ABU DHABI // A death-defying leap off the world’s tallest building. A sweeping view of the Liwa desert from the back of a camel. A first-person perspective of the Dubai skyline disappearing in a fast-moving combination of sand, fog and lightning.
These are some of the scenes that made the Top 10 list of videos watched and shared on YouTube in the UAE this year.
The videos have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, collectively, with music videos and advertisements taking up seven of the top 10 spots. The percentage of hits for each video that came from the UAE was not available.
Let It Go, the Oscar-winning song from Disney's Frozen, was among the most-viewed with almost 250 million hits.
Other popular songs on the list included Katy Perry's Dark Horse, Taylor Swift's Shake It Off and Esmail Mubarak's Shooq, which amassed more than 1 billion views among them.
Mother Nature also made the cut, with a video of the Burj Khalifa disappearing in a cloud of rain, published in March this year, getting more than 5 million hits.
The Burj Khalifa featured several times, with footage of Soul Flyers World Champions, Vince Reffet and Fred Fugen, breaking the world record for base jumping from the top of the world's tallest building. The Pinnacle Base Jump video was created by Skydive Dubai and has been viewed almost nine million times.
Google's video of exploring the Liwa desert has also been popular, as was du's Hag El Laila advert, Omo's Will It Remove challenge, and Al Khaleej's how to make bread video.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
