Lady Gaga and Android hit tech milestones

Lady Gaga garners over a billion views on YouTube and Android Market hits 100,000 apps

Two pretty impressive technology-related milestones made their way onto Twitter recently, and they’re each worth taking a look at individually. It’s arguable which of the two milestones is the most important, but when in doubt, go with the more original one.

Lady Gaga

American pop sensation Lady Gaga announced over the weekend that she had garnered one billion views on YouTube.

Many sources had predicted the milestone would be reached around this time, but it was unclear which pop artist would make the jump first. Teen pop idol Justin Bieber, with well over 900 billion plays on YouTube, will likely be joining Gaga’s exclusive club very soon.

Gaga’s videos, like Poker Face, Just Dance, and Bad Romance, are often so bizarre that they didn’t really need much push from the artist herself to go viral on the Web. In fact, those three videos alone had accumulated one billion views by themselves back in March, according to video analytics company Visible Measures. (Today’s milestone is different in that it looks only at YouTube.)

Android Market

The Android developer team announced Monday that the Android Market now features 100,000 apps.

Always the underdog, Android has the unfortunate luck of having reached this milestone less than a week after Apple’s App Store hit 300,000 apps, as revealed at the company’s special “Back to the Mac” event. Then follow the necessary comparisons: Apple only needed 16 months to hit 100,000 apps, but Android took four months longer.

In spite of Apple, Android should not downplay its latest feat. A tenth of a million applications is more than enough for smartphone users to explore for a long time. Actually, instead of trying to hit the biggest number, smartphone makers should focus on encouraging developers to work on really useful aps, instead of the joke fart apps.

What does it all mean?

So, since everyone knew these two milestones were coming, why should we care? Maybe it matters because, as one VatorNews commenter said in a related article, Lady Gaga has proved more than any other musician the importance in creating a totally comprehensive package and harnessing the power of social media to sell it. (It may sound silly, but startups could definitely learn a thing or two from her.)

In the case of Android, we could lean other way. Either developers are slowly beginning to love the non-iPhone mobile operating system or this was a long time coming. No matter how one spins the story, it’s at least a small win for the legitimacy of Android.

When it comes down to it, though, the social media monster inside of me wants to ignore all of that and quietly point to how both Lady Gaga and Android announced their individual milestones: via Twitter. The microblogging platform may not be battling revolutions in third-world countries or curing AIDS, but it is most certainly reigning supreme as the best medium for any singular voice to convey its message directly to the most massive audience in the world.

One predictable win for Lady Gaga, one small step for Android, and just another day in the news-breaking world of Twitter.