Over the last year YouTube replaced Wikipedia as the UKs most popular social media website. Over 10.4 million Britons visited YouTube in January, or, one in every three Britons online. However, most telling was that half of the ten fastest growing social media sites during the last year were video-related. Whilst the majority of the most popular social media sites are the networks, such as Facebook, the fastest movers point to video being the biggest star of the 2008 social media scene.
By Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online
The fastest growing video social media site was vidShadow, growing 639% from the first time it appeared on the radar in 2007 to January 2008. Veoh, a mixture of consumer and professionally created content, grew 595%, Youku saw a 524% increase in popularity whilst Tudou and Video Jug grew by 250% and 247% respectively. And it’s not just the consumer-generated versions doing well. BBC’s iPlayer outperformed them all, growing by 918% from less than 200,000 UK visitors in August 2007 to over 1.9 million in January 2008. So, why are the video sites doing so well?
Firstly, the intensively competitive nature of the UK broadband market means people have had the opportunity to switch to higher bandwidths, making video a more viable option. Secondly, as more video sites spring up, this increases competition which improves the technology available to consumers and results in increased marketing activity and, therefore, awareness in the minds of consumers. Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, all this would be irrelevant if it wasn’t for changing consumer habits. The Internet is now a daily part of life and it is now as natural to turn on a PC as it is to turn on the TV, tune in the radio or open a newspaper. Essentially, people’s mindsets are simply more tuned into watching video online now.
It’s important to be aware that this changing mindset is happening across the board, not just amongst a technologically savvy niche of consumers. YouTube’s audience, for example, is composed in pretty much the same way as the overall Internet audience – only the 12-24 year old age group shows a significant ‘over-indexing’ in YouTube.
However, the demographic that has increased its share amongst YouTube’s audience the most over the last year was 50+ women. This group composed just 4% of YouTube’s audience in Jan 07 but doubled it to 8% in Jan 08. Furthermore, BBC’s iPlayer tends to ‘over-index’ most strongly on older consumers. Almost 25% of its visitors are at least 55 years old – double the percentage that this age group makes up across the entire Internet population.
So, whether it’s people snacking on video clips or feasting on full length TV shows or films, it’s clear that video could be the star everyone is chasing this year.
By Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online
