Following on from their Facebook and Twitter infographics, Website Monitoring have produced another stats sheet, this time for YouTube.

Here are a few key facts taken from the chart:

• The first video was uploaded to YouTube on 23 April 2005
• The most popular video on the site, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, has been played 185.39 million times
• 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute
• 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the USA
• The most popular channel on YouTube has 2,159,651 subscribers

See the full infographic on the Website Monitoring site.

YouTube South Africa, the first localised YouTube site on the African continent, has gone live. You can see it in action at www.youtube.co.za.

The new domain has a strong focus on content uploaded by South African users, and makes use of adjusted search algorithms to promote South African content on category pages and in the “featured videos” section.

YouTube has also signed partnership agreements with several South African media companies, including the SABC and e.tv, enabling these companies to establish a presence on the site and easily distribute their content. The SABC will be piloting a certain amount of old and current content on the channel, and if the pilot proves successful, this offering will be extended to include a range of SABC news, sport, soaps, dramas and comedies.

Perhaps more importantly, video download speeds are now significantly faster for South Africans. No more grabbing a quick cup of coffee while you wait for that hilarious cat video to load!

Of course, if the new site is still not fast enough for you, you have the option to watch videos with YouTube Feather. This beta offering is a stripped-down version of the standard video page, including only the most basic features. YouTube Feather can be accessed via the TestTube section of the site.

Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder, says, “We’re very excited to bring a local version of YouTube to South Africa and we look forward to continuing to improve the YouTube experience for our South African users.”

Google has acquired On2 Technologies in a stock for stock transaction which will see each outstanding share of On2 common stock being converted into $0.60 worth of Google class A common stock.

The overall acquisition cost for Google is $106 million and Google has taken this step to thoroughly use On2 futuristic video compression techniques for its own expansion. YouTube currently lacks ways that could assist High-Definition HD Video conversions and compressions, which means that the deal is much needed considering the bright future Google sees for their service.

The deal is expected to close by the fourth-quarter of this year and the investors look already pleased as the On2 stock closed 62% over the premium at the close of yesterday.

Google is certainly feeling the pressure with its contemporaries expanding its domains and this deal will have surely relaxed the nerves a bit. Now it can further evolve the immensely successful YouTube to newer heights.

[via TechCrunch]

Internet Explorer 6 is certainly not on the credibility list of big names from the Web 2.0 world. It was Digg that earlier hinted at cutting the support for the Web Browser and now it is suspected that YouTube is also phasing out the Browser shortly — a screenshot taken by an IE6 user is pretty much conclusive that the time for the IE6 is up.

“We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers”

Given the bugs and issues on the site, and the fact that only 5% of users on Digg are using IE 6 — hence causing a minimal 1% of diggs, buries and comments, the website announced that they’ll remove support for Internet Explorer 6.

Following on the same lines as Digg, YouTube will also prefer its developers spending time optimizing the service for newer and better browsers rather than paying attention to the fading Microsoft browser. Google is going to have their efforts concentrated on more “modern browsers” like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 or Safari.

Totally understandable, don’t you think?

[via TechCrunch]