We’re obsessed with keeping score. And not just in sports. In politics, movie box office takes, the number of times Meredith and McSteamy glance longingly at each other in “Grey’s Anatomy.”
And YouTube. We love to see the YouTube balloon keep expanding, which means that online video is growing, breaking into the mainstream even more, and will one day rule the networks.
Comscore issued its July Website traffic and online video report and one number stands out: 5 billion. Comscore estimates that U.S. online videoaholics watched an average of 235 minutes of video, with 91 million viewers watching 5 billion videos on YouTube.
That’s 54.8 videos per viewer. In one month.
Just for grins, 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace, about 8 videos per viewer.
Overall, Comscore says that 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience watched online video in July.
Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb asks a question that has been on my mind for a while: How accurate are the Comscore numbers? Are they any better than Hitwise, another analyst firm that has argued the online video market in general is declining — except for YouTube.
Numbers and statistics, of course, are subject for interpretation and barroom debate. The trend I see is right here in the house: The Kid, now a freshman in high school, has been spending even more time than usual watching YouTube videos. So are her friends. No one comes over any more to hang out and watch TV or a movie. They hang out and watch YouTube.
It’s The Kid’s TV channel of choice. After all, you can only watch MadTV’s “Can I Get Your Number” sketch twice — once if you happen to catch the original airing and a second time in rerun. On the Web and on YouTube, you can watch it over, and over, and over, and over.
I knew the game was changing when I started getting family videos sent to me by my grandmother that were posted on YouTube. She did it all herself, from taking the video to uploading it. Now the entire family, which is spread across the globe, talks daily via comments on YouTube. Not quite a traditional use of the service, but I can believe the score. Which is interesting and slightly scary!