YouTube Blindsides the Video Search Marketplace
Danny Sullivan over at SEW points to YouTube, an entrant in the red-hot video search space. Think of it as the Flickr of video. Users can upload video and search its library of user-generated content. And like Flickr, users can tag and add editorial layers of content to video.
Hitwise (linked through SEW), meanwhile, reports on the growth of the site and of the broader video search space, as well as some demographic data. Interestingly, YouTube has grown the most (in market share) over the past three months compared with Yahoo! video search, Google video search and AOL's Singingfish (the only one that isn't growing at all, which is surprising given that AOL has the greatest content assets of the four, and Singingfish has been around the longest).
Look for others—especially Yahoo! which knows the power of user tagging—to consider folksonomy strategies in their video search offerings. And keep an eye on YouTube, as it seems to have come out of nowhere and attracted a young and powerful demographic, among which viral marketing can spread like wildfire. Sound familiar? It might be too soon to tell, but so far it's reminiscent of another runaway success among this demo: MySpace.
YouTube will certainly remain on our radar screens for the video search space, given its advertising implications as it fits into the broader IPTV ecosystem. Rupert Murdoch and a handful of other acquisition suitors are no doubt intently watching as well.
