23
2007
YouTube Visits Up 14% Since Viacom Takedown Order; Surpasses Television Network Sites
YouTube’s traffic has not suffered since Viacom demanded that it remove 100,000 video clips on February 2, 2007. The market share of US visits to YouTube increased by 13.9% in the two week period between the weeks ending 2/3/07 and 2/17/07, and its average weekly traffic increase since the start of the year was 7%. As of 2/20/07, YouTube ranked as the 12th most visited Internet domain in the US. The sites that received more traffic than YouTube were MySpace domains, Google, Yahoo domains, Hotmail, MSN, eBay, Live Search, and Facebook.
During the week of February 3, YouTube’s traffic surged above the combined traffic to all of the television network websites.* This is a landmark event in the changing face of web traffic and entertainment consumption, now that entertainment seekers are now more likely to go to YouTube than any other television network or gaming website. The custom category of 56 television cable and broadcast network sites received 0.4865% of all US Internet traffic for the week ending 2/17/07, while YouTube received 0.6031%.
*The custom category of television networks excludes news, sports, weather, and shopping networks, whose websites serve a distinct purpose beyond supporting their unique television content, and does not include individual television show websites such as American Idol and The Simpsons. Here is a list of the top 10 sites in that custom category.
Now that Google owns the leading entertainment website in the US, it is faced with the challenge of offering copyright protections to content owners. This is a case in which user behavior is far ahead of the technology that content owners need to harness it, and hopefully companies like Audible Magic (via Techcrunch) or the start up Attributor (via WSJ) will make this possible.
Does Youtube really even need Viacom?
Its not just youtube whose traffic is surging. Many of the video content websites have experienced an upswing. It’s interesting to read that Youtube’s early february traffic was greater than the combined traffic of all the network websites.
Youtube clones like http://www.dailymotion.com are also benefiting from the increased attention paid to these type sites. Interestingly there are even youtube-type free porn video sites like that have popped up to take advantage of this phenomenon.
We can probably expect the big network websites to offer even more vidoes to try to compete in the future.
Let me get this strait; more folks go to Youtube than all other TV networks WEBSITES combined? Wow! And what does that mean? Network websites (if they are set up for it) can show some of their programming. So? But wait! Television is where most all folks watch TV programs from the networks you speak of, not from their websites. So what are you trying to say, that youtube has more viewers than the networks combined?
Or as Bruce Leichtman, President of Leichtman Research Group, says “As with most forms of media and entertainment, online video is following the traditional ‘heavy hand’ model of a minority of users driving the majority of the usage. Rather than replacing TV, in the near-term, emerging video services like online video are best viewed as opportunities to complement and augment traditional TV viewing options.”
Why did he say this? Key findings of a study his company recently completed, based on a survey of 1,250 households nationwide, concluded:
* Men aged 18-34 account for 41% of those who view video online on a daily basis, while comprising just 14% of the online subscribers sample
* Men aged 18-34 account for over two-thirds of adults who view YouTube and other user-generated content daily
* Just 8% of those who watch video online strongly agree that they now watch TV less often
Walter Graff
BlueSky Media, Inc.
http://www.bluesky-web.com
Offices in NYC and Amherst Mass.
Completely agreeing to what Walter Graff was commenting here before, I would like to add that when discussing the current youtube hype you should take into account the overall nature of the content shown there (and in the many clone sites around).
From content perspective mainly two kinds of program are successful on such user centered sites
a) Snippets recorded from TV, which can be commented (ok, this may sound a little like the holy Web 2.0 promise to some folks) or
b) Amateurish produced fun and/or trash videos (the kind colleagues mail around in the office or the kids show on their mobile phones during breaks on schoolyard)
Besides clips like the execution of Saddam Hussein (which was shown btw on TV as well), I have not found any original content which was only available on youtube that could hit the quality marks set even by small regional TV stations for prime time airing. I suggest to take the quality factor more into account when the weekly repeated routine of declaring youtube to the service that will kill TV is celebrated. Youtube will not do so – because it has no original content of importance in a wider context.
Even if they acquire some in the future or find a model to pay their users for streaming original content exclusively on their site, they’re no longer youtube as we know it – they will become a quite ordinary media service similar to todays TV networks.
But there are other things happening,seeming to be more promising for me then youtube (at least here in Germany): triple play DSL+Internet+VoD hits really succesful the market since the last year. So this may change really the way people watch TV in the future – not those postcard sized, unsharp and blocky posts on youtube, they are watching sharp, fluid moving, colourful original novelty Movies, Documentaries, News and Live Sports – all in 5.1 Surround Sound, fullscreen on a Flatscreen Plasma in their living room – but on demand and over DSL.
Youtube is light years away from this kind of user experience – and should therefore be considered as this good and successful website it really is: a place to share and comment funny or not funny little video snippets on a computer.
Jobst von Heintze
CEO MPEG AG Magdeburg
Germany