The Online Video Explosion

August 10, 2006 by  

During our last show we were talking about the recent explosion of online video. I found a few blog posts that discussed this topic. Smart Mobs had a short article entitled “Watching Online Video” where they discussed who is watching online video. They go on to say:

“Julie Supan,senior director of marketing for YouTube,said the site now serves up 35 million videos per day,and users upload 35,000 videos per day,with 100 million page views per day. These are massive numbers for a site that’s not even a year old yet”.Which prompts this question posed by unmediated.org, if Youtube.com now gets more traffic than the BBC.Which is mainstream media?

Another story I found from Wired called “A Guide to the Online Video Explosion” asks what do people want to watch? They noted that:

” . . .the networks are racing one another to get their broadcast programs online, while also creating Web-only content.

But don’t let them fool you. What’s happening here isn’t just TV online. Gone are the rigid 30- and 60-minute blocks; now the clip is it – be it 30 seconds or eight minutes, we’re watching only the money shots. Gone is top-down broadcasting; instead, the network has been, well, networked, with thousands of creators and places to watch, from single-serving sites like Rockboom to slick aggregators like iTunes and blinkx. And gone, too, is the at-this-time, at-this-channel programming; now we’re not only time-shifting with DVRs, we’re space-shifting as well, watching stuff on our laptops, iPods, and cell phones – even loading it back onto our TVs.”

What are your thoughts on this recent trend? Post a comment to this post and let us know!