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Online video watching surges

Watching and sharing videos have become some of the UK’s most popular online activities, with new figures showing that YouTube, the video website, has overtaken Wikipedia as the most visited social media website.

Some 10.4m people visited YouTube in January, compared with 9.6m going to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, and 8.5m visitors to Facebook, the social networking website, according to figures from Nielsen Online.

Visitors to YouTube are up by 56 per cent from last January and represent about a third of people using the internet in the UK. Facebook leapt from being the 18th most popular social media website last year to third place this year, with visitor numbers soaring 712 per cent.

Video-sharing websites are enjoying a rise in popularity, with websites such as vidShadow, Veoh and Youku dominating the list of the fastest growing websites in the UK.

Veoh, which carries everything from home videos to network broadcasts, grew by almost 600 per cent over the past year to reach 799,000 visitors in January. VidShadow, which allows amateur video producers to make money from sharing clips, has grown 639 per cent in the past two months.

Alex Burmaster, internet analyst at Nielsen, said access to fast broadband internet services was prompting more people to watch videos online. About 85 per cent of UK internet connections are over broadband.

Media companies such as the BBC and Channel 4 have also recently launched services allowing viewers to watch TV programmes over the internet. They have been promoting these services heavily, increasing the public’s awareness that they can watch videos online.

Websites such as the BBC’s iPlayer are not classed as “social media” as, unlike YouTube, they show only professional content and do not allow people to upload their own material. But the marketing for these websites has had a beneficial effect on the online video sector as a whole.

“It is not niche behaviour anymore,” Mr Burmaster said. “The internet has become a mainstream part of life and logging on is as natural as turning on the TV or opening a newspaper.”

Источник: Financial Times

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