Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98% in the past year, from 503.8 million minutes in October 2008 to 999.4 million in October 2009, according to Nielsen.
In addition, the number of online video streams viewed on social networking and blog sites increased 45%, from 240.8 million streams in October 2008 to 349.5 million in October 2009.
Ranked by number of video streams, Facebook was the top online social networking and blog destination in October 2009 with 217.8 million video streams viewed; MySpace followed with 85.2 million; and Stickham was third with 26.3 million.
Facebook also experienced high video audience growth with a 1,840% increase in total time spent viewing video, from 35 million minutes in October 2008 to 677 million in October 2009. During the same period, total streams grew 987% and the number of unique viewers of video increased 548%.
Ranked by total streams, overall online video use grew 26.2% year over year, according to separate research from Nielsen. Unique-viewer numbers grew 14.8% during the same period.
Ranked by number of video streams, YouTube was the top online video brand with 6.7 billion total streams, followed by Hulu with 632.7 million, then Facebook with 217.8 million.
