YouTube moves past 3 billion views a day

YouTube may have initially gone viral thanks to the proliferation of cute cat videos uploaded by users attracted to the novelty of self-broadcasting. But the technology has since moved on to become a central tool used by protesters across North Africa and the Middle East.

So it is that YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday with the stunning announcement that it moved past the 3 billion views-per-day mark last weekend. That's a 50 percent increase over the previous year.

Put another way: it's equal to "nearly half the world's population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine videos a day," the company pointed out on its corporate blog.

Another tidbit offered up by YouTube: More than two days' worth of video gets uploaded to the site each minute.

Meanwhile, take a gander at the following April 2005 video from one of the service's co-founders, Jared Karim. It's the first clip ever uploaded to YouTube.

This post initially appeared on CBSNews.com.