Top 5 Educational Blockbusters of the Summer

Summer's over, school is back, and students are in the classroom ready to learn again. But did they ever stop? Turns out, people on YouTube spent 15% more time watching educational videos in August 2013 than April. From outrageous science experiments and geographical anecdotes, to lessons on how to become British Royalty or stop an asteroid, people spent over 142 million hours watching educational content on YouTube this summer. That’s nearly 16,200 years of video watched, and more than twice as much as last summer!



And the numbers keep climbing. From 2011 to 2013, views of educational videos during the summer have increased by 99% in the US.



While the views come from a collection of over 46 million videos, we’ve put together a list of the summer’s educational blockbusters and highlighted the top five most-viewed EDU videos of the season. Sure beats summer school, right?

Video		Channel	Total Summer Views
	How Old Are Your Ears? (Hearing Test)	AsapSCIENCE	5,416,659
	Why Are Things Creepy?	Vsauce	4,560,119
	Self Freezing Coca-Cola	Grant Thompson	4,458,311
	Amazing Resonance Experiment!	brusspup	3,416,145
	Canada & The United States: Bizarre Borders	CGPGrey	3,277,612

*View counts based on totals as of August 31, 2013

Even if you’re back in class, it’s not too late to catch up on the summer’s hits. Check out our top five playlist, and good luck this year.



-- Dan Abel

Batman wins YouTube: Our top 10 most popular superheroes

If YouTube popularity can determine who’ll win in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, your views and uploads put Batman as the clear winner. Based on keyword searches, Batman is the most popular of all superheroes on YouTube, with more than 3 billion views of 71,000 hours of video. Following Batman is Thor, Superman, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Wolverine -- the rest of the list is below. Collectively, the top 10 superheroes alone account for more than 10 billion views and 234,000 hours of video.

Superhero(es)		Views	Hours of video
	Batman	3,000,000,000	71,000
	Thor	2,100,000,000	66,000
	Superman	1,700,000,000	14,000
	Iron Man	1,400,000000	20,000
	The Avengers	1,000,000,000	31,000
	Wolverine	540,000,000	7,800
	Spider Man	340,000,000	7,400
	Captain America	280,000,000	4,900
	Justice League	220,000,000	3,200
	Deadpool	200,000,000	8,900

While Batman also takes the top overall spot for searches, the Dark Knight has been overtaken in searches by Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers since 2008.

The top videos for each superhero are a mix of popular movie trailers, video game play, fan originals and more - check the playlist of the top 10 here:

A year since Gangnam Style, K-Pop keeps getting bigger

On July 15, PSY's now legendary video for "Gangnam Style" will officially turn 1 year old. The video is already the most viewed video ever on YouTube and was the first clip ever to surpass 1 billion views -- it currently stands at 1.7B and is still growing for those counting. But impact of the biggest web video phenomenon of 2012 extends beyond PSY's singular music video.



While global interest in K-Pop has been on the rise for the past few years, the data suggests views of Korean artists tripled in the year following the release of Gangnam Style. Here's a chart of monthly views on top K-Pop channels, including PSY:


In the year before "Gangnam Style", official music videos from K-Pop artists were viewed over 2.2 billion times globally. The year following, that number jumped to over 7 billion views, 3x the viewership. In 2011, less than half the viewership on top K-Pop channels was from outside the Asia-Pacific region. Now, the majority of the watching is taking place outside the region. 91% of viewing in the past year was outside Korea.


In the U.S. where, for many, K-Pop had been an unknown genre of music, video viewership of top K-Pop artists doubled the year after "Gangnam Style" hit the web.

So what were people watching?

The top 10 music videos from Korea uploaded since "Gangnam Style" represent a diverse mix. PSY tops the list with his follow-up "Gentleman", which itself now has nearly half of a billion views. Other major acts include Girls Generation and Big Bang, both of which have cultivated large international followings.

You can see the full top 10 via this playlist or watch below:



-- Kevin Allocca

Introducing the YouTube Trends Map

Are teens in the South watching the same videos as middle-aged folks in New England? Now with the YouTube Trends Map (youtube.com/trendsmap), you can see today’s most popular videos in major markets across the U.S. You can also see what’s popular with women or men, as well as by different age groups.



The Trends Map is the result of all the great feedback you’ve given us from the Trends Dashboard, as we keep working to help you find great videos and channels on YouTube. For now, the Trends Map is only available for the U.S., but stay tuned for updates.

Check out the Trends Map FAQ for any questions, and happy trend-tracking!

-- Kevin Allocca

PSY's 'Gentleman' Raises the Bar

Everyone knew the followup to PSY's massive (if unlikely) international hit "Gangnam Style" would draw lots of attention. But considering the assumption-defying nature of PSY's breakout popularity and massive anticipation, it was hard to predict just how big that spike in interest would be. One week and around 200 million views later, the results are in.

PSY already holds the record for the most viewed video of all time -- Gangnam Style now has an incredible 1.5 billion views -- but now he also set the record for the most views ever in a single day with the over 38 million "Gentleman" achieved on April 14th. Here's a chart of the incredible daily viewership so far:



Not surprisingly, PSY's new single quickly became April's top rising search on YouTube -- with worldwide interest first peaking on Monday April 15 and remaining high since -- and debuted at #1 on YouTube's music chart, bumping his previous hit to #2.

From a stats perspective, it's one of the biggest music video launches the web has ever seen. For some added perspective, "Gentleman" was seen 100 million times in less than 4 days in regions all over the world, a milestone that it took "Gangnam Style" nearly two months to achieve:



The previous single-day record was set by KONY 2012 last March.

-- Kevin Allocca

Note: 24-hour period measured via PST.

Rise of the Ridiculous Prank Channel

Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

Pranking and prank videos have been a part of online video culture from the start. For YouTube, the popularity of some classic videos -- Rickroll anyone? -- was entirely based around prank behavior. Jimmy Kimmel helped bring crowd-sourced video pranking to the masses and fads like coning spread from one country to the next.

But over the past few years, we've also started to see another trend emerging: prank channels. Entire channels devoted to terrorizing and harassing innocent people. Here's a chart of the monthly viewcount for just the top 10 of these channels.



So what are the top 10? By our rough estimation, we'd designate these 10 channels -- whose videos have been watched around 3.5 billion times combined -- as the heaviest producers of consistent popular prank videos:

• PrankvsPrank
• NQTV
• JustForLaughsTV
• MagicofRahat
• ImprovEverywhere
• RomanAtwood
• VITALYZDTV
• MediocreFilms
• jackvalefilms
• LAHWF

Want more? Check out this playlist for a selection of 10 of the top trending prank videos of all time. Watch them all below or click here to see the list.