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Business Bytes
May 16, 2008

Streaming Video Isn't The Only Thing Streaming

 

Another day, another survey. Some are worth quoting and noting; others not so much. Still others may be of value, but only if you put the results into context.

Case in point, ComScore put out a survey this week on online video metrics. According to their results, Americans viewed some eleven billion online videos in March of this year. That was a 13% jump just from February. February is also a slow sports month, while March has the NCAA playoffs, as in March Madness. That being said this March's numbers of online videos downloaded is a 64% gain from March of 2007. Now that's significant.

All this is very interesting... if you work at youtube, or one of the entertainment sites like Fox Interactive.

What you should not take away from these results;

- Online videos have become really popular. So, I should add streaming video to my corporate site or ecommerce site. If you build it, they will not necessarily come.Online videos have become very popular - at entertainment sites. To my knowledge there's been no rush to watch boring videos from professional conferences.

- If I have a video of a keynote address I made at the sheet metal industry's national conference in Boise last month, I should put it up on youtube. Everyone watches youtube. True, youtube is popular. But the average bear is watching clips from Stephen Colbert or guys dancing on treadmills. Very few people are going to youtube and conducting searches that involve the word " keynote".


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Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio