As the internet continues to expand, video is taking hold and is responsible for the most recent explosion in online traffic. Whether it’s an online news website like MSN, a sports website like ESPN, or just an email from your friends, video is a likely candidate for viewing content online. It’s hardly considered fun anymore unless there’s some kind of video involved in your online experience.
Many of you have probably heard of the YouTube.com website, it is a place for people to engage with videos in new ways by sharing, commenting, and watching videos. YouTube originally started as a personal video sharing service in February 2005 and has grown into an entertainment destination with people viewing more than 70 million videos on the site daily. Everyone can watch YouTube videos, both on YouTube.com and on the Internet. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the announcers of tomorrow.
This new revolution in the way people can interact online is vastly expanding the ways we communicate and share information with others online. Video is exploding on the Internet everywhere. Even the emails of our friends and family include videos that someone has posted somewhere on the Internet. The most recent controversial topic on the Internet is the so-called video of President Bush suffering a digitally manipulated assassination titled “Death of a President.” Channel 4 in the UK has produced a film that begins with the assassination of President Bush by a pacifist sniper outside a Chicago hotel. They have used special effects to use the real face of Bush. It appears to be a surprisingly real movie, and understandably it causes outrage among many Americans.
Death of a President uses digital wiles, archival footage, and actors. This drama, which recreates the national paranoia after the murder, will be screened this month at the Toronto Film Festival. Channel 4 hopes to sell the film to US broadcasters, but they say it is impossible. So wait until it hits YouTube. At the moment, all we have is the image of the scene and the initial news aired by NBC.
The number of Internet users watching online video grew an impressive 18 percent between October 2005 and March 2006. That’s according to comScore’s first analysis of online video viewing habits of Web users from USA, Excerpted from their new Video Metrix service.
In March, US Internet users initiated a total of 3.7 billion video content streams; and they watched an average of 100 minutes of video content each during the month, compared to 85 minutes in October.
Men started 52 percent of these streams, women 48 percent; dividing the genera on roughly equal lines. But men spent much more time on content, averaging two hours of viewing time during the month, compared to twenty hours for women. Not surprisingly, men between the ages of 18 and 34 were most engrossed in online video, averaging 140 minutes of video consumption.
But while certain demographics are consuming more video than others, the report’s biggest surprise is that people of all ages and walks of life are eating it, according to Erin Hunter, executive vice president of media and entertainment at comsCore.
“There are age biases, but there is no group that does not,” he said. “It’s not just about college students. It’s also the oldest demographic, and clearly both men and women alike. In terms of content, we watch entertainment, sports, and news, all with pretty high viewership rates.”
As we can see, the Internet is taking shape in a whole new light. Video is becoming a reality and has enabled millions of people to post video content online. What’s Next? Will we be able to form our own TV stations online with broadcast media? Instead of blogging, can you watch me talk about the latest and greatest e-commerce topics in the comfort of my home? I sure hope so and it seems that the Internet is definitely heading in this direction. With the birth of reality TV a few years ago and the recent influx of bloggers everywhere, it seems like that would be the perfect combination: Internet reality TV stations, created by people like you and me.
