In addition to being in good standing, the YouTube channel must have a minimum of one thousand subscribers. The sticking point, however, is that neither of the two alone seem to guarantee that you’ll be granted access to the feature, instead making you eligible to apply for it. Says YouTube, after enabling the Live button, users will gain access to the feature “in the following weeks,” all of which is a rather obtuse explanation of the expansion.

You can find out rather quickly if you meet the requirements by heading into the Account Features page and scrolling to the bottom of the listing. At the end of the list is the “Live” feature with a radio button. If you see a clickable button that says “Enable,” you’ll eligible to apply. If you’re not for whatever reason, such as bad standing or too few subscribers, you’ll see the following instead:

There are three categories in which an account is monitored for good or sub-par standing: Community Guidelines, Copyright Strikes, and Content ID Claims. All three are likewise listed on the Account Features page, each with a radio button and rating next to it. All three radio buttons must display a green light and the phrase “Good Standing.”

YouTube specifies the standards for gaining – and remaining – in good standing in its Community Guidelines. If you are granted the live streaming feature, you’ll be able to use any live video stream, with the ability to implement various camera angles, advertisements, slates, and close captioning. The live streams are supported across multiple devices, and can be watched from a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

SOURCE: YouTube

Included in the map is mainland USA as well as bits of Alaska and Hawaii – though you’ll find both of the smaller areas stuffed in the pocket of the larger, per usual smashed maps for convenience. Regions are mapped according to larger populations – don’t expect Staples, Minnesota to appear any time soon.

What’s interesting about the break-down you’ll see on the YouTube Trends Map is the differences between shares and views, age demographics, and gender based on Google information you’ve given the search engine whilst viewing videos. It’s not clear at the moment what Google does for breaking down Male and Female audiences – in the past we’ve found such situations to default to Male: we’ll see what Google has to say about the situation soon.

Meanwhile have a tap through the Age separations to see what’s happened to our hive mind – it doesn’t seem to matter what age viewers are, everyone wants to see the water polo player nudge his opponent into the pool as the rest of his teammates shake hands for a good game. Everyone loves to giggle.

The easiest way to grasp how many users this is? Almost one of every two Internet users visits YouTube for their video needs. That is astronomical, but perhaps still not enough to grasp the full nature of 1 billion users. How about this? The user base in one month is equal to approximately the Super Bowl audience – times ten.

Taking it even further, if YouTube were its own country, it would be the third largest, coming in behind only India and China. And rounding out the examples, remember PSY and Madonna’s Madison Square Garden event? They would have to perform in front of that audience 200,000 more times to equal the number of unique monthly visitors YouTube gets every month.

In summary: 1 billion users is a huge number, and certainly a celebration-worthy achievement. And as any good company would do, YouTube has given a hearty thank you to everyone who uses the service, expressing gratitude for every user from the “aspiring filmmaker in his basement” to the “next great pop musician.”

[via YouTube]

Of course, this isn’t the first time Netflix has revealed such information, having released a graph on the performance of top networks back in 2011. That information was harder to sort through, however, and far less appealing to the eye. With the ISP Speed Index, the information has been aggregated in a single location, with easily digestible information and the ability to pull up data for eight countries.

According to Netflix, 33 million customers stream in excess of a billion hours of video every month, providing ample data. Streaming data has been provided for the US, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Mexico. The US rounds out the list with both the fastest and slowest ISP speeds, while Mexico comes in at the bottom of the list for highest speed, and second from bottom (after the US) in the lowest speed category.

Mexico has the lowest overall speed at 1.65Mbps, however, while Finland has the top overall speed at 2.57Mbps. For the United States, Google Fiber comes in as #1 with 3.35Mbps, while Clearwire comes in last at 1.25Mbps; the average speed is 2.3Mbps. The UK’s speeds are a tad less polarized, with Virgin beating out the rest of its competition at 2.37Mbps, and EVERYTHINGEVERYWHERE coming in last with 1.77Mbps; the average speed is 2.07Mbps.

[via Netflix]

Twonky Beam is already compatible with devices and products like the Apple TV and AT&T U-verse, and now one of the most popular gaming consoles of all time, as well as all Roku streaming media players, now comes with support for the free Beam app. Those who own either devices will be able to watch online videos from their mobile devices on their TVs.

PacketVideo boasts that “unlike proprietary solutions that only work within a closed environment,” the company’s Twonky Beam app “is an open solution that works across brands, operating systems and industry standards” in order to bring beaming abilities to multiple devices easily and without hassle.

While Roku streaming media players already have all sorts of online video options, the Twonky Beam app does a lot more than that. It’s supports tabbed browsing, and you can bookmark your favorite video sites. Plus, you can beam and play content to your TV while you continue to browse videos on the app itself.

Twonky Beam is a free download and it’s available in the Google Play store and the iTunes App Store.

Here are some more numbers coming straight at you: YouTube Mobile accrues around 600 million playbacks per day, and as of January this year over 4 billion videos are watched per day, with 3 billion hours per month watched by 800 million users around the world.

The YouTube team have put together a video showcasing the various milestones and achievements the site has hit, loaded with stats and numbers across the years, plus various events that have been shared out across the world thanks to the platform. You can take a peek below, although you’ll have to provide your own cake and party poppers.

A provisional decision was published by the Competition Commission last year saying at the contracts did seem to be anti-competitive. The deadline for the final determination has now been extended to July to allow the commission to take into account changes in the movie market. The commission stated that it needs to assess “potentially relevant” developments in the industry such as the arrival of Netflix in the UK.

The commission also plans to assess the impact of LoveFilm that offers streaming movies as well. BSkyB reportedly announced recently that it intended to launch a streaming only service that will be standalone from its TV channel subscription. A paper was published by the commission asking for submissions on how the new services within the UK might have possibly opened competition in the market. Submissions are due by March 28.

[via Guardian]