YouTube
continued to hold its huge lead over competing video services, claiming a larger
share of the online video market than the next 64 sites combined.
A survey by research firm
Hitwise
measuring US visits to video sharing sites in May recorded a 60 per cent market
share for YouTube.
MySpace
came second with a 16.08 per cent market share, followed
by Google
Video with 7.81 per cent.
Google,
which acquired
YouTube for $1.65bn in October 2006, had nearly 68 per cent of all online
video traffic in May. The survey measured only website traffic, not embedded
videos or streams.
YouTube is also growing faster than competing sites. The study found that
YouTube's share of all US web traffic had grown by 70 per cent since May 2006,
while the 64 other top video sites had grown by just eight per cent.
YouTube is benefiting from its parent company as well. Hitwise found that the
amount of traffic being directed to video sharing sites from search engines has
climbed by 300 per cent since May 2006.
Hitwise research director Lee Ann Prescott noted that traffic from search
engines, including Google, now accounts for one fifth of all traffic to YouTube.
Do you agree?
Have your say on this article