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March 03, 2006
Is social media now into the early majority?
In my previous post, I surmised that social media was still in the early-adopter phase.
I may have to take that back.
AdAge says that video-sharing/social media site YouTube.com had 4.9 million unique visitors in January. About 20,000 videos are uploaded to the site every day.
4.9 million visitors per month. That's the numbers-atmosphere that surpasses the web traffic of almost all traditional media. If you compare YouTube's visitor numbers to the web's most-visited traditional media site -- the New York Times -- the trend is even more eye-opening:
In terms of reach, it's a statistical dead-heat. After coming out of virtually nowhere six months ago, YouTube is officially hot.
Update: Newsweek says YouTube "gets more visitors a week than the video sections of either Yahoo or Google and the average user spends almost twice the amount of time there." A large part of that is due to the brilliant but simple idea of making it easy for users to post clips into their own web pages, with YouTube providing the background engine. The article also takes up copyright content on the site (as raised by commentor Ben Martin); the MPAA praises YouTube as being a "good corporate citizen."
Update 2: Amy Gahran says Alexa's presentation about site tatistics is wacky. I agree that it's confusing. As the company says on its own website, Alexa is not a good barometer of sites that aren't at least in the top 100,000 of all websites.
AdAge got its 4.9 million visitors figure from Chicago-based comScore. Hey Gian: How about opening up comScore's data set for a few basic public searches like website traffic and rank? That would be a wonderful new tool for the Internet, not to mention driving a powerful new level of traffic to comScore.
I feel somewhat comfortable that comparative analysis of two large sites using Alexa's data is a pretty good indicator of popularity. Not scientific, but probably an OK guess.
Technorati Tags: Social media, YouTube, Copyright
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Yeah, it's amazing the traffic you can get by offering other peoples' copyrighted material on the internet for free!
Signed,
Shawn Fanning
Oh, Shawn...
If it’s in the early majority, then 2006 will be its coming of age. But people still ask me what blogs are, unless we’re a bit behind Down Under.
How interesting...perhaps most of all that YouTube has 20,000 people a day providing content they think is interesting and relevant. It's just going to keep growing and growing and growing...
You may remember I'm the iPod wedding guy. what a great alternative source (besides iTunes, and my Blog) to showcase videos.
Now, who will come up with a video search feature...
You may remember I'm the iPod wedding guy. what a great alternative source (besides iTunes, and my Blog) to showcase videos.
Now, who will come up with a video search feature...
One thing to keep in mind here is that your analysis is premised on believing Alexa's estimates of traffic.
Personally, I think there's something weird with Alexa's numbers. I mean, they show my newest blog, The Right Conversation, which I began in December 2005, as having a "daily reach" as high as 38 million visitors!
While I'm flattered, I know that's utterly ludicrous. I see my site stats drawn from my server logs. Trust me, it's nowhere in that ballpark. (Yet.)
It would be nice if there were reliable independently audited numbers to test this theory. Good luck getting that.
...I'm not saying your analysis is wrong. If the numbers from Alexa are correct (at least proportionately), the growth of YouTube is stunning.
Thanks,
- Amy Gahran
Contentious.com
RightConversation.com
Amy -- I find Alexa's presentation about statistics confusing as well. As the company says on its own website, Alexa is not a good barometer of sites that are not one of the top 100,000 in the world.
The 4.9 million visitor figure I quoted from AdAge comes from comscore. If comscore would just open up its data set for something as basic as traffic and rank, that could be quite wonderful for the Internet, not to mention comscore.
I feel relatively comfortable that comparative analysis of two large sites using Alexa's data is a pretty good indicator of popularity. Not scientific, but probably a good guess.
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Well like u mentioned youtube gets loads of traffic,but it jus has me wandering how google converts that traffic or did they just purchase youtube jus for kicks' which is also cool.
