According to comScore, Google’s video sites grew 31 percent in November 2007 from the previous month. That makes Google’s sites including YouTube and Google Video the number one video site on the Internet with almost 3 billion videos viewed (31.3 percent share of all videos viewed).

Overall, U.S. Internet users viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos in November. In fact 75% of Americans viewed online video in November.

Other fun facts:

• Over 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched a video online averaging 3.25 hours of video per person during the month.
• Viewers watched an average of 3.25 hours (195 minutes) of online videos. That’s a 29% gain from the 2.52 hours (151 minutes) watched in January 2007.
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer consumed 69 videos.

Bonus: See ComScore’s press release with more figures and the list of the top 10 video properties.

Technorati Tags: comScore, Google, YouTube, streaming, research, Google video

2007 was a big year for Internet video. There were the huge Internet video celebrities, like Tay Zonday (Chocolate Rain), Chris Cocker (Leave Britney Alone), Miss Teen South Carolina and the Dramatic Prairie Dog (sometimes known as Dramatic Chipmunk).

Well a new study from Pew Internet found that 48% of Internet users said they have visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube in 2007. In December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites–which represents growth of more than 45%.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site “yesterday”. Last year, just 8% said they had visited a site “yesterday.”

Bonus: Link to the PDF of the full report.

Web 2.0 is all about interactivity and talking with web visitors. And YouTube is full of people leaving comments on videos.  But have you ever really sat down and read many comments on YouTube? Popular videos have hundreds of comments. Most of the comments are either spam, trolls or other annoying people.

That’s why Rohit Bhargava, a marketing professional, writes on his blog that he sees no point in publishing videos in YouTube and allowing comments. Sure, blogs are great forums for conversations, but YouTube, he says is filled with “people posting racist views about kids, using swear words and having all kinds of useless, mean and idiotic ‘conversations.’” He writes:

“For some reason, commenting on videos encourages stupidity.”

Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people who comment on Digg, YouTube, blogs, MySpace or any other sites. However, using comment moderation is important to limit the amount of spam and trolling. After all, lots of blogs moderate their comments, but very few YouTubers moderate their comments.

And I doubt that commenting on videos encourages stupidity, but people must feel comfortable with the level of anonymity that YouTube has.

I think that’s the most interesting thing. Why do people believe they can leave dumb or racist comments on public forums? Would they ever say these things in person? Face to face with someone else? No. Absolutely not. But people feel safer when behind the veil of the Internet and their keyboard.

Bhargava says he advises people to “embed the video elsewhere and choose to moderate or remove comments on YouTube altogether.”

I agree. Especially, if you’re a company trying to use YouTube in business: turn off or moderate comments. Trying to keep a professional look to your video can backfire if visitors are subjected to spam comments or vicious trolls trying to shock people.

Over at TechCrunch, a guest post written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg is stirring up some animosity over YouTube spamming. Greenberg wrote a story called “The Secret Strategies Behind Many ‘Viral’ Videos”, where he talks about how his viral video marketing company, The Comotion Group, helps makes YouTube videos viral.

Greenberg starts out the piece:

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

And then he details some secrets like:

1. Not all viral videos are what they seem
2. Content is NOT King
3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page
4. Title Optimization
5. Thumbnail Optimization
6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself
7. Releasing all videos simultaneously
8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole
9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

Commenters were hating on this post saying how this is just spamming. Even Michael Arrington said he was “disgusted” by this post.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, TechCrunch, viral videos,

Bonus: Read the follow-up article by Greenberg where he says that some of the original flavor of the post was lost due to TechCrunch’s editing of the story.

The LA Times has a story about how YouTube users can generate more views by adding words like “sexy”, “nude” or “hot” as their tags or keywords. One woman posting her music videos online was encouraged by veteran YouTubers to post a sexy thumbnail image to boost viewers.

They call it “bait and switch” since many people search YouTube looking for sexy, hot girls. Surprise, surprise.

Unfortunately, YouTube has a strict no nudity rule which means that searchers don’t get what they search for. At most, publicly available videos are at a PG-13 level–meaning they have some skimpy clothing or racy dancing, but no nudity.

One example the Times cites:

A YouTube video called “Naked Chicks!” exemplifies a well-worn strategy for boosting a video’s view-count. In addition to its breathlessly pervy title, the video’s “thumbnail” image — the small photo you see before you open the clip — shows off the nicely tanned lower half of a bikini-clad woman.

People have been gaming YouTube for a long time. After all, many people call it “BoobTube”. But YouTube says that the issue of misleading thumbnails isn’t rampant. Still, it’s quite easy for anyone to garner lots of views by using the right combination of thumbnails and keywords. Here’s another example the LA Times cites:

In late August, popular video blogger and bawdy YouTube humorist Philip DeFranco, a.k.a. sxephil, posted a video titled “Big Boobs and You,” a rant about his aesthetic preferences vis-à-vis the female form. The video’s thumbnail was in line with its title, but the video only flashed the image for a split second, the rest was just a monologue.

DeFranco admitted the video was an experiment to see how much traffic an offering with that name and image could generate. It scored 1.8 million views, by far the most successful of the 107 videos DeFranco had posted up to that point. The conclusion of his experiment was clear.

Yes indeed. Sex sells.