That’s the big news from YouTube today, who announced on their blog earlier that they are now clocking 60 hours of uploaded video every minute. That is, in a word, unreal.

YouTube put together a fun interactive visualization over at onehourpersecond.com that shows you what the rest of the world does in the time it took to upload some videos. One of my favorites in spite of the lack of sense it makes to me: “In 38 minutes of uploads to YouTube, our ostrich is still running at full speed, traveling 98,040 miles.”

Additionally, they also calculate that they’ve exceeded four billion video views worldwide every single day. They put it in perspective: “That’s up 25 percent in the last eight months and the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching a video every day, the same number as there are US $1 bills in circulation, the same as number of years since there was water on Mars…it’s a big number, and you’re making it bigger every day.” Lots and lots of videos happening in your face, humanity.

And because video is their thing, of course you knew they’d have a video to mark this milestone:

In order to mark my own observance of YouTube’s achievement, I’m going to share some of my favorite videos with you here. Hope you like them as much as I do.

Honestly, though, it’s presumptuous to assume that will signify the 500,000,000th unique user, however, because if you’re already on Twitter you know that bots abound in all forms. I’m pretty sure that half (if not more) of my 80-some followers are bots of some kind and, if I’m lucky, I could have the odd Homeland Security intern following me while masquerading as a licentious girl.

But real people Twitter or not, the 500,000,000 mark is quickly approaching.

Look at that statement at the bottom. I’m gonna go ahead and say it: there is no way in hell more than one million people are joining Twitter every 24-hour period. Not unique users, at least. I have more than one Twitter account, as I suspect other people have as well if they like to keep a single account dedicated to one task (such as a business or a blog), so the multi-account user would inflate this number. Second, I swear on any of my accounts the bots-to-humans ratio hovers somewhere around 4:1.

With their olfactory senses keen to the smell of sir-reverence, Compete.com computed the site analytics for unique users to Twitter as of November 2011.

Computing meaningful stats for social media networks is a confusing if not contradictory exercise. It can seem like futile pomp that allows websites like Twitter and Google+ to blow their own horn. It’s all of matter of what data is most flattering for the message a business wants to promote. In this case, half a billion users sounds impressive. Academics are Level 50 Magicians when it comes to manipulating mediocre data so I guess if you PhD students can’t get a job at universities after you finish your dissertation, you can always go work for a place like Twitter.

Distimo cites free apps as the leading cause for Android Marketplace reaching the 400K mark as 68% of all apps downloaded on Android devices was free content. As we’ve mentioned before, free apps, otherwise known as the freemium apps, are becoming the emerging business model in app development. The model has boosted the downloads from the Android Market nearly 166% since the beginning of 2011.

Distimo drew up a timeline comparison of Android’s ascent to 400K downloads with Apple’s trajectory to the same milestone. While Apple’s climb has been relatively steady to each subsequent thousand-download marker, Android Marketplace actually took longer to reach the 200K and 300K marks than Apple App Store. However, Android Marketplace took considerably less time to expand from 300K to 400K than Apple App Store, which gives cause to speculation of whether Android will be able to maintain this steep increase as it approaches future milestones.

One reason Distimo offers for the boom in Android app downloads is the application store’s 100,000 active developers publishing on average 4.1 apps a piece. More apps developed make for more apps downloaded, for sure. At any rate, Android Marketplace appears to be on track to outpace Apple App Store in 2012.

Of course, that sounds like a lot – and it is. But remember that the App Store (generic) has seen over 18 billion apps downloaded, and the current rate exceeds 1 billion apps per month.

The Mac App Store was announced back in November of 2010 and eventually released to the masses in January of 2011. After only one day in existence, Apple reported that the app downloads had topped one million.

Phil Schiller had this to say about the milestone:

In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry. With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.

For app developers, it appears the the Mac App Store has been a huge help – allowing easy distribution and a wider reach than they could have imagined.

“The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle,” said Saulius Dailide of Pixelmator. “Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”

“In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

That’s a lot of downloads in less than two years or existence.

When you combine all the Angry Birds games (classic, Rio, Seasons) across all OS’, that’s when you get this staggering figure. According to Rovio, players across the world have played over 200,000 years worth of Angry Birds. Here are some more interesting facts:

Squawk! Angry Birds, the best selling mobile game in the world, has achieved amazing things. Angry Birds Fans around the world have so far played a total of 200,000 years of Angry Birds, with 300 million minutes of playing time daily. Moreover, more than 266 billion levels of Angry Birds have been played, with 400 billion birds launched into action, and over 44 billion Stars collected in the process

Are you an Angry Birds player? Have you completed every level? Let us know in the comments.

When I first heard about Instagram, I said, “Oh, so a free Hipstamatic…sounds good.” I quickly realized that Instagram is providing more than just photo filtering (which is fun). Instagram is a full-fledged social network, a fun and satisfying one at that.

With its own photo-news feed, comments, likes, hashtag capabilities, “@” tagging, and geotagging, it has won the hearts of many more than just this writer. Now over 7 million users strong, the application has just hit another milestone.

Instagram announced today on their blog that they have just surpassed 150 million photos shared. They also noted that 15 new photos roll in per second.

Thank you for sharing your stories through Instagram. Here’s to another 150 million. (If you want to help us get there, take a look at our Jobs page – we’re hiring!)

That “we’re hiring” blip is interesting because one of the things people find so charming about the company is their tiny workforce. Until just recently, the company had been able to run with just 4 employees. A few days ago AdWeek reported that they had just hired their 5th employee, Jessica Zollman, as their “community evangelist.”

Here’s photo #150,000,000, as snapped by @janefot

Instagram is being used by celebrities, businesses and news organizations as well. Companies like Kate Spade and new outlets like NBC and CNN have their own accounts. Justin Bieber almost crashed the servers when he tweeted out his first Instagram pic a couple of weeks ago.

Remember that 7 million user stat? That’s even more impressive than you think. As VentureBeat points out, Instagram just launched last October. At this point in their lives, neither Facebook nor Twitter had even reached 1 million users.

200 million. That’s a staggering figure, especially considering just a year ago they announced 65 million tweets per day. In January of 2009, the company announced that users were sending 2 million tweets per day. What was an impressive milestone then pales in comparison to this newest achievement. It also suggests a more exponential rather than linear growth in the social media site.

Along with this announcement, Twitter has provided a visualization of just what 200 million tweets would look like, in real life. They say that 200 million tweets equals a 10 million page book. This book, written every day, would take 31 years to read. The book would be as tall as 8.163 copies of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or 1,470 feet.

In the blog post, Twitter has also provided us with a list of the most trending topics of the first half of 2011. They prove that the world is a bunch on Rebecca Black-loving fools.

World events/News

1. AH1N1 – Swine Flu
2. Mubarak – former Egyptian President
3. Easter – Christian holiday
4. Cairo – capital of Egypt
5. #prayforjapan – sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
6. Chernobyl – site of nuclear disaster in 1986
7. Libia/Libya – site of an ongoing civil war
8. Fukushima – Japanese nuclear power plant
9. William & Kate – Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
10. Gadafi – Libyan political leader

Pop culture

1. Rebecca Black – pop singer
2. Femme Fatale – newly-released Britney Spears album
3. Charlie Sheen – actor
4. #tigerblood – hashtag popularized by Charlie Sheen
5. Nate Dogg – rapper
6. Anderson Silva – Brazilian mixed martial artist
7. Tom & Jerry – famous cartoon
8. Mumford & Sons – British rock band
9. Bieber alert – referring to artist Justin Bieber
10. Queen Gaga – referring to artist Lady Gaga

Of course, the only problem with the 200 million tweet figure is the question of original tweets. Twitter is full of bots who send out automated tweets. Do these factor in the 200 million? Also, does that number include retweets?

Even with these questions, it’s obvious that Twitter is growing fast. ComScore says that Twitter.com alone received 139 million unique visitors worldwide in May of this year. That’s a 54% increase year-over-year.

Twitter seems to have run into a little trouble, however, as it is being reported that they have been targeted by the Federal Trade Commission.

Flash forward to the end of March, and Foursquare announced that they had hit 8 million users.

Since then, we have seen the record-breaking 2011 Foursquare Day on April 16th. Foursquare reported 3 million check-ins on that Saturday alone, shattering the previous record of 275,000 single day check-ins.

And now they have announced their greatest milestone yet – 10 million users.

One of the most amazing things about building foursquare has been seeing a tool we designed for our friends turn into something now used by over 10,000,000 people. And, as our community grows larger, we get to build things that start to fulfill out larger vision of the future. Thanks to all of you for supporting us, and stay tuned for much much more.

Along with this announcement, the team released a nifty infographic detailing their growth and some fun facts. For instance -

• There are 6,230 Sake bars registered in Japan
• According to check-ins, Target, Walmart and Macy’s are the top retail chains in the world
• When checking-in, people are more likely to “shout” YAY than UGH.
• 78,387 Mayorships change hands every day
• Mike Bloomberg is the only real Mayor who is the Foursquare Mayor of his City Hall

In recent months, Foursquare has expanded their vision with things like NFC experimentation at the Google I/O conference as well as various promotions with Murphy USA gas and 7-11.

CEO Dennis Crowley has discussed the future of the service being one with a more fluid user experience – possibly with things like predictive check-ins, place suggestions and friend location notifications. Are you part of the 10 million Foursquare users? What direction would you like to see the company go in the future? Tell us what you think.

But before that, check out the infographic below -

The app allows users to share what they are currently watching, reading or playing with their friends over Facebook and Twitter.  The service recently added full foursquare integration to go along with new check-ins for sports, so that users can also broadcast the location of their activities.

GetGlue also announced they have reached another milestone, 100 million data points.  These data points refer to the system of rating and recommendations that is built into GetGlue.

“These data points represent connections between people and the entertainment they’ve consumed, revealing insights about tastes and dynamics of entertainment consumption. With this milestone GetGlue now joins established internet properties like IMDB, Fandango, TV Guide, Yahoo!, and Amazon as a significant source of entertainment tastes.”

To the people at GetGlue, these milestones must signal their arrival as a legitimate entity within the social entertainment sphere.  The big question, obviously, to a service that is growing, is where is the money going to come from?  In an interview with Forbes, CEO Alex Iskold had this to say:

We are currently experimenting with a number of different ways to monetize the service. We’ve done a few implementations with sponsored rewards, and increasingly see this as an interesting option.

However, longer term, we see the aggregate data set as the valuable asset. Already, from the 100M data points, we’re able to get rich insights into consumption patterns and behavior around entertainment.

Consider the current state of entertainment analytics: a tiny amount of sampled data impacts how 100’s of millions of dollars are spent by entertainment companies and brands. There’s a very real, very large opportunity here if you can provide meaningful insights at scale.

Some statistics about GetGlue :

• Averaging over 1 check-in per second with 10 check-ins per second during primetime
• Averaging 1 share per second to Facebook and Twitter
• In primetime, up to 20% of tweets about shows are coming from GetGlue
• For instance, 10% of tweets about the season finale of Californication came via GetGlue

Do you use GetGlue?  How often do you check-in to it or any other service that involves check-ins?  Yesterday, Goby CEO Mark Watkins wrote an article titled “2011: The Year the Check-in Died.” In it, he predicted the decline of check-in services that don’t offer much more than check-ins.  Is a service like GetGlue immune to that decline because of its recommendations, rankings, and the ability unlock stickers and such?  How about Foursquare or Google, who are both attempting to bring deals and rewards programs to people who check-in?

Let us know how you feel about check-ins, and check-out GetGlue’s infographic from their blog:

This week Google actually took efforts to make Chrome more accessible, and introduced a new category of featured extensions.

Mozilla’s milestone is certainly a significant one though, and there’s no question that Firefox has been revolutionary in the web browser space.

"This exciting feat was made possible by the huge community of people who have made and used Firefox Add-ons since we launched in 2005," Mozilla says in its announcement. "Over the years, we remained dedicated to building features and products that make Firefox the world’s most customizable Web browser for consumers and developers."

Mozilla has put up a "Best of 2 Billion Firefox Add-ons" list based on feedback. There are 25 add-ons in the collection, with the top one being Adblock Plus.