Online Video Usage Explodes

Prof. Ken Kobre at San Francisco State University runs one of the most prolific VJ courses and websites in the country. His blog is a must-read for anyone in the business.  

Yesterday, he ran some pretty astonishing statistics on the incredible uptick in online video in the past few months.  I don't know what is driving this, but it certainly is a major shift in media usage in this country.

A few of the more starling bits:

YouTube draws 125 million viewers per month (one billion views per day!), Hulu and Facebook are closing in with double-digit percentage gains that shatter their previous video-viewing records.

There were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.

There were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.

Kobre uses these statistics to urge newspapers not to dump out of their initial forays into online video.  The Washington Post just fired their two best VJs, astonishingly.  

We think that's important, but we're not sure that newspapers are going to be on the cutting edge of much more than paper cuts, so to speak.  But we think in light of where the demos are headed, the future of all forms of online video are pretty bright indeed.  But probably not at your local paper.