Update: Google+ Reaches 20 Million Users in First Three Weeks

  • ETCentric recently reported that Google+ may be one of the fastest growing networks ever, when it hit the 10 million mark two weeks from its launch.
  • Web analytics firm comScore reports that the new social network has already doubled that amount. Google+ has had 20 million unique visitors since its release late last month, including five million from the U.S.
  • Additionally, the Google+ iPhone app released earlier this week is expected to boost these totals.
  • “I’ve never seen anything grow this quickly,” commented VP of industry analysis at comScore, Andrew Lipsman. “The only other site that has accumulated as many new visitors in a short period of time is Twitter in 2009, but that happened over several months.”
  • According to Digital Trends: “The long-term plan for Google+ is to integrate it with other Google services such as YouTube and Gmail. When that happens, it’ll become a service to be reckoned with and will likely begin to make big gains on competitors such as Facebook and Twitter.”

Average YouTube Viewer Watches 5 Hours of Videos per Month

  • According to comScore’s May 2011 online video rankings, the average U.S. Internet user watched almost 16 hours of video last month.
  • The report indicates the total U.S. audience engaged in more than 5.6 billion viewing sessions during May, while 83.3 percent viewed online video.
  • Not surprisingly, Google’s YouTube was was the leading video site (again) with 147.2 million unique viewers, and an average of five hours spent per viewer on the site.
  • VEVO followed YouTube with 60.4 million viewers, Yahoo had 55.5 million viewers, and Facebook took the fourth spot with 48.2 million viewers.
  • Hulu had the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.3 billion.
  • The average length of online video content was 5.2 minutes.

Warner Bros. Looks to Facebook for Movie Rentals

Looking for a new distribution channel in the face of decreasing DVD sales — and new ways to leverage increasing consumer time spent online — Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it will start renting movies via the popular social networking site Facebook. The first offering will be the 2008 Batman hit, “The Dark Knight.” The choice was based largely on the fact that the film has already been “liked” by 3.9 million Facebook users.

The studio created the rental application independently of Facebook, so the films will be hosted and streamed by a third party.

According to comScore, Facebook was the sixth-most popular video site in the U.S. in January. Despite its growing popularity for streaming video, Facebook has not announced any plans to launch its own paid video service.

Some analysts responded to the news that Facebook could become a serious competitor for Netflix and other online video services.