Social Nets, Video Hold Most Hope for Online Growth: Nielsen
The proportion of time Americans are spending on such engaging Web pursuits as social networking, and watching online video is approaching moon-shot status, according to new findings from research firm Nielsen Online. And for that matter, so are the audience sizes.
The study, presented in late April at the ad:tech San Francisco conference, found that the number of American users headed for online video destinations such as YouTube and Hulu.com has grown 339% from 2003 to 2009, while time spent on video sites has expanded almost 2,000% in the same period.
In the last year alone, video-centric Web sites increased their unique visitors by 10%, while streams per user grew 27% and total minutes spent watching online video jumped 71%, Nielsen determined.
Meanwhile, time spent engaged with social networks went up 73% in the last year, and the unique audience for those networks grew 11%. From 2003 to 2009, social networks saw an 87% increase in unique visitors. In the U.S., Nielsen found, social network usage grew 2.6% between December 2007 and December 2008 and now stands at about 67%.
In fact, global social network usage outstripped e-mail in reach for the first time in February of 2009, with 68.4% of the world
