YouTube on the up and up and up

If internet users hadn’t already realised…YouTube is now officially the fastest growing web brand in the UK, notching up a massive 478% increase in traffic in the first six months of 2006.

Internet research group Nielsen Net//Ratings said today that the video-sharing service had seen traffic soar since the beginning of the year to 3.6 million unique users in July.

YouTube’s growth has also surpassed that of MySpace during the first half of 2006, and will probably continue to climb, buoyed by the likes of Geriatric1927 – a British pensioner telling his life story – getting an enormous massive amount of press coverage in recent weeks.

Was it just us and a some heavily criticised people commenting on YouTube, but the Geriatric1927 thing was actually a bit dull, right?

The MySpace social networking site shouldn’t be downhearted - it still managed to achieve a growth figure of 98% in the first six months of 2006, with only photo-sharing service Flickr appearing between the two sites with a surge in popularity of 131%.

Other Web 2.0 sites, such as Bebo (up 85%) and Photobucket (up 91%), also featured in the top ten sites.

DIY fans are doing their bit as well, helping B&Q achieve growth of 72%.

Nielsen also managed to segment the results by sex. YouTube might be enormously popular but its traffic – around 65% - is made up mainly of men. MySpace is far closer to achieving equality of the sexes with a split of 53%-47% in favour of men.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution