What can happen in two days, you ask?

You could drive non-stop across the country from our office in San Bruno, Calif. to New York City

You could undertake a massive movie marathon by watching the entire Back to the Future trilogy eight and a half times (we'd recommend you do that at YouTube Movies)

An ambitious cheetah (the fastest land animal at an average running speed of 75 mph) starting in South Africa could traverse 3,600 miles of the African continent and reach Egypt

Considering how much of this footage is uploaded for personal viewing purposes only, as opposed to something of interest to the general public, YouTube's view numbers are also notable: 3 billion views per day, a 50% increase over last year.

That's the equivalent of nearly half the world's population watching a YouTube video each day, or every U.S. resident watching at least nine per day, says Google.

All this, and more, is shown off in the infographic below:

How did YouTube get here? By delivering the diversity and quality of content its users want, including: "live streams of music festivals to campaigns around social inspiration and change, rockstars in education to citizen-journalist coverage of global events, and you showcasing your own talent." The company also mentions that faster uploads, support for longer videos and the recent launch of self-service live streaming to its partners have also had an impact on viewing trends.

"With Topics, YouTube will try to deliver results by honing in on comments from users on videos they have viewed, sites that have linked to the video and even what users have watched in the past," writes the BBC's Maggie Shiels this morning. A YouTube spokesperson confirmed for us by email that an official announcement will be made on the YouTube blog this evening.

YouTube to Automate Topics Based On

• Your YouTube viewing history.
• Comments you've left on other videos.
• Types of sites linking to a video on YouTube.

"There are all these great gems inside YouTube that are not getting broader exposure," Palash Nandy, a search and discovery engineer at YouTube, told Shiels of the BBC.

"Take the sport of parkour [running through urban obstacle courses], this is a very particular sport that if exposed could become much more popular. There are all these random sports out there like cheese rolling or extreme ironing that no-one sees."

Extreme ironing? I've heard of riding lawnmower races, but extreme ironing seemed a bit much to me - until I saw that YouTube actually suggests refining that search to limit it to extreme ironing underwater or extreme ironing skydiving. What a world we live in!

It's not hard to imagine YouTube Topics on extreme ironing on YouTube LeanBack, on Google TV. Heck, controlled by the Android phone TV controller app.

Bring it on, YouTube Topics.

Have you got some favorite YouTube subscriptions? I do, and I thought I'd share them here. If you've got some good ones to recommend to ReadWriteWeb readers let us know in comments so we can subscribe and watch them while exercising and folding laundry.

Talks @ Google

Famous authors and others come and speak to Google staff and the videos are run in this channel. Sometimes famous Googlers speak to each other. Good stuff, long videos. For example: Clay Shirky.

Gartner Videos

Garnter is the world's biggest analyst firm and the company frequently posts interviews with big company execs at conferences. Depending on your perspective, these videos can be very valuable, or very boring with hints of interesting tidbits. Example: Yvonne Genovese Discusses Pattern Based Strategy

The Liam Show

Liam Kyle Sullivan loves shoes and I love him for it.

Lockergnome

Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome is crazy prolific and not going to change your life - but it's fun. It's pretty remarkable how this tech geek has built a publishing empire that may have reached its pinnacle with nearly continuous live streaming video of hiself answering questions and talking about nerdly pursuits.

O'Reilly Media

Everyone's favorite tech book publisher and event company publishes good videos from events and occasional webcasts. Great for a deep-dive into the most cutting edge web technology.

Porter Novelli

This big firm runs PR for SXSW and hosts all kinds of really interesting smaller technology events. Mobile social media and augmented reality have been recent topics.

Social Data Revolution

Andreas Weigend is a deep thinker about social data online and he scores great interviews on the topic. He's got a PhD in Physics and was the Chief Scientist at Amazon.com through 2004. His videos are highly recommended.

Steve Gillmor

Steve Gillmor combines years of experience as a tech reporter with great access to leading engineers, executives and thinkers and a willingness to push the envelope far into what the future may (or may not) look like online. His YouTube channel is mostly filled with video of his hour-long weekly show the Gillmor Gang. There are plenty of perspectives not included, but if you're interested in some of the most innovative perspectives in Silicon Valley, this is a great show to watch.

Those are 7 of my favorite YouTube channels to subscribe to. If This Week in VC and Mixergy had channels on YouTube, I'd subscribe to those there too (there's still iTunes!).

Update: Leo Laport posts explains in comments below that only a fool's list of geeky YouTube channels would neglect his Twit channel, so check that out. I would be willing to revise the list above and put Twit in place of the Liam Show, but only if Leo is willing to perform the Shoes song himself.

Andrew Warner also pointed out that Mixergy does have some short videos on YouTube as well.

What are your favorites? I think we all could use some more geeky suggestions.

For those who wish to share videos, but not with the whole of mankind, VidMe hopes with today's launch to offer an alternative to YouTube both online and with its iPhone app.

"(V)ideos shared using VidMe work only for the intended recipient and cannot be forwarded, downloaded or become viral without the video owner's approval...Links to videos shared using VidMe work only for the intended recipient and become inoperable if they are forwarded to anyone else."

Running a site or service on advertising is untenable for a site that is hoping your video does not get a million views. So VidMe have elected to make theirs a pay service. Upon initial sign-up, a user receives enough free credits to upload several videos. For subsequent uploads they have to pay. VidMe also allows you to record videos on site.

Whether you've got 5 or 30 minutes to spare, check out the two following videos (one short, one long) that both do a great job of explaining where the Internet of Things is at and why it's so exciting.

Above, from IBM's Smarter Planet. Below, Tim O'Reilly at the O'Reilly MYSQL conference.

Of course it's not all peachy keen. As O'Reilly explains at the 18 minute mark, there is a battle over control of all this data the web is being flooded with.

"You see increasingly the giants of the internet are trading for their own account, they are building a platform in which all roads lead back to themselves. Now there is a contervailing force for openess, but we have to wary, we have to be aware of that, we have to work for openess in that web."

What do you think about the Internet of Things?

Caption image from the Internet of Things 2010 Conference coming up in Tokyo this November.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tim_oreilly_explains_the_internet_of_things.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tim_oreilly_explains_the_internet_of_things.php Internet of Things Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:27:06 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick IBM's Smarter Planet team has created a great 5 minute video explaining the emerging trend of Internet of Things, an exciting topic ReadWriteWeb has and will continue to cover frequently and in depth. Internet of Things is about, as the video explains, the coming future when there are more "things" on the Internet (sensors especially) than there are people.

The result of that will be "a kind of global data field" the video says. "If we can actually begin to see the patterns in the data, then we have a much better chance of getting our arms around this. That's where societies become more efficient, that's where more innovation is sparked." Check out this artistic, succinct, optimistic and inspiring video explaining what could well become a big factor in how the future unfolds.

]]>

This is heavy stuff, clearly aimed to fostering positive and substantial cultural change through technology - by opening up a new plane of options for humanity. Of course there's little critique of this movement in videos like this; that's something we're still exploring but we imagine surveillance is one down side. There's also some risk of paying so much attention to our machines that we lose track of the joy of engaging directly with the world around us.

The upside as described in the video is big, though.

"When we talk about a smarter planet, you can say that it has two dimensions. One is to be more efficient, be less destructive, to connect different aspects of life which do affect each other in more conscience and deliberate and intelligent ways. But the other is also to generate fundamentally new insights, new activity, new forms of social relations. So you could look at the planet as an information, creation and transmission system, and the universe was hearing its information but we werent. But increasingly now we can, early days, baby steps days, but we can actually begin to hear the planet talking to us."

To track this trend across multiple vendors, check out ReadWriteWeb's Internet of Things archive.

Photo by Svilen Milev.

A blog post on the Netflix news-tracking resource Hacking Netflix offers up the full text of the survey, which reads:

Imagine that Netflix offers its subscribers the ability to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on their iPhone. The selection availability to instantly watch includes some new releases, lots of classics and TV episodes. There are no advertisements or trailers, and movies start in as little as 30 seconds. You can fast-forward, rewind, and pause or watch again. The movies & TV episodes you instantly watch are included in your Netflix membership for no additional fee.

Whenever you want to instantly watch content on your iPhone, your iPhone must be connected to a Wi-Fi network (such as one you might have at home or at work, or in public places like coffee shops, book stores, hotels, airports, etc.)

If this functionality were available, how likely would you or someone in your household be to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on your iPhone via a Wi-Fi network?"

Although this is an unofficial source for the news, the official Netflix blog links to the Hacking Netflix site in their blog's sidebar, which at least somewhat speaks to the legitimacy of the content posted there.

If Netflix Supports iPhone, it Supports iPad Too

So why is Netflix considering an iPhone application now? This renewed interest is intriguing, especially when it comes only six months after CEO Hastings told reporters that "we will get to mobile eventually, including the iPhone." At the time, he stated the company's interest was more focused on getting Netflix content onto video game consoles and TVs. With the new crop of Internet-connected television sets, there has been plenty to keep the company busy in that regard.

A likely reason for the new direction may have to do with the impending launch of the Apple iPad. The thin, slate-like computer, sometimes described as "a big iPod Touch," is predicted to do well according to numerous technology analysts. Already, major media publications are looking into iPad versions of their print and web content, with the hope that the device will help them tap into a new audience of content consumers. Perhaps Netflix wants to do the same.

It's worth noting that the iPad will run the same mobile operating system as Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, so although the survey doesn't specify this, an iPhone app could run on the iPad just as easily as it does on the iPhone.

What's Required to Make this Work

The only question now is how will the company build it? The iPhone doesn't support Adobe Flash, the technology that's typically used on the web for streaming video. However, that's no matter to Netflix. They opted to go with Microsoft's Flash competitor, Silverlight, when they launched their web streaming "Watch Instantly" service for Mac (and, unofficially, some Linux) users back in October 2008.

An interesting side note about Silverlight? It already works on the iPhone. In fact, in November 2009, Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb demonstrated Silverlight streaming on the iPhone during a live presentation at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference. Reports quoted him as saying that Microsoft "worked with Apple" to create this iPhone-ready server-side solution, much to the surprise of Apple-watchers everywhere. Goldfarb later clarified his statement, saying that he meant Microsoft did all the work on the technology, but he did add that they "made sure Apple was comfortable with it."

However, Silverlight is not yet enabled on the iPhone, so the true level of comfort Apple may or may not have is still undetermined. But then again, one never knows what Apple has in store for the future. Assuming Apple was to give the green light to Silverlight, Netflix wouldn't have many code changes to make in order to transform their database of movies and TV shows into iPhone-ready content.

Of course, without official acknowledgement from Netflix itself, their future plans for the iPhone are just speculation at this point. We've reached out to multiple company representatives but have yet to hear back by press time. If we receive word, we'll update this post with details.

If you've been wondering what the future of web video looks like, look no further than here.

As exciting as both announcements were, neither project holds a candle to what SublimeVideo currently offers. The HTML5-based videos on both sites still feel slow - not exactly demonstrating the internet revolution promised by this new web standard. In addition, neither company is yet offering full-screen HTML5 videos.

However, SublimeVideo does full-screen videos and a lot more, too. Behind its attractive user interface much thoughtful design accompanies the HTML5 code powering their new player.

In the SublimeVideo demo, you can already maximize the video to full-screen (if you're using a WebKit nightly build) and it also offers other features like live-resizing when resizing the browser window, well-designed controls on a draggable plane, a keyboard shortcut (spacebar) to play and pause the video, effects like zoom-in and out transitions, and, of course - thanks to HTML5 - you can jump into the video at any point and have it play without wait for it to buffer.

According to the project's homepage, the SublimeVideo team is working on additional features that will arrive in the public release, said to be "coming soon." These include volume controls, IE support by falling back to Flash, and Firefox support. (At the moment, the player only works in Google Chrome, Safari, and IE with Chrome Frame installed.) Oh and it will work in mobile Safari, too.

More than any other technology demo currently out there, SublimeVideo showcases the future of web video in all its speedy, sleek, and plugin-free glory.

For more information on the software and the company's plans, you can follow their Twitter account here: twitter.com/Jilion. And for more great HTML5 demos, check out our previous post on the subject here.

5. United Break Guitars

• Uploaded on July 6, 2009

• 5,914,000 views

4. MTV VMA's Remix: Kanye West Interrupts Obama's Speech

• Uploaded on September 13, 2009

• 4,200,000 views

3. SOUR '日々の音色 (Hibi no neiro)

• Uploaded July 1, 2009

• 1,600,000 views

2. Evian Roller Babies International Version

• Uploaded: July 1, 2009

• 12,436,000 views

1. JK Wedding Entrance Dance

• Uploaded: July 19, 2009

• 31,000,000 views

That "different space," as it turns out, is music...and it really isn't all that different, especially considering MySpace's roots. If anything, this major overhaul of the social network is an attempt to return the site to becoming the popular entertainment hub it once was.

When MySpace hit the scene back in 2003, local bands - especially indie rock bands - were among the first to create profiles on the social network. Their presence immediately began to attract a young, hip crowd of users who were interested in following pop culture, and, in particular, the up-and-coming artists they discovered while browsing through the network. Only eight months after its launch, MySpace began to experience exponential growth, as its users created profiles and friended others who would then, in turn, invite more users to join the social network. Thanks to the "network effect," MySpace soon became the place to be online. Everyone was there.

But at the same time that MySpace was having its heyday, another social networking site was being created. Although still in its infancy in 2004, a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg began writing the code for what would eventually become Facebook, now the world's largest social network.

Over recent months, we've seen the mass exodus from MySpace to the more popular - and more populated - Facebook. Studies have shown that those left actively engaging on MySpace now tend to be younger, lower-income users. Researcher Danah Boyd pointed out, somewhat controversially, that the differences between the two networks, MySpace and Facebook, went further than age and income - they involved your "social class," too.

Tired of being compared to Facebook in this way and certainly tired of hemorrhaging its users, MySpace CEO Van Natta has plans to turn the sinking ship around. After taking over the company six months ago, he's been busy arranging new partnerships for the one-time king of social networks. These partnerships aim to bring the focus back to music, and less on socializing.

New Music Initiatives: iLike, Videos, Artist Dashboards

One of the most notable new initiatives involves MySpace's iLike integration. After being acquired by MySpace in August, many wondered why iLike wasn't becoming a part of the MySpace network. Actually it was, but Van Natta didn't want to disclose that information at the time.

But now, the iLike acquisition is beginning to make sense. Through iLike music video widgets, now popular installations on other social networks like Facebook and Orkut, the videos - and, most importantly, their ads - can be streamed on other sites while the revenue generated returns to MySpace. Even though many of the users watching these videos now may be lost forever to MySpace, they're helping the company regain its footing through their streams.

MySpace's entire music video vault, one of the most popular features on the social network, has also been integrated with iLike. In August, comScore reported 45 million people watched 340 million videos during the course of the month. It only makes sense for MySpace to capitalize on that activity, which is why the company has now launched MySpace Music Videos, an online video archive where users can not only watch videos from their favorite artists, but with a click, purchase the song or ringtone from Amazon or iTunes. Meanwhile, pre-roll, post-roll, and overlay ads help to monetize the content.

In addition, to cater to the musicians, bands, and labels who make MySpace their home, the network has also launched "Artist Dashboards." These online analytical tools track the fans' demographics by age and location, the total number of plays per song, profile views and more. Every artist with a MySpace profile is given free access to these tools.

Is it Enough?

The question that remains, of course, is whether or not MySpace's re-branding efforts will be enough to keep the site from going under. Although MySpace still had a healthy 64 million users in August of this year, that number is 12 million fewer than it did at the same time last year. Meanwhile, Facebook climbed to 300 million worldwide that same month.

Can MySpace entice people to come back to the network through its new music-based initiatives? It's too soon to tell at the moment whether the strategy will work or not, but it's definitely the network's best shot. By capitalizing on what remains the most popular activity on MySpace to date (music and video), the company hopes to become more of a niche site for socializing around music instead of a site for just socializing. The newly launched features are just a part of the company's overall efforts in this direction, too. Still to come are concert ticket and merchandise sales, although no details or launch dates have been given for those features as of yet.

While these efforts may not ever allow MySpace to reclaim its status as the number one social network - that ship seems to have sailed - they could definitely help the network maintain profitability. And at the end of the day, that's all that's really needed. It's not about how many users you have, it's about how much money you can make off of those that you do.

Says Darya Gudkova, Head of Content Analysis & Research at Kaspersky Lab, "naturally, this type of advertising is more interesting and gets more hits." That's bad news for YouTube because when something works, spammers keep at it... with a vengeance. Once word gets around that video spam is more successful than traditional methods, there's no doubt that it will only increase.

How Would YouTube Handle Video Spam?

So what will YouTube do if video spam becomes a real problem on its network? We would like to think that it would take the offending content down, but that could be easier said than done. After all, this isn't like the copyrighted content that their Content Identification tool can easily identify and remove. That tool works by comparing unique signatures somewhat like a digital "fingerprint" from a content owner's copyrighted file to user uploads across the site. Then, if a match occurs, the copyright holder has the option to have the video taken down.

Identifying a spammer's video would be much harder. Just because someone is using YouTube to sell something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's video "spam." That moniker should only be reserved for videos which are truly undesirable messages where fraudulent activities are underway. The question is, how would YouTube know?

Assuming that video spam takes off, the best thing the site could do to police online content is to include a "report spam" button for videos themselves, as it now has for video comments only. 

Of course, for potential victims of video spam, the best thing is not to get duped into visiting YouTube in the first place. Spam filters will simply have to adapt to this new technique. Unfortunately, that will be yet another challenge for Google, which, in addition to owning YouTube, also offers a feature in its webmail product Gmail that automatically embeds any YouTube videos referenced in the email directly in the message itself. That makes it even more convenient for video spammers, who wouldn't have to convince their victims to leave their inbox and launch a new browser window: just click a button on the video embedded below.

In total, the average viewer watched about 135 video clips. While full-length shows are becoming more popular, it is still important to note that the average video is only 3.7 minutes long. Hulu, which focuses on full-length TV shows, also recorded its best month yet, with 457 million views.

Another Record-Breaking Month

June, according to comScore, already broke most records, but at that time, the company credited the surge to the large number of high-profile events (including the death of Michael Jackson and the elections in Iran). ComScore argues that TV viewers are turning to the Internet right now because most of the shows on TV are currently on summer hiatus. While this probably plays some role in this current growth in interest in online video, we would also argue that a lot of viewers are simply changing their viewing habits and have moved away from watching shows on traditional TV and cable networks. Instead, they are watching popular clips on YouTube and full-length shows on Hulu.

But what in this future scenario will Social Network XYZ be? As the sands of time wash MySpace into obscurity, with a wave of hundreds of employees being let go this week for example, now seems like a good time to think about what comes next. What could kill Facebook, the MySpace killer? We've identified four possible scenarios - which do you think is most likely? Most desirable?

Scenario 1: Incremental Change

In some ways, Facebook was just a series of incremental changes away from what MySpace offered. The same core functionality of messaging, media storage and personal expression is consistent across both sites - Facebook just purports to be classier, it's more about school friends than music and it came along at a time when being online was more universal than it was in the days of MySpace's rule. Perhaps another social network will challenge Facebook simply by making small changes in response to the most annoying things about Facebook. Perhaps they will more effectively deal with app spam and they will make preservation of privacy easier. It's about to get a whole lot harder at Facebook, if you believe Michael Arrington's report that Facebook status messages will soon be publicly visible by default. Facebook's privacy settings are already so labyrinthine that company watch-dog blogger Nick O'Neill's post on changing the settings has been viewed by millions of people and he's now selling a book on the topic.

Perhaps a challenger will make incremental changes to these kinds of policies and steal Facebook's thunder.

Scenario 2: A Smarter Technology

Facebook's technology is very smart already, but it could be a whole lot smarter. The future of social networking may come in the form of more sophisticated recommendations. If you liked this video that your friend just shared, then you might also like these other videos, these groups and these public figures to follow.

The Facebook news feed keeps users engaged by following the progress of their friends' lives - but most peoples' friends have pretty boring lives. The flow of information we get from our social networks could be spiced up a whole lot with smarter recommendation systems.

Unfortunately Facebook is moving away from the kind of rich user profiles and connections that sophisticated recommendations are built on. The company is removing geographic regional networks and no longer prompts users to note how they met the people they connect with on Facebook. (Its executives also speak to their users like children, in big vague terms like "we help you Connect.")

The future crown of social networking could be stolen by a system that offers users powerful features, options and recommendations. Think of how television is moving towards increased complexity of features and imagine social networking going that way as well.

Scenario 3: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is one of those new buzz words that is going to get old fast, but the user experience is not. Social networking as a layer on top of real world experiences has a lot of potential to capture peoples' imaginations. Systems like Loopt and FourSquare are already catching on.

Why would I want to leave my network at home on my desktop when I could bring it with me and detect a residue of restaurant reviews written by my friends, wherever I go around town. Is this place I'm in just a fountain in the park, or can I click a button on my phone and see pictures of my friends smiling there in the past, read a short history of when it was built and leave messages for friends who come there in the future? On second thought, if you thought information overload was an issue today, an augmented future like that could drive us all even more insane.

Scenario 4: Distributed Social Networking

Imagine being an AT&T customer and being unable to call T-Mobile customers on your phone. Imagine being afraid to leave your phone provider because you'd lose your friends' numbers you'd stored and the photos you'd taken. (Heck, imagine having a great phone but being unable to use it on another network! But that's another story...)

That's where we're at with social networking today. They are essentially "walled gardens" little different from the old AOL days.

Talking Social Network Interop @ GSP East from Brian Oberkirch on Vimeo.

The next step after Facebook may be no social network in particular at all - it may be social networking as a protocol. A set of standards that let you message, share with and travel to any social network you choose. Suddenly all the social networks have to improve because they are competing on quality of service, over customers that have free will and are able to leave at any time. Someone might even build an interoperable social networking service so compelling that you'd be willing to pay for it, instead of being served up ads.

This is probably the most radical vision, the riskiest when it comes to making money, and so the least likely to happen. But it sure does sound interesting.

What do you think the future of social networking is going to look like? Facebook can't rule the world forever. No one can. The marketplace and the internet are all about churn, innovation and cycles. Just like MySpace has fallen from the top, someday Facebook will too. What do you want to see come next?

Using a tool called the Moment Maker, you create each "Moment" (as the shared media is called) by adding notes, assigning an emotion, adding the date, location, and the names of the people who were in the moment, in addition to the media itself. You can choose to add the photos and videos either from your computer, from publicly shared content on the web via a search tool, or from your own accounts at various online services including flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Picasa.

A Few Stumbles

The Moment Maker tool is relatively easy to use, but could use a little simplification. For example, the first time you go to use flickr, the service needs to authorize your account. Although you're in the middle of "moment creation," thisMoment doesn't perform the authorization using a separate tab or pop-up window. Instead, you're forced to save the moment as a draft, head to your preferences, and authorize flickr from there. Had I known that I'd have to drop what I was doing to configure these settings, I would have headed to my preferences first, then created my Moment. Even better, some sort of walkthrough or prompt to set up your associated services in the beginning would have been useful. UPDATE: The company tells me that you won't see a prompt to link your services if you log in via Facebook Connect from a "moment" page, which, of course, is what I did. You might do the same, so I stand by my assertion that this process needs to be easier. Even the prompt you're supposed to see isn't as obvious as the link to "add a moment" at the top of the screen.

Another slight drawback was the search feature once connected to my flickr account. Although a search box is displayed, entering in a query returned photos that were clearly not mine, but pulled from the public stream. Considering that flickr Pro users like myself probably have hundreds of photos (or thousands!) to sift through, being able to search your own images is a critically important feature. There is a way to search your own images, but it's odd that it wouldn't be the default setting. Instead you have to click the link that says search images "from me" to find your own photos. I didn't even see this option the first time I used it!

Still, when you get through the challenges of locating your content, the end result is an attractive, side-scrolling slideshow of photos and videos which you browse through using the site's timeline feature. These slideshows can be set to public or private as you choose.

Social Sharing

If simple slideshow creation was all the site did, it would probably languish in obscurity since it's already somewhat competing with other photo slideshow creation tools like flickr and Slide. The addition of video and an attractive UI would only take thisMoment so far.

However, the beauty of thisMoment is that it lets you push the content out across the web. After creating a moment, you have the option to post it to Facebook and/or Twitter or email it to friends. Thanks to thisMoment's integration with these social web services, it also automatically identified certain contacts of mine already using the site and allowed me to select them from a list of "my connections" instead of having to type in email addresses.

Another change since the service was in private beta is that it now allows you to access embed codes for publicly shared moments and you can promote them on social sites like Digg, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and others through a "share" widget located at the bottom of the slideshow.

Premium "Momentos"

At launch time, thisMoment announced content licensing agreements with The New York Times, the Time Inc. Lifestyle Group and Road & Track. These companies will offer branded versions of thisMoment called "Momentos." Surprisingly, these moments weren't featured on the company's homepage nor were they easily accessible via site navigation or search. That's an odd choice - you would think that if they have access to premium content, they would find a way to highlight it better.

In the future, thisMoment plans to expand their offerings to include an iPhone application - it should arrive in the App Store in a few weeks. A Facebook app is available now.

This study, which was sponsored by media research firm Nielsen, however, concludes that the average adult in the U.S. still watches an almost unbelievable 5 1/2 hours of live TV every day. 94% of adults watch TV on any given day, while most people only watch online videos for a few minutes a day.

TV (including DVR playback) represents 99% of all the video watched by U.S. adults, and even for the youngest group in the sample, those 18-24, online video only represented 2% of all screen time.

The Bad News for TV

In terms of general use, however, computers and mobile screens have clearly taken time away from TV, even if online video still has a lot of room to grow. Users 18-24 spend more time in front of their computer screens than any other group (143 min a day on average), but still watch 210 min of TV every day.

The older a person, the more time they are likely to spend in front of their TV (421 min for those 65 and older). For TV executives, however, this means that the next generation of viewers will most likely spend even less time in front of their TVs.

With YouTube XL, Boxee, and the new Hulu Desktop, a growing number of players are also now pushing online video onto the TV screens of mainstream users, and chances are that within a few years, online video and traditional TV will simply start to converge. While we will probably still be watching the majority of video on TV sets, users will care less and less whether it is coming from their cable company or ISP.

Note: we reported some data from a preliminary version of this report in March.