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Google updated the YouTube app for Google TV yesterday, bringing YouTube's channel-based redesign to the living room. It also adds a "Discover" tab for browsing new channels and videos to watch. The update also adds performance and navigation improvements.

Yesterday, Google TV's Facebook page seeded that a big announcement was coming. When Peter Kafka revealed that this YouTube app was it, he concluded that it was no big deal. But as far as Google TV goes, the YouTube app is big. YouTube is the new television. It's smart TV's killer app. But YouTube is not exclusive to Google TV. If Google TV wants to be relevant, it has to offer the best YouTube experience around.

YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at its most popular videos of all time. Our latest update has Justin Bieber still at number 1 with Baby, which was the first video to earn a half a billion views! Currently, Bieber and Eminem between them make almost half of the top 10. Also of note is a music video by Jennifer Lopez called On The Floor ft. Pitbull, which has risen to number 2 with almost 500 million views in only 10 months.

We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views (it's now outside the top 10). The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million views. In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views. By the beginning of January 2011, Justin Bieber was at number 1 with over 400 million views for Baby.

Here is the top 10, as of February 2012:

The Internet may have grown up first in the United States, but it's a global phenomenon now. The same can be said for the fast-growing body of educational content on the web. YouTube announced a new batch of partners that were added to its Education Channel today and noted that nearly 80% of the viewership of educational content on the site came from outside the United States. Less than 70% of the site's total traffic is International, so the educational content is disproportionately viewed by global audiences.

Both YouTube and iTunes U are serving up huge quantities of educational content to a world already in the throes of a 50 year revolution in global education. In some ways they represent exactly the kind of education that a new world needs, too: learning that augments existing education and fosters life-long development of non-routine analytical and interactive skills. That's a recipe for good times.

YouTube's statistics continue to boggle the mind. It revealed today that it serves 4 billion videos every day, a 25% increase in the past eight months. YouTube users upload one hour of video every second, which has prompted Google to create an annoyingly cute website to visualize this awesome stat. At the end of 2011, YouTube reported that it served a trillion videos that year, about 140 views for every living human being.

As Reuters notes, Google reported that only about 11% of YouTube views are monetized. That's not all the revenue Google makes from YouTube, since its Universal Search features YouTube video results prominently alongside search ads. But the YouTube business is still under construction, and it's growing fast. As YouTube's reach begins to dwarf even television, the whole landscape of video content changes.

One of Google's earliest YouTube employees is now leading a new charge at the company: Trying to figure out how to make YouTube a better service for social good - focusing on nonprofits, education, and free expression/activism.

YouTube has long worked with nonprofit-types to help them spread their causes and raise money. About 16,000 organizations are currently in its program for nonprofits, which gives them access to special YouTube features and support, Google says. And YouTube, the video service, is already a tremendous mouthpiece for activists.

But a new team, led by former YouTube product head Hunter Walk, is designed to integrate the notion of "doing good" into everything YouTube develops, from product features to support to broader vision. With the extra support, there's no reason YouTube shouldn't have 100,000 organizations in the program, Walk says.

I use the service Wistia.com to embed videos on my blog pages: I have covered the company before here and mentioned their analytics and video player. Today the company announced another series of improvements to their player on their blog here that are worth considering. The new features go way beyond what most video hosting sites offer.

Men are more likely than women to turn to Facebook and other social networks for healthcare purposes, according to a survey by accounting firm PwC.

Not surprisingly, the survey of 1,000 adults found that younger people were more likely to use social media than older people for healthcare purposes. Overall, nearly a third of respondents, and 50 percent of those under the age of 35, had used social media for healthcare purposes, which can range from registering a complaint to looking up informational videos on YouTube.

The PwC report concluded that social media would continue to be a factor for healthcare providers and consumers, saying that healthcare is "no longer social media's wallflower." At the same time, however, ambiguous regulations, privacy concerns and a host of other factors all limit how patients and healthcare providers use social media to make decisions.

YouTube reflected on its banner year today, 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.

Looking at the trends, it's clear YouTube viewers are looking for quick entertainment, music and humor. The report excluded content from major music labels, and it's still full of songs. The most viewed video was "Friday" by Rebecca Black, of course. For the year of a trillion views, the success of this weird, bad video is reassuringly YouTube-like. But YouTube began some major changes and unprecedented deals this year. What will YouTube's next Rewind be like?

YouTube has launched a new initiative called YouTube for Schools, which will enable educators to open up classrooms to the wide world of educational content on YouTube without all the junk. Open Internet access in schools is tricky, with all the distractions and time-wasters out there, so Google is taking this step to make educators' lives easier.

Network administrators can turn on YouTube for Schools to give school computers access to the vast library of YouTube EDU content from partners such as the Smithsonian and TED. The content is organized into topical and grade-level playlists. You can view the lists at youtube.com/teachers.

In a potential abuse of YouTube's system for reporting copyright infringement, Universal Music succeeded yesterday in having a pro-file-sharing song removed from the site. The kicker? Universal evidently does not have any legal claim to the rights of the song or any of its contents.

The track was commissioned by file-sharing site Megaupload as part of a campaign to generate support for the controversial service. It features several mainstream artists, including Snoop Dogg, Kanye West and P Diddy, praising the service, which happens to be one of many thorns in the sides of major music executives everywhere.