60,768 News Articles

YouTube corners web video market

Thrashing Google, MSN & Yahoo

YouTube is the most visited video website, attracting almost half of all visitors and towering over giants such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN, according to Hitwise.

For the week ending 20 May, YouTube, founded in January 2005, nabbed almost 43 percent of all visits to video websites, while the video section of News Corporation's MySpace.com came in second with 24.2 percent, the market researcher said.

The video search engines of Yahoo (9.6 percent), MSN (9.2 percent), Google (6.5 percent) and AOL (4.3 percent) followed. Rounding out the top 10 were iFilm, Grouper Networks, Dailymotion.com and Custom One Media's vSocial.com.

Collectively, traffic to the top 10 video sites increased 164 percent in the past three months, New York-based Hitwise said yesterday.

For many years, online video remained an unfulfilled promise, hampered by high broadband prices, inferior image quality and reluctance by TV networks and film companies to put their shows and movies on the web.

However, in the past year, video on the web has gained momentum, helped by a critical mass of users with broadband access, improved quality and an embrace by production companies to distribute their films and programs online.

Send to a friend

Email this article to a friend or colleague:


PLEASE NOTE: Your name is used only to let the recipient know who sent the story. Both your name and the recipient's name and address will not be used for any other purpose.