Google Inc (GOOG): America’s Best Growth Stock: YouTube?

Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG)‘s YouTube crashed Twitter, Inc.‘s seventh anniversary party yesterday. But, before we spoil Twitter’s special day, I’ll pause to congratulate the company for seven years, 400 million tweets per day, and well over 200 million active users — well done, Twitter. Now on to YouTube: Google Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) announced yesterday that YouTube has reached 1 billion monthly active users. It has taken the video streaming service just eight years to reach the impressive milestone. With viewing trends in the company’s favor, YouTube is just getting warmed up.

Generation C loves video
On Google’s official YouTube blog, the company adds perspective:

Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.

Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly 10 Super Bowl audiences.

If YouTube were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India.

PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!

So what’s driving this phenomenal growth? Generation C. Media measurement company Nielsen defines this group by their connected behavior. Gen C thrives on:

Connection: watching YouTube on multiple screens, and constantly switching between devices

Creation: engaging with online video, watching, creating, and uploading videos on YouTube

Community: thriving on community, defining which YouTube videos are popular by sharing content

Curation: finding content that matters to them

Nielsen’s findings indicate that this demographic group’s engagement with content is deepening at a mind-boggling pace. As much as 76% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 now own smartphones. The “amount of time Gen C spends watching YouTube on their smartphones is up 74% from last year,” the report asserts.

This YouTube-friendly audience has very different video consumption habits from the general population — 20% of them don’t even subscribe to cable. They fall in the category of “light TV viewer,” watching, on average, just 39 minutes of TV a day.

Though Gen C does watch less TV, they also consume video content at times others may not. To illustrate, 41% of Gen C watched YouTube on their smartphone while waiting for something or someone, 18% while commuting, and 15% while TV commercials are playing.