Facebook grew by 1,840 p.c in a year

BANGALORE, INDIA: Of course, the social networking site YouTube is the leader in the online video front, but there are some surprises coming out. According to VideoCensus, the latest survey from Nielsen's, which was released on Thursday, Facebook is fast strengthening its position in the online video arena.

Facebook is now the third most popular video site in the US, according to the survey. What makes the news is that it was in number 10 position last month and this jump is a real surprise. If this pace continues Facebook would soon take over Hulu, which is in the number second slot.

According to Nielsen, the "total time spent viewing video on Facebook" grew by 1,840 percent year over year. The number of unique viewers grew 548 per cent over the same period. Total streams increased by 987 per cent year over year.

The social networking site has generated more than 217 million streams in October resulting in 31.5 million viewers as opposed to 110 million streams with 23 million viewers in September.

Number one YouTube got 6,632,964,000 streams and 105,923,000 unique viewers, while Hulu had 632,662,000 streams with 13,472,000.

However, when it comes to unique viewers, Facebook had more than double the number of viewers Hulu had for the month of October.

According to Nielsen vice president of Media Analytics Jon Gibs, “Facebook's rapid growth in online video during the last year illustrates the site's evolution from simply a communications focused tool to a media portal.”