Online Video Popularity Still Climbing

Ant writes "Macworld reports that people in the U.S. have steadily increased the amount of time they spend watching videos online, as Google's YouTube remains by far their preferred video site, according to a study. In July, almost 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos online, up from 71.4 percent in March, according to comScore Networks. The monthly time spent watching videos went up to an average of 181 minutes per viewer in July from 145 minutes per viewer in March, according to comScore. In July, the average user watched 68 clips, up from 55 clips in March. Overall, almost 134 million U.S. Internet users watched a little over 9 billion video clips in July, up from 126.6 million people and a little over 7 billion clips in March."

Comments

Demand will be met

[mcrbids]

When customers don't get what they want, they'll look for a way to get it. And when somebody provides what the customers want, they'll buy it.

How much simpler could it be?

I want to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and I'll pay up to a couple bucks a day to get it. I don't want to wait, and I don't want alot of hassle. What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television. Broadcast television will wane, and the quality of online video developed under alternative business models will improve. (We hope - most of the YouTube content is either pirate or just awful to watch)

But the ability is there, and the public networks aren't (so far) willing to adapt. So they'll die.

How much simpler could it be?

Re:Demand will be met

[suv4x4]

What we're seeing is the end of an era - the era of broadcast television.

Now, now. Don't be so quick. I agree we're in the early stages of transition, and in the next years we'll see lots of channels broadcast on the internet, but don't kill classic TV just yet.

You know they killed radio and cinema when TV was introduced, and killed cinema yet again with VHS. Then with DVD again (but ok.. VHS died :) ).

There are currently a billion or more folks world wide at 30+ who prefer the passive experience of cable/air TV (I'm not saying it's a bad thing either), and the market will continue to deliver to this market, if even for the sheer amount of investment in broadcast equipment they already have.

For the longest time I see content being broadcast on both classical TV and on demand. While in the next 5 years I expect the Internet on-demand/live streaming business will boom, I expect it won't be before 20-30 years that we see classic broadcast TV become a niche and disappear, if ever.

Re:Who doesn't

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Actually it's Internet Killed the video star http://www.poptix.net/funny/videostar.swf ;-)

Online video site business model.

[Silverlancer]

1. Get lots of venture capital, somehow.

2. Declare the site beta.

3. Allow people to upload videos as high as 18 megabits per second.

4. Wonder where all the venture capital went.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Broadband

[Mike610544]

It would be interesting to see how much of this is due to the (partial?) death of dial-up internet access. Is the rate of increase consistent with dialup->DSL/cable conversions? Even within the "broadband" realm, I'm much more likely to click a video link now that my DSL is 3 Mb compared to when it was 760Kb.

Upload vs. Download stats

[sufijazz]

While Comcast's recent actions threaten to stifle innovation in this space, Netflix and Amazon Unbox will eventually win. Not to mention YouTube. What is interesting is that related industries such as video search engines and content producers like this will flourish.

I'd like to see some statistics on how many people upload videos vs. how many download/watch them.