YouTube reports exponential growth; issues viral video challenge
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YouTube had been seeing astronomical growth of video uploads from mobile devices, up 1700 percent - yes, 1,700 - over the past six months. But since the launch of the iPhone 3GS last week, mobile video uploads increased by 400 percent a day, according to a post on You Tube's blog.
So what's driving this growth? Aside from the fact the more video-enabled phones are on the market today, YouTube also points to improvements to the "uploads flow" from a phone as well as the ability to upload and then instantly share among your social networks.
To promote the ease of sharing a video from a mobile device and having it go viral, YouTube has issued a challenge on its blog. (Get this language in the instructions. Five years ago, this would have made no sense):
Can you make your test video go viral through your social networks? If you can, we're willing to feature that video on our homepage. Upload a video from your phone, tag it with "mobiletest," share it with your social network, and Tweet us the link (so be sure to put "@youtube" and "mobiletest" in your message). We'll give you one week to spread your test video far and wide, after which we'll take a look at the most popular clips and feature a few on our homepage in a special "mobile upload" edition of our Spotlight Video.