From ReadWriteWeb:

YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let’s take a look at their most popular videos of all time.

I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular video of all time on YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006 and has since gone on to attract 55.8 Million views. It’s had 60,476 comments, the first of which was: “That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!!”. The comments for this video are still going strong today - the latest 10 comments have all come in the last 30 minutes, as of writing. Plus it’s been favorited 252,082 times (making it the number 1 Top Favorited video of All Time).

According to a SMH article at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance. In many ways this is your typical YouTube video - a funny, goofy, short and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).

Incidentally, on Laipply’s website there is an accompanying cat video - proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.

The next 3 most viewed YouTube videos are all music. Two of them professional, one amatuer.

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