MySpace Videos a Threat to YouTube?

Posted on April 11, 2006

HitWise reports that MySpace Videos have already passed YouTube in traffic.

On March 31, 2006 the market share of visits to MySpace Video increased by 1,242%, sending it far ahead of YouTube and the other video search services. As I've written before, MySpace is the leading source of traffic for YouTube, accounting for 23% of its upstream visits for the week ending April 1, 2006. It makes sense that MySpace would launch its own video service and MySpace Videos began showing up in Hitwise data in January, shortly after YouTube began to take off in December. Now that MySpace is owned by News Corp, it has the perfect distribution mechanism for Fox content, and could be testing out its video capability with viral videos, which have been so successful for YouTube.

MySpace clearly lacks some of the tools and resources provided by YouTube but MySpace could easily change that with some added programming. MySpace also has many less videos than YouTube. HitWise also says that MySpace provides over 20% of YouTube's traffic which is another risk for YouTube as the number of videos on MySpace grows. MySpace is promoting their videos more and more. Each member's profile now includes a link that people can click on to view that person's videos -- this is mostly empty for now since most MySpace members don't have videos yet. They also have a video tab on the top menu bar and ads promoting MySpace videos that says "Share Your Videos" and "Upload Your Video Now."

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