So congratulations are due on YouTube's 6th birthday - they now claim 3 billion views per day with users uploading more than 48 hours worth of video every minute.  That's a 100% rise on last year and still climbing. 

I don't imagine they really think that half the world is watching everyday, perhaps there are some keen viewers who come back a few times, but the reach is truly astounding for a video platform that launched with flaming farts and singing fans. 

Back in 2005, we were trying, with difficulty, to explain to clients how broadband would change the world. It's a little embarrassing now to remember our spiel, speeches and general ranting about the potential for a genuine participatory audience creating and sharing media and taking part in the general dialogue of the times.

Often quoted by IT professionals at the time was the case of Kylie's bum, where an unsuspecting technician had uploaded a short clip of video onto a fairly mundane site that featured some shots of the singer gyrating in shorts. This being a rare opportunity, the clip went viral and the website owners had a huge bandwidth bill to pay. Cue smug nods, tuts and 'there by the grace of' comments from the IT staff we were trying to get past.

So well done YouTube for solving that particular problem. Of course it didn't help sell our content management system which does also publish video in a variety of widgets. Now everyone expects video publishing for free.  But that's not the real the problem with YouTube. That lies with the enormous database itself. How are we supposed to find the best content? If we search for our favourite subjects we miss what Murdoch senior calls the 'serendipity' of the newspaper - finding the thing you didn't know you wanted to know.

Perhaps in six years time we will will be reminiscing how everyone thought we were mad when we suggested that the growth of free video would drive users back to locations where professionals curated content for them - like television and mainstream media publications. Will 3 billion views a day prove another tipping point?