Top 10 Holiday Videos of 2012

Happy Holidays from YouTube Trends!

For a third year, we again look back at the top trending videos of the holiday season. This year, Epic Rap Battles -- who also produced one of 2012's overall top trending videos -- took the top spot as of Christmas Eve with it's Snoop Lion collaboration, "Moses vs Santa Claus".

You can see the full top 10 in the list below or via this playlist.

While it didn't break the top 10, the top Hanukkah video of the year was this Rube Goldberg Machine from the Israel Institute of Technology.

For more, you can check out the top 10 lists from 2011 and 2010.

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Gangnam Style Crosses One Billion View Mark

This post originally appeared on the Official YouTube Blog

A million views? You know what's cool? A billion views.

Today, a 34-year-old K-Pop artist made online video history when his viral video, Gangnam Style, smashed all our records and became the first video ever to reach one billion views. Yup, that’s right one BILLION views!



PSY's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music-- and er, great equine dance moves. In the past, music distribution was mostly regional. It was more difficult to learn about great artists from around the world. But with a global platform at their fingertips, people are now discovering and sharing amazing music from all over the planet, by artists like Brazilian Michel Teló and Belgian-Australian Gotye.

One billion views is an incredible number, but the PSY-nomenon goes beyond that. Check out these stats:

• PSY was already big in Korea, but in 2012, he became a global celeb as Gangnam Style quickly spread from Seoul and the pacific to North America, South America, and Europe. It’s been seen at least 1 million times in close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever!
• From a one-thousand person flash mob in Jakarta to cover videos from Ai Weiwei and Mitt Romney, hundreds of thousands of parodies have been uploaded to YouTube, some of which have tens of millions of views. In fact, fan tributes to Gangnam Style are now being viewed 20 million times every single day.
• PSY's own remix with Hyuna has 200 million views alone.
• "Gangnam Style" was YouTube's top rising search of 2012 and on October 6th, we saw more than five million searches for “gangnam style” in a single day. Check out this video demonstrating some of our most popular YouTube searches this year.
• For those interested in the business side: a number of assessments and projections have been posted claiming “Gangnam Style” has generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, hit more than 2.9 million in song downloads since July, and achieved other incredible feats!
• Since late last month, people have clicked to buy the track on iTunes over 600,000 times helping make PSY the first Korean artist ever to rank #1 on the U.S. iTunes chart and #1 in over 30 more countries.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about this feat is that it took just over five months to happen. To give this milestone some context, here’s a chart of Gangnam Style’s rise to popularity versus Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” the video that previously held the most-watched video title:



Congratulations to PSY, the flash mobbers, K-Pop fans and people who love fun across the globe. Considering the Gangnam Style dance was the number one dance-related search on YouTube this year, you better make sure you brush up on your moves before New Year's Eve.

The kind of amazing creativity and unique connection between people all over the world that resulted in this one billion views is only possible with an incredible community of people we're so lucky to have on YouTube. And we can't wait to see what you'll come up with next!

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YouTube Rewind 2012: Recapping the Year's Top Trends!

This post originally appeared on The Official YouTube Blog

It’s that time of year again to pause, rewind and remember the videos, the entertainers, and the moments that captivated you in 2012.

This year, Korean Pop music transcended boundaries and took the world by storm. Cover songs, parodies, and "do-it-yourself" music videos from all genres entertained us in countries near and far. And you participated in conversations at a global scale, uploading videos to share ideas on everything from nonprofit campaigns, to political satire, to new and surprising voices and talents. Plus, all over the world, you tuned in for the most up-to-date news footage of presidential elections, natural disasters and more.



2012 has been a big year for YouTube. You’ve been watching over 4 billion hours of video a month. Millions of creators are using YouTube channels to experiment with innovative forms of entertainment, explore their passions and interests, and take creativity and pop culture to new levels. 2012’s top trending videos showcase this creative ingenuity in ways we'd never before thought possible.

Check out the YouTube Rewind channel to explore the trending videos of the year in your country. Globally, here’s what we were all talking about in 2012:

Top Trending YouTube Videos:

1. PSY - GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) M/V
2. Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover)
3. KONY 2012
4. "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen - Feat. Justin Bieber, Selena, Ashley Tisdale & MORE!
5. Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2.
6. A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE
7. WHY YOU ASKING ALL THEM QUESTIONS? .. #FCHW
8. Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize
9. Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.
10. Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128k' - Mission Highlights

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