YouTube announces 1 trillion playbacks and rewinds 2011 to reveal the year’s biggest video hits

Earlier today we looked at some of the UK’s most watched YouTube videos of 2011. Now, the Google-owned video-streaming platform has announced the world’s biggest hits over the past 12 months. Some of these may surprise you…some maybe not.

You can see the full figures and stats for yourself here at YouTube Rewind, which will give you a timeline of this year’s most popular videos and events.

“Today, we rewind through the videos and channels that absorbed our collective global attention this year”, says Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager in a blog post today. He continued:

“To compile these lists, we looked at global view counts of popular videos uploaded throughout this year, and, in some instances, we aggregated views across multiple versions of the same video. 2011 was a year of amazing new channels and new stars being discovered, awesome creativity, and of course, Rebecca Black. It was also a year of powerful news stories playing out on YouTube, as people witnessed and documented uprisings and natural disasters, touching personal moments and moments of protest.”

Allocca went on to reveal that there were more than 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) playbacks on YouTube in 2011, equating roughly to 140 views for every person on the earth.

Most viewed YouTube videos globally (excluding videos from major music labels)

1. Rebecca Black – Friday (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
2. Ultimate Dog Tease
3. Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton)
4. Talking Twin Babies – PART 2 – OFFICIAL VIDEO
5. Nyan Cat [original]
6. Look At Me Now – Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes (Cover by @KarminMusic)
7. The Creep (feat. Nicki Minaj & John Waters)
8. Maria Aragon – Born This Way (Cover) by Lady Gaga
9. The Force: Volkswagen Commercial
10. Cat mom hugs baby kitten