ReadWriteWeb

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:

According to a German court in Hamburg, Google's YouTube can be held liable for damages when it hosts copyrighted videos without the copyright holder's permission. This case centered around three music videos by classical crossover soprano Sarah Brightman, but this ruling will likely have far-reaching consequences for YouTube's operations in Germany. YouTube will now have to block access to these videos and disclose how often its users accessed these streams. YouTube will also have to pay damages based on the number of plays. Google plans to appeal the ruling.

The Snuggie. Can any marginally-useful product peddled on late night TV ever match its success? The infomercial for the blanket with sleeves known as the Snuggie has got to be one of the most ridiculed pieces of television ever produced - the parody advertising the "what the f$#@ blanket" has more than 13 million views.

But the Snuggie is also the only infomercial product that we've known ordinary people to actually purchase. And now, the makers of Snuggie are soliciting videos in an attempt to capitalize on the running joke.

Now that World Cup soccer has become the most popular Web event ever, we wanted to help you understand what it is about this sport that's so effective at capturing the world's attention.

From the number one video of soccer celebrities Ronaldinho and Ronaldo showing their best tricks, to the 50 best goals of all time, to street soccer on rooftops, these are our picks for the best videos with the greatest number of views. As a bonus we've included two honorable mentions. These two aren't the most popular videos, but they do much to explain the world-unifying force that the World Cup is. If we've left out any of your favorite soccer videos, please post your links in the comments below.

Have you seen the video that's a collection of Hollywood's most dramatic dead cellphone moments? From the very first cell phone TV commercial, to a huge T-Mobile publicity stunt, to children in Africa who mine the Coltan we use in our mobile devices, here's our collection of the top videos about mobile.

Of these, far and away the most popular was a T-Mobile publicity stunt that auditioned 10,000 dancers and then filled up a Liverpool England street train station with 400 of them. The advert entitled "Dance" was part of T-Mobile's Life for Sharing campaign. Do you have a favorite video that makes mention of mobile? Let us know in the comments below.

Over the past 20 years the two people most prominent in the world of personal computing have been Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Sometimes they've worked as partners, mostly as the opposite. So in the end who wins?

ReadWriteWeb wants you to be the judge. After viewing these 10 videos, it's up to you to decide who gives a better graduation speech, who makes the best cartoon character, and who is better at being funny. Who's the bigger alpha in the dating game, who's better at saying nice things about their opponent, and finally, who is better at leaving their business?

Our choices for the 10 best Twitter Videos focus on not just number of views, but on videos that help explain how Twitter has changed our culture. From the most popular video about why a group of teenage girls quit Twitter, to an instructional video about how to you use Twitter, to cartoons, to downright Twitterholics, the culture that is Twitter has been explained in many ways.

Another common theme in these videos is introducing non-Twitters users to the Twittosphere. David Lettermen makes great fun of the all too common question, "What is Twitter?" Twitter in HD, featuring Marina Orlova from HotForWords, covers the early days, as well as the creators of Twitter. If you'd like to know more about ReadWriteWeb follow us on Twitter @rww.

Facebook runs a website that gets a quarter of a trillion page views per month. The culture around Facebook has led to many popular videos. Some of the most viewed videos about Facebook are simply music videos and many of those didn't make our list.

While we did consider the number of views in our selection, we primarily focused on videos that illustrate all the ways Facebook has changed our lives. From Farmville, to warnings about losing privacy to what people don't like about Facebook, this list of videos shows society's reaction to Facebook's sudden rise in popularity. Also included are two 60 Minutes interviews with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. They're from 2008, back when Facebook only had 10% of the users they have today.

Our selection of the 10 most popular YouTube videos about the Web is of course based on page views. But we also filtered the results for videos that are most true to explaining the big-picture version of what the Web is. The selection includes some of the most creative ways the growth of the Web has ever been explained.

The fast paced growth of the Web too often keeps us focused on the latest and greatest, to the point were we lose perspective for how the Web has changed over time. So let's take a step back and get a more culturally-oriented overview of the Web. From a 1969 film about an internet that didn't have a name, to the most recent video on the Future of Publishing - as both nostalgia and analysis, we offer you these videos to help you reflect.

YouTube is, by far, the most popular online video service, but we actually know very little about how bloggers use the service to embed videos on their own sites. Sysomos, the Toronto-based social media analytics and monitoring firm, just took a closer look at how the blogosphere links to and embeds YouTube videos. Overall, the company analyzed over 2.5 million YouTube videos that were embedded in blog posts between July and December 2009.