Youtube climbs back on top of Wikipedia and other social networking sites in the UK, serving 10.4 million unique viewers in January.

Youtube is a social video uploading site allowing users to upload and share videos over the internet. According to Nielsen Online, the site saw a 56 percent increase in unique page views over January of 2007. Wikipedia, the most popular site of last year, also saw a jump of 23 percent to 9.6 million unique page views year-to-year, though it was not enough to keep the lead.

Facebook saw a huge jump, improving 712 percent to 8.5 million unique page views and earning it spot number three. Topping off the top five was Blogger with 5.1 million and Myspace with 5 million unique page views.

Overall, three of the top five increases seeing triple digit improvements in unique page views were video sharing sites. This is due to the popularity of video, and the penetration of high speed internet. “Video [may be] the biggest star of the 2008 social media scene,” says Nielsen Online analyst Alex Burmaster. Experts feel that social media and networking sites have evolved from being simply a “niche” of the internet, to being the backbone for internet growth.

Steve Chen recently hinted at live video streaming for Youtube, saying that “now with google, we hope to actually do something this year.” Google purchased Youtube for $1.65 billion in October of 2006.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 2:19 pm under YouTube.

Read more entries by Ken Mitchell.
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