YouTube hits 1.8 billion concurrent users per month

While YouTube’s place as the de facto media platform is now in question thanks to the rise in prominence of competitors such as Twitch, there’s no denying that it is still an impressively large site. Proving this point, CEO Susan Wojcicki has revealed that YouTube manages to pull in a whopping 1.8 billion concurrent users onto the platform every month.

The platform’s latest milestone was announced during YouTube’s Brandcast presentation to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, New York, with the number increasing from 1.5 billion in mid-2017. This figure doesn’t take into account those watching YouTube while not logged in, or those logged out for the entire month, making YouTube’s user base significantly bigger.

Wojcicki was keen to address the platform's problems on offensive content and data practices, stating that it is “incredibly important” that YouTube grows as “responsibly” as possible. In particular, this seems to be in reference to the inappropriate kids videos and conspiracy theories that have unsettled its general user base.

Since then, YouTube has managed to build the right “infrastructure and tools” to manage this, allowing for human-curated videos, progressively introducing 10,000 more moderators and a greater reliance on machine learning technology. “There is not a playbook for how open platforms operate at our scale… The way I think about it, it's critical we're on the right side of history,” she explains.

KitGuru Says: That is an incredible amount of users tuning in every month, with no signs of slowing down yet. What makes it such an appealing platform to you? Is it the original YouTube Red content, user-created on-demand content or the introduction of its livestreaming service?  

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