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Facebook Surges to Number 2 Video Site in October: comScore
Social media juggernaut Facebook surged into the number 2 position for unique video viewers on comScore's U.S. online video ranking for October, 2011. This is the highest rank Facebook has achieved, and its 59.8 million viewers nudged it past VEVO at 57 million, which was down just slightly from September. Facebook's unique viewers jumped approximately 10 million from its September total of approximately 50 million viewers. The big October bump comes after a relatively flat past 12 months of viewers, though a doubling of monthly video views (see charts below). In October alone, Facebook's total video views increased to 346 million, 37% higher than September.
No doubt the vast majority of Facebook's videos are shared videos by its members. However, this year has seen a flurry of studios offering their movies or TV shows for rental or purchase on Facebook: Warner Bros. with "The Dark Knight" (followed by "Harry Potter" and "Inception") and later with its series "Aim High," BBC with "Doctor Who," Universal with "The Big Lebowski," Miramax with its "Miramax eXperience" app, and most-recently Paramount with the "Mission: Impossible" catalog. In addition, Facebook has launched addition social features for media this year and even streamed live pre-season MLB games. Then there's the whole "incentivized video view" program that gives Facebook users credits for watching video ads. Over the summer, Facebook also announced its Skype video chat integration. Last but not least, Facebook is rumored to be in the market for a media executive to be its Hollywood liaison.
Add it all up and 2011 has been a huge year for Facebook expanding into all sorts of video activities. But while Facebook is gaining momentum, it is still far behind YouTube, the perennial 800-pound gorilla of the online video world (yesterday's comScore rankings pegged YouTube at 161.4 million unique viewers and 18.6 billion videos viewed). And YouTube is hardly sitting on its hands; in 2011 it has announced plans to launch one hundred independent video channels, expanded its selection of movies available for rent, and ramped up its "True View" video ad format, among other things. With YouTube, Facebook and others jostling, a lot of innovation surely lies ahead.
Categories: Social Media
