Facebook Is Now the Third Biggest Video Site in the US

Online video means YouTube at the moment. There's a huge number of other video sites and Hulu is coming up strong, but the Google site is on a completely different level. And, while no one is going to threaten its dominance any time soon, eventually there may be someone who could and its name shouldn't really surprise any one. It's Facebook of course, the social networking giant has now become the third biggest video site in the US.

Facebook has managed to get 217 million streams in October, almost double from the previous month according to Nielsen numbers. The social network had just entered the top ten most popular venues for video, in terms of the number of videos streamed last month, at number 10. A month later, it shut up passing many established players reaching the third spot only behind Hulu and YouTube. In total 31 million people watched at least one video on Facebook in the previous month.

At number two, professional content video site Hulu strengthened its position with 632 million streams up from 437 million in September. The number of unique visitors stayed flat. Hulu is seeing some very solid growth, but Facebook is storming up its rear at this point and, despite having three times less streams, if it manages to keep up the pace, the social network may soon overtake Hulu as the second most popular video site in the US.

Still, there are some big differences between Hulu and Facebook, mostly because of their target audiences and content. Hulu was able to get more than 600 million streams from just 13.4 million viewers. YouTube has less to worry about, enjoying a very solid lead although numbers were slightly down last month, going from 6,688 billion videos streamed in September to 6,632 billion. The site attracted roughly the same number of viewers at almost 106 million.