YouTube reflected on its banner year, announcing that it served over 1 trillion playbacks in 2011. "That's about 140 views for every person on the earth," YouTube's Rewind blog post says.

YouTube saw record traffic and mobile growth this year. It gets 3 billion views per day, and video uploads have doubled since last year.

The report excluded content from major music labels, and it's still full of songs. The most viewed video was "Friday" by Rebecca Black.

YouTube began some major changes and unprecedented deals this year.

In October, Google gave users the ability to link YouTube and Google+ accounts, but that was just a new way of browsing videos. In November, however, users caught YouTube beta testing a whole new YouTube, and it arrived on December 1. YouTube's grid had been replaced with a social stream.

The rearrangement of YouTube around channels sets the stage for the unveiling of the major content deals on which YouTube has been working. This year, YouTube sought deals to broadcast pro sports games and rentals of Disney movies. Google chairman Eric Schmidt has been on a world tour of TV executive get-togethers talking up the future of Google as a mainstream video platform, readwriteweb.com reports.