post YouTube revealed that currently, users are uploading more than 100 hours of video every minute and there are over a billion users visiting the site.

Two years ago, YouTube had revealed that users were uploading around 48 hours of video and last years that number grew to 72 hours per minute. In two years, YouTube has more than doubled that number which is impressive indeed, but also speaks about the growing penetration of high speed internet connectivity and smartphones.

Only a couple of days ago Microsoft had announced an official YouTube app for Windows Phone, it seems like this app is going to be short lived. TheVerge is reporting that Google has asked Microsoft to take down the app and halt all installs immediately, because of the lack of ads. Google terms this as a violation of API use.

Apparently, Microsoft made the app without Google’s permission with features that specifically prevent ads from playing. This would obviously hurt Google where is hurts the most as its main source of making revenue is advertising. And this way it is also unable to deliver revenue to content creators.

Microsoft for its part has responded and claims that it will be more than happy to provide ads on the app if Google provided access to the relevant APIs.

Clearly, Google is not happy with Microsoft. It has shown an unwillingness to develop for Windows Phone in particular and at Google I/O even CEO Larry Page was extremely critical of the software maker. He said that he was disappointed that Microsoft made use of Google’s open standards for IM on Outlook, but it did not reciprocate in kind.

He went on to say “You can’t have people milking off of just one company”.

As expected, YouTube has launched a pilot program for some of its partners to offer paid channels on its online video channel platform. The subscription fee for these channels starts from approximately Rs 54 ($0.99) per month.

YouTube has started the service with a 14-day free trial for each channel and is offering many discounted yearly plans on subscriptions. On the content provider’s side, they are launching their channels with interesting content packages as well as other content-based offers to attract the subscribers. The first list of these partners has 53 channels including BigStar movies, UFC select, National Geographic Kids and more. Though YouTube has started it as a pilot service and is checking on the response, it has mentioned to soon give liberty to these channel providers to offer paid channels as a self-service.

YouTube says that this move will help the content providers generate revenues and provide them a more flexible platform to monetize as well as distribute content rather than just relying on ads.

Subscriptions are currently restricted to computers for now, but YouTube will soon start offering subscription from other devices as well. For now, once subscribed to a channel through computer users will be able to watch it on any device.

In addition to the updated Foursquare app unveiled earlier today, Microsoft announced a new version of the official YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 devices. According to the Redmond-based company, YouTube version 3.0 has been completely revamped to take advantage of Windows Phone 8 features.

The latest version has introduced the ability for users to pin videos, playlists, and channels to the Live Tiles, which will automatically update itself to show the latest or the most popular videos from a particular channel. YouTube now allows users to share their discoveries on social networks, e-mail, and text messages and also has added a feature that plays the video in the background when the phone’s screen is clocked. Microsoft has also introduced a useful feature that lets users pin the YouTube app to the phone’s ‘Kid’s Corner’ and limit the content that is accessible through the app.

In addition to the above, Microsoft also revealed that there is an updated version for Windows Phone 7x devices under development with some of the above features likely to be introduced in the coming weeks.

Windows Phone 8 device users can in the meanwhile head over to the Windows Phone Store to download the latest version of YouTube for free.

Back in January we had told you about YouTube’s plans to introduce paid subscriptions for its individual channels around the second quarter of this year. Almost on cue, the video platform is now believed to be finally launching the paid subscription model as early as this week, Financial Times reports.

According to the report, YouTube is likely to offer options like à la carte and pay-per-view for some of its video channels to provide a wide variety of content. The paid videos will include movies and television shows on up to 50 YouTube channels, with subscriptions expected to start from $1 (Rs 54) to $5 (Rs 260) a month.

Earlier this year, a Google spokesperson said in a statement to AdAge, “We have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models. The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform. There are a lot of our content creators that think they would benefit from subscriptions, so we’re looking at that.”

Korean pop star PSY rose to fame owing mainly to his YouTube hit Gangnam Style. Now he is back with a new single called Gentleman, and the folks at TheNextWeb claim to have confirmed from Google that the song has broken a new YouTube record.

According to the report, the new song has amassed more than 38 million views in just 24 hours. Remember, PSY had announced the song just about a week ago on April 15 via a press release, so it is not as if viewers were waiting for the new song for a long time.

Previously, KONY held the record for most views in a day at 30 million. In comparison, Gangnam Style managed 22 million in a single day.

The Next Web notes that on Monday April 13 when it contacted Google, the company only knew that Gentleman had been watched 18.9 million times on that date, but this data was not for 24 hours and was less than it.

It crossed the 100 million views mark in less than 4 days and currently it has crossed the 200 million views mark. Yes, you heard it right the song has been viewed more than 200 million times in less than 10 days.

Those on iOS platform who missed the live streaming of videos and events from YouTube can now enjoy watching live events on the YouTube application for iOS. Google has updated its YouTube app for iOS, which now offers some new features including access to live streaming, access to new uploads in My Subscriptions feed and more. The update is available for download from the iTunes App store.

Apart from these major updates, users can now queue up videos to play on TV. YouTube recently had launched the send to TV feature for iOS, which could let the users automatically pair up their Apple mobile devices with their smart TV. Now with this update, this feature will help in queuing up videos from iOS run devices to work like a video playlist on TV.  Other updated features include one channel branding for video creator channels along with stability and performance improvements.

It has been 57 years of the introduction of commercial videotape recorder Ampex VRX-1000 and YouTube is celebrating this anniversary of VHS by offering an analog view of select digital videos on its sites. These videos bring the VHS viewing experience back for those who can recall the video cassette days, before digital became common.

There are certain videos on YouTube that have VHS mode for the YouTube player. These video when played on tape mode offer the basic analog visuals, which might look noisy in the digital era, and will revive the experience of watching content on tape cassettes.

According to Wikipedia, the video cassette recorder was launched on April 14, 1956 at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters Convention, and since then became a popular mode of entertainment.

Those who wish to experience it, can click on the VHS button given in the bottom right of the player on certain YouTube videos, which will change the video mode from digital to analog and offers the static and fuzzy motion of the VHS era.

There are quite a few gamers out there who like to show the world just how good they are by uploading videos on YouTube of them playing a game. YouTube seems to be making their lives easier and according to a report on TheVerge, YouTube has announced that it’s making its live-streaming tools available for game developers at the ongoing Game Developers Conference at San Francisco.

What this essentially means is that using these API’s game developers will be able to add a feature to the games in future that allow developers to live stream a video coming from a game. YouTube will then take that video feed and transcode the video in real time so that viewers can watch the live stream on YouTube.

This is not something very new as YouTube has been trying to promote live-streaming and recently also tied up with with Call of Duty: Black Ops II to allow live streaming of the game. Sony too recently talked about a similar functionality on its upcoming Playstation 4, where gamers can quickly share game footage with others using the ‘Share’ button on its Dualshock controller.

YouTube further adds that this live streaming function will not only be great for gaming companies to promote new games but also increase social interactions between gamers.

Google Play Movies is not the only thing that Google has made live in India, but it has also enabled YouTube Rentals, which essentially offers more or less the same content, but for devices that run YouTube via the browser and there is no dependence on Android hardware. This also means this is in many ways a much bigger deal as massive number of people have easy access to legal content via devices that have YouTube clients or have web browsers. This solution is completely device agnostic.

Notably, there is a wealth of local content on rentals and now users can either ranging between Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi, Telegu, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali movies and Malayalam. Besides this users will have access to content from Hollywood and World Cinema. Pricing wise is quite varied just like Play Movies and rentals can cost as low as Rs 50.

Anyone who uses the Internet will agree that YouTube is the one place you will always go to if you want to watch a video. So when YouTube announced today it had hit a billion unique users in a month, it didn’t come as a surprise.

To get your head around just how big a ‘billion’ is, YouTube posted certain examples. It says that a billion means that now nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube and that if YouTube were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India. It also adds that PSY and Madonna would have to perform their concert at Madison 200,000 times again to cater to audiences as big as this.

YouTube isn’t the first to cross the one billion barrier as Facebook already crossed that figure in October last year. But that doesn’t make this milestone any smaller and if these past eight years are anything to go by, then YouTube will keep getting bigger.

After launching the YouTube Capture app for the iPhone and the iPod touch back in December, Google has released the dedicated video recording app on the iPad. YouTube Capture is essentially a video capturing app that allows the user to capture and edit videos on the fly and share them on social media sites after they have been uploaded to YouTube.

Once you have finished recording a video, YouTube Capture lets you tag them, add captions and instantly upload them onto YouTube. The app also provides minor editing features like color correction, stabilization, trimming, and adding music tracks. Once you are happy with your desired video and uploaded it, you can then share it on social media sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.

The launch of YouTube Capture on iPad proves just how interested Google is about releasing its own apps on the iOS platform, even though it is the chief rival to its Android platform. YouTube Capture follows other Google apps like Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube that were recently launched on iOS.

You can download YouTube Capture for iPad from the App Store.

YouTube is not only a massive video playing platform, but it has also become one of the biggest online music players. Now according to a report on Fortune, YouTube is set to cash in on this popularity by reportedly planning to launch its own subscription-based music service later this year.

The report states that unlike the music available on Google Play, which is bought by users, YouTube’s music service will allow users to stream music for free. This free service though will have quite a few ads strewn around the UI and the company is likely to charge a subscription fee for ad-free access.

Through a Google spokesperson refused to confirm it, he did hint at such a service in the works saying, “While we don’t comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we’re looking at that.”

When this service goes online, it will compete directly with the likes of Spotify and might even end up doing better because of the kind of brand value YouTube has.

Google today announced an update for its YouTube app on iOS. The latest version (1.2.1) brings in a host of new features like send to TV and YouTube capture among others.

The send to TV feature that was already available on Android devices, allows a user to stream any video from your phone or tablet directly to your TV with built-in software support. What this means is that you do not need to have YouTube on your TV but just the software support, and the app on your iPhone, iTouch and iPad will use Wi-Fi to stream content onto a bigger screen. TVs that support this software are certain models from LG, Panasonic, Sony, Philips, Samsung and Sharp among others. The update also allows you to send YouTube videos to Xbox and PS3 consoles, but they have to be manually paired.

YouTube capture is a feature that lets a user capture a video from the TV and upload it onto YouTube. YouTube has also improved streaming of videos on slow connections, which will mean less buffering for many of us in India who do not have high-speed net connection.

You can download the latest version of YouTube from the App Store.

Google’s YouTube is reportedly in talks over investing $50 million in the music video service Vevo LLC. There is nothing concrete about the deal yet as it is still in the negotiation phase and it might not even see the morning sun, according to a Bloomberg report. YouTube’s $50 million investment is expected to get it less than 10 percent equity stake in the company, valuing Vevo at upwards of $500 million.

Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment formed Vevo in 2009 to stream original music video under their label to the users online. These videos have been widely seen by viewer worldwide and ensure delivery of safe content as well. YouTube’s current contract with Vevo expires in April and the investment is seen as a guarantee to ensure Vevo’s content remains on YouTube.

According to Comscore, Vevo got 51.6 million unique visitors in the US in December alone, which is something that would attract YouTube. As reported earlier, YouTube is also rumored to be working with content developers to to test whether viewers are willing to pay a subscription fee to access quality online content.

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