I’ve been doing some research the last few days around online video usage by Americans. Earlier this year I came across these online video stats:

January 2007 Report: U.S. Online Video Viewers
(sources: eMarketer; U.S. Census Bureau)

• 2003 – 52 million (32% of U.S. Internet users; 19% of population)
• 2004 – 69 million (41% of U.S. Internet users; 25% of population)
• 2005 – 89 million (51% of U.S. Internet users; 32% of population)
• 2006 – 107 million (60% of U.S. Internet users; 38% of population)
• 2007 projection – 123 million (67% of U.S. Internet users; 43% of population)
• 2008 projection – 137 million (73% of U.S. Internet users; 47% of population)

Today I found these stats which show that by July of this year the actual American online video usage was far surpassing the late 2006 projections. In fact, the ComScore stats below show the actual online video views surpassing even the 2008 projections above….

July 2007 Report: U.S. Online Video Views
(source: ComScore)
Nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video during the month. More than 9 billion videos were viewed by online during July, 2007. 2.4 billion of the video views occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 390 million, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 298 million, and Viacom Digital with 281 million.

What’s the takeaway here? If you thought online video was a fad or even a slow trend it’s actually quite the opposite. Besides, you know when she’s jumping on board it’s full-fledged mainstream.

I recently pulled stats for some work we’re doing at White Post that cover the growth in blogs, online video, and MySpace. These are all really interesting and I’m going to let the numbers speak for themselves…for now anyway.

Worldwide Blog Growth (source: Technorati)
January 2004 – less than 2 million blogs
July 2004 – 3.5 million
January 2005 – 6 million
July 2005 – 12 million
January 2006 – 24 million
July 2006 – 50 million
October 2006 – 57 million

Worldwide Online Video Growth (source: ComScore via Reel Pop)
October 2005 – less than 25 million online video views per day
January 2006 – 125 million online video views per day
July 2006 – 700 million online video views per day

United States Online Video Viewers (sources: eMarketer; US Census Bureau via Business 2.0)
2003 – 52 million (32% of U.S. Internet users; 19% of population)
2004 – 69 million (41% of U.S. Internet users; 25% of population)
2005 – 89 million (51% of U.S. Internet users; 32% of population)
2006 – 107 million (60% of U.S. Internet users; 38% of population)
2007 projection – 123 million (67% of U.S. Internet users; 43% of population)
2008 projection – 137 million (73% of U.S. Internet users; 47% of population)

MySpace.com registered users (sources: MySpace, Blog Herald, Business Week via Joe Suh)
May 2004 – 2 million
April 2005 – 12 million
October 2005 – 33 million
January 2006 – 48 million
July 2006 – 90 million
November 2006 – 131 million
February 2007 – 160 million