Date: 03-03-2008
The growing popularity of YouTube, which has registered a growth in traffic of 214% over the last year, is being seen as a major competitive threat to various social networking sites. A number of social sites, including MySpace and Bebo, have started to launch original web series and free online video content, banking on the original content to attract ad revenue and keep users from surfing to other sites. MySpaceTV was relaunched by MySpace to compete directly with YouTube in particular. Even NBC and News Corp. plan to start their own online video site, partnering with AOL, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo! for the initiative. Some analysts think that steps taken by its aggressive competitors won't matter much to YouTube in the short run. It is worth noting that Apple's iTunes may also face stiff competition from the proposed alliances and initiatives.
