Google-owned YouTube said Thursday it plans to increase its staff by nearly a third in what will be the online video-sharing star's biggest hiring year.

"2010 was a bang-up year," Jeff Ferguson of YouTube human resources team said in a blog post. "And in 2011, we plan to grow the number of people working at YouTube by more than 30 percent!"

Since being founded in February of 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, YouTube has become a global stage for sharing video.

An average of 35 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute and two billion videos are watched daily at the website, according to Ferguson.

"It's been amazing to watch an idea become a platform that turned into a stage for hundreds of millions of people to express themselves," he said.

"We now have aspiring filmmakers and musicians building their careers on YouTube, activists opening our eyes to global issues and individuals telling their stories in ways that only video can capture."

YouTube also announced the launch of the first "YouTube Creator Institute" in conjunction with the University of California School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College of Chicago.

Institute programs will combine online and on-campus components aimed at teaching aspiring filmmakers how to thrive with digital age tools.

earlier related report
Smartphone sales to top 100 mln in Asia-Pacific: analyst
Singapore (AFP) March 10, 2011 - Sales of smartphones such as Apple's iPhone4 are set to top 100 million units for the first time this year in the Asia Pacific market -- excluding Japan, an industry analyst said Thursday.

Smartphone sales are projected to hit 137 million units in 2011, up from nearly 84 million last year, the technology industry research company IDC said in a statement.

"Smartphones were a hot item in 2010, with more than double the shipments of 2009," said IDC analyst Melissa Chau, adding that the growth came from the region's more developed markets such as South Korea.

"In 2011, IDC expects this fire to keep burning as mobile phone vendors race to get consumers on higher-margin devices, operators look to pull up revenues on mobile data, and mobile platform stakeholders battle to woo app developers," Chau said.

'Apps' refers to 'applications' that allow smartphone users to do a range of activities through their mobile phones including sharing pictures, playing games or checking their bank accounts.

In addition to operating as a telephone, smartphones allow users to send and receive emails, access Facebook and Twitter accounts, download movies, music and books and perform multiple other functions while on the go.

By 2015, three in five phones sold in the region will be smartphones, up from one in five in 2010, IDC said.

In the face of the smartphones onslaught, feature phones -- or devices that perform the basic functions -- still held their ground.

Sales of feature phones grew 17 percent in 2010, driven by low-end brands priced below $100 from China, India and other countries, IDC said.