A regular MySpace user clued me in on the phenomenal increase in visits to MySpace Videos on March 31, 2006 that I mentioned last week. On that day, MySpace began including a “videos” link on all profile pages, as shown below in the profile of Tom Anderson, one of the MySpace founders. Clicking on the link directs the user to the vids.myspace.com domain. Most MySpace users don’t have any videos loaded, so the result page shows message that says “this user has not uploaded any videos.”

Hitwise data shows that when visits MySpace Video took off, its daily average session time decreased from 5 minutes 17 seconds on March 30 to 3 minutes 10 seconds on March 31. The chart below demonstrates this quite dramatically: MySpace Video’s market share is shown in the thick dark blue line, and its average session time in the thin blue line. Less than a week after the dramatic spike, traffic has leveled off, and average session time has increased to only 4 minutes 25 seconds. YouTube’s market share in the thick red line did not take a hit, and its session time, in the thin red line, actually increased to over 15 minutes in the past week.

What’s even more telling about the success of YouTube vs. the threat posed by MySpace Videos is the number of plays that the top ranked videos have received. As of this writing, “Pokemon Theme Music Video” has been viewed 7,823,195 times on YouTube, while “Crazy Longboard Slides” has been plyaed 439,890 times on MySpace Video. That’s a difference by a factor of 18.
Because “MySpace Tom” has over 69 million “friends,” MySpace certainly has the potential to drive video traffic, but YouTube has far superior content, and thus its market share is still increasing on a weekly basis.