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."

Who doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

We are all well past the "Internet Age" hype. Video killed the radio star? How about Internet killed the TV/Movie star.

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. [divx.com]

4. Wonder where all the venture capital went.

Re:Who doesn't

[cashman73]

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

Not really true. MTV killed videos itself about 10 years ago when it decided to stop airing them,... replacing real music content with Beavis and Butt-Head, and crap pop culture reality shows,... The good news is, at least YouTube seems to have somewhat resurrected music videos! ;-)

This was news, several years ago...

[adona1]

At what point will people stop reporting that "more people are doing X and Y on the internet"? Yes, lots of people do things on the internet. It will grow as more people get online and connections get faster. It isn't really very interesting.

Looking at websites? Check.
Downloading music? Check.
Social networks online? Check.
Watching videos? Check.

Can we just presume that more people are doing whatever next comes along, and not keep reporting on it?

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:Online video site business model.

[ImaLamer]

5. ???

6. Profit

(oh wait)

Re:Who doesn't

[vimh42]

Sounds about right. Though I don't think the TV/Movie star is dead quite yet. But perhaps some people get a little more entertainment out of something that is a little more real. Any idiot with a video camera can make a movie. And sometimes those idiots are quite entertaining.