Turning your phone and tablet into the best remote control for YouTube

We bet you a billion views you can find your way around YouTube faster on your mobile device than on your TV. That’s why we launched a feature making it easy to send videos from your mobile to your TV with just one button.

This year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we’re bringing that mobile/TV pairing feature to devices from our friends including Bang & Olufsen, LG, Panasonic and Sony. In 2013, you’ll see this feature come to even more devices like those from Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio, Western Digital and others.

These new devices will also have the latest look and feel for YouTube on TV, letting you watch HD videos and channels on the big screen with everyone at home. Catch the latest videos from your subscriptions, watch playlists full of 1080p videos and find the next great video faster with search suggestions.

Whether you’re at CES or at home, you can now watch YouTube on 400 million devices: from tablets to TVs, smartphones to streaming boxes, and consoles to cable providers. When you sign in and subscribe on any of these devices, you’ll always have something great to watch next.

Francisco Varela, global director, platform partnerships, recently watched “Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome : "Episode 1".”

Gangnam Style Makes YouTube History: First Video to Hit 1 Billion Views

A million views? You know what's cool? A billion views.

Today, a 34-year-old K-Pop artist made online video history when his viral video, Gangnam Style, smashed our records and became the first video ever to reach one billion views. Yup, that’s right one BILLION views!

PSY's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music-- and er, great equine dance moves. In the past, music distribution was mostly regional. It was more difficult to learn about great artists from around the world. But with a global platform at their fingertips, people are now discovering and sharing amazing music from all over the planet, by artists like Brazilian Michel Teló and Belgian-Australian Gotye.

One billion views is an incredible number, but the PSY-nomenon goes beyond that. Check out these stats:

• PSY was already big in Korea, but in 2012, he became a global celeb as Gangnam Style quickly spread from Seoul and the pacific to North America, South America, and Europe. It’s been seen at least 1 million times in close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever! 
• From a one-thousand person flash mob in Jakarta to cover videos from Ai Weiwei and Mitt Romney, hundreds of thousands of parodies have been uploaded to YouTube, some of which have tens of millions of views. In fact, fan tributes to Gangnam Style are now being viewed 20 million times every single day. 
• PSY's own remix with Hyuna has 200 million views alone. 
• "Gangnam Style" was YouTube's top rising search of 2012 and on October 6th, we saw more than five million searches for “gangnam style” in a single day. Check out this video demonstrating some of our most popular YouTube searches this year. 
• For those interested in the business side: a number of assessments and projections have been posted claiming “Gangnam Style” has generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, hit more than 2.9 million in song downloads since July, and achieved other incredible feats! 
• Since late last month, people have clicked to buy the track on iTunes over 600,000 times helping make PSY the first Korean artist ever to rank #1 on the U.S. iTunes chart and #1 in over 30 more countries. 

Perhaps what’s most impressive about this feat is that it took just over five months to happen. To give this milestone some context, here’s a chart of Gangnam Style’s rise to popularity versus Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” the video that previously held the most-watched video title:

Congratulations to PSY, the flash mobbers, K-Pop fans and people who love fun across the globe. Considering the Gangnam Style dance was the number one dance-related search on YouTube this year, you better make sure you brush up on your moves before New Year's Eve.

The kind of amazing creativity and unique connection between people all over the world that resulted in this one billion views is only possible with an incredible community of people we're so lucky to have on YouTube. And we can't wait to see what you'll come up with next!

Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager, recently watched “Rewind YouTube Style 2012”

News on YouTube: 2012 in review

When something big happens in the world, the YouTube community responds. Our news partners race to get footage live on the site. On-the-spot reporters upload video directly from their smartphones to let us all know what it’s like to be there. Leaders express their outrage, and their sorrow. And our 800 million users around the world head to YouTube to better understand what just happened, from multiple perspectives. For years, YouTube has been the global living room - today’s it’s becoming a global newsroom.

2012 was a year in which one of the most respected voices in reporting, The Associated Press, hit one billion views on YouTube - a milestone only reached by a few dozen channels in YouTube history, and shared this year by one of the newest voices in reporting, Phil De Franco.

It was a year in which one of the world's most exciting stories on Earth came in the form of a four frames-per- second video from Mars.

It was a year in which The Weather Channel live-streamed its coverage of Hurricane Sandy for more than 70 hours, to millions of people who would have struggled to get the news any other way.

And it was a year in which people from more than 200 countries tuned in to youtube.com/politics to watch the US Presidential Elections.

We’re proud of our news partners, and the work they do to bring the events of the world to their growing audiences around the world. Here’s our recap of 2012, which we put together with the help of Nieman Journalism Lab and Storyful. As we head into the new year, subscribe to the new youtube.com/news channel to stay on top of the biggest news stories of 2013.

Tom Sly, Director of Content Partnerships for News and Education, recently watched “The Year in 60 seconds: 2012.”

YouTube in Rewind: What you were watching in 2012

It’s that time of year again to pause, rewind and remember the videos, the entertainers, and the moments that captivated you in 2012.

This year, Korean Pop music transcended boundaries and took the world by storm. Cover songs, parodies, and "do-it-yourself" music videos from all genres entertained us in countries near and far. And you participated in conversations at a global scale, uploading videos to share ideas on everything from nonprofit campaigns, to political satire, to new and surprising voices and talents. Plus, all over the world, you tuned in for the most up-to-date news footage of presidential elections, natural disasters and more.



2012 has been a big year for YouTube. You’ve been watching over 4 billion hours of video a month. Millions of creators are using YouTube channels to experiment with innovative forms of entertainment, explore their passions and interests, and take creativity and pop culture to new levels. 2012’s top trending videos showcase this creative ingenuity in ways we'd never before thought possible.

Check out the YouTube Rewind channel to explore the trending videos of the year in your country. Globally, here’s what we were all talking about in 2012: 

Top Trending YouTube Videos:  

1. PSY - GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) M/V 
2. Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover) 
3. KONY 2012 
4. "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen - Feat. Justin Bieber, Selena, Ashley Tisdale & MORE! 
5. Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2. 
6. A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE 
7. WHY YOU ASKING ALL THEM QUESTIONS? .. #FCHW 
8. Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize 
9. Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen. 
10. Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128k' - Mission Highlights 

Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager, recently watched "Interactive Timeline: YouTube Rewind 2012"

A gift for you from Taylor Swift

When Taylor Swift unveiled her first single on YouTube back in August, you went a little crazy for it -- along with the rest of the country. During that same session, Ms. Swift secretly recorded an acoustic version of “We Will Never Ever Get Back Together” as well as never-before-heard acoustic versions of two other tracks off the new album: “Treacherous” and “Forever.” Today, she shares that session exclusively on YouTube, as a special holiday treat for her fans.



Sarah Bardeen, music community manager, recently watched “Toro y Moi ‘So Many Details’.”

Film and share videos instantly with YouTube Capture for iPhone and iPod touch

Life moves fast. To speed up recording, enhancing and sharing videos with your friends or the whole world, you can now use the YouTube Capture app on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Making sharing fast and easy
YouTube Capture is ready to record as soon as you open it. When you’re done filming, write a caption, select which networks you want to share to, and hit Share. Even if you minimize the app, the video will keep uploading in the background. You can control who sees your video by setting it to private (only you can view it), unlisted (only people with a link to the video can view it), or public (to let it shine to the world).

More than a point-and-shoot
Have a shaky hand or bad lighting when recording your video? Touch it up easily with YouTube enhancements like color correction and stabilization, or trim the length and add free background music from YouTube. These enhancements are also available on existing videos on your device, and you can always undo enhancements later on YouTube.com. YouTube Capture will remind you to rotate your phone to a horizontal position for filming, so your videos look high-quality and free of “Vertical Video Syndrome.”

YouTube Capture will be available today on the App Store. We’re also working to bring this to Android in the future, and learn more at youtube.com/capture.

Reed Morse, Software Engineer, recently watched “Ronald Jenkees - Red Lemonade Remixed.”

Who do YOU think is “On The Rise?” Nominate YouTube partners for the program in 2013!

By now, many of you may be familiar with the monthly On The Rise program, where we identify four YouTube partners whose subscriber numbers are growing but haven’t yet reached 100,000. You get the opportunity to vote for your favorite, each channel is evaluated on criteria such as viewer engagement and channel optimization techniques, and one of the four channels is featured on the YouTube homepage and across our social networks. In past months, featured partners like JoshSundquist, CuteGirlsHairstyles, and strskillschool have seen growth in their fan base and video engagement thanks to your support.

This month, we’re taking a brief hiatus from asking you to vote on emerging YouTube talent while the On The Rise program undergoes a bit of a face lift. We’ll be back in 2013, but in the meantime, we wanted to give YOU - the fans and viewers - more of a say about which channels really are on the rise.

We’re excited to announce that you can now nominate a YouTube partner to be considered for the “On The Rise” program. Feel free to submit nominations for your own channel, or for channels you follow that you think deserve more attention or could be the next YouTube sensation. We’ll continue to feature promising partners who have fewer than 100,000 subscribers and produce engaging content on a regular basis.

As always, thanks for participating and helping some of YouTube’s promising content creators grow their fan base!

Devon Storbeck and Christine Wang, YouTube Partner Support, recently watched “M4SONIC - Virus (Live Launchpad Original).”