Top 5 YouTube Videos

The crowning of Lady Gaga last week, as the first music artiste to reach one billion views on YouTube for three of her music videos (Poker Face, Bad Romance and Just Dance) makes Internet history. However, Lady Gaga may not hold on to this particular piece of history for much longer as more artistes get closer to the 1 billion mark at a speed which suggests that the 2 billion mark will be reached at a faster rate. For example, the Twilight series and Soulja Boy already boast of totals of around 980 million and 860 million page views respectively and it won’t be long until they also cross the billion mark.

Although reaching the one billion mark with an accumulation of different videos (3, in the case of Lady Gaga) is a remarkable achievement, the more impressive record will be when a single video actually gets to the one billion mark. As we count down to the first video to be viewed a billion times, Visible Measures “top 5 views for single videos” gives us an idea of the artistes/videos who are most likely to be the first to reach this milestone. The top 5 list of video views as at March 2010 is shown below.

1. Soulja Boy: Crank Dat – 722,438,268
2. Twilight Saga:  New moon – 639,966,996
3. Beyonce: Single Ladies – 522,039,429
4. Michael Jackson: Thriller – 443,535,722
5. The Gummy Bear Song – 394,327,606

Talking Point

Which video do you think will be the first to be viewed one billion times on the Internet? Do you agree with those who say it will be Lady Gaga’s latest single – Telephone featuring Beyonce? How do you explain the dominance of the top 5 list by music videos?