The Internet's video bulletin board

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

NEW YORK

It takes only a few minutes to see why YouTube.com has rocketed to the top of the Internet -- hilarious amateur dance routines, a hypnotic juggler, a Hong Kong bus fight and the most incredible caterpillar you've ever seen crawling across a floor.

Barely 1 years after it was started to host short videos posted by the public, YouTube is streaming more than 100 million clips every day, putting it at the center of online culture.

It's already popular enough to be embraced by "old world" media, with a new tie-in with NBC television after its replays of clips from the network's "Saturday Night Live" comedy show drew more viewers to the show itself.

"It's the Web site which is becoming the most successful. YouTube is in similar position to Myspace" as the dominant player in its area, says industry watcher Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media.

It also has become the leader of online video Web sites, with 60 percent of the market, surpassing Yahoo, MSN, Google and AOL, according to Hitwise, which measures Internet audiences.

Started in February 2005 by some Silicon Valley veterans, YouTube saw its visitor numbers quadruple from January to June, according to Nielsen/Netratings.

By mid-July, they hit the 100 million mark for videos viewed each day, on the back of submissions such as the surreptitiously filmed, tense Cantonese-language argument known as "Hong Kong Bus Uncle" and the hectic six-minute dance medley "Evolution of Dance" by Jud Laipply.

A small-time motivational entertainer, Mr. Laipply hit the big time on YouTube, topping its catalog of tens of thousands of videos with more than 31 million user views.

That's twice the number of views for the second-ranking video, two teenagers who made their own bedroom rock video to the Pokemon theme music.