Add Your Photos and Video to This Story

Daily Visits to Video-Sharing Sites Doubled in 2007

by Jarrett Martineau | January 10, 2008 at 06:15 pm | 191 views | add comment

Proving industry analysts' predictions to be absolutely correct, there has been a massive boom in the online video industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

Audiences are bigger, more diverse, and more willing to engage online video content than ever before and, even though YouTube is ubiquitous and omnipresent, other video destination sites are also experiencing significant growth.

If ever there were a time to start up that vlog you've been thinking about doing, now is the time.

Daily visits to online video-sharing sites doubled last year, according to a study released Wednesday by Pew Internet and American Life Project. 15 percent of the 2,054 American adults surveyed said they visited a site "yesterday" -- the day before being contacted -- up 8 percent from 2006.

The percentage of people using video-sharing sites also grew -- by the end of 2007, 48 percent of American internet users had been to online video-sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo and Revver. That's up from 33 percent in December 2006, meaning that overall portion of people heading to video site doubled.

The dramatic increase is tied to the popularity of such video sites among men, and the under-30 set. Nearly a third of plugged-in young adults, aged 18 to 29, view videos on a typical day. The average daily use of popular online sharing sites also flourished among women, high school graduates and those 30 to 49 years old, according to the study.

Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew project attributes the online boom to the growth of broadband and the amount of video content available online.

"The internet is now a destination for people that it didn't used to be," said Rainie. "It's become a new venue for entertainment."