YouTube has less than one-third of Internet audience

Angus Kidman
Wednesday, 03 January 2007 02:16

Your IT - Home IT

Video-sharing site YouTube is often held up as a prime example of the success of consumer-generated content, but a new study suggests that less than a third of Internet users regularly visit the site.

A survey of 2,541 Internet-using adults in the US by Harris Interactive and Witeck-Combs Communications found that 69% never go to the video-sharing site. 22% used YouTube for less than an hour a week, while just under 2% used it for more than five hours a week.

While those numbers might be a slight exaggeration -- videos from YouTube can easily be embedded in other sites, so it's possible that consumers are accessing the site without being aware of it -- they do demonstrate that YouTube has yet to achieve the mass reach of the television networks it is often said to be poised to destroy.

YouTube, which was purchased by Google in November for $US1.65 billion, has experienced enormous growth through its combination of amateur video, music clips and television extracts. It has come under increasing pressure to police copyright violations on its site, though it has had some success in negotiating deals with major record companies and US TV networks to use their content.

Other consumer-generated media did not fare much better in the study. MySpace was used regularly by 27% of consumers, and the same number said that they regularly read blogs. The figures all ranked slightly higher for gay and lesbian consumers, who were the original focus of the research.