Web Video Statistics: I Smell a Rat
The web metrics firm comScore has published a tally of of how many online videos were viewed during the month of December. That number is 10 billion. That’s “b,” as in “freakin’ billion.”
Like Mike Huckabee, I didn’t major in math. But as a journalist I do have an Associate’s Degree in Rat Sniffing. And I smell a big one.
By my primitive calculations, if comScore’s stats are correct, during the month of December 2007 2,237 person-years were spent watching online video. (That’s assuming each of those 10 billion videos was watched for :30.)
For comparison, 2,237 person years would be the equivalent of:
- one human watching online video continuously, without bathroom break or time spent dying and being reborn, since the reign of Julius Caesar.
- 2,237 people spending one year, day and night without rest or time to stretch, planting the Great Plains with switchgrass.
And that’s just one month in 2007! In 2008, I’m sure enough person-years of video will be watched worldwide to rebuild the Great Pyramid of Giza by hand (20,000 men 20 years, according to recent estimates).
This is either a preposterous bit of stat-pumping or a terribly, terribly sad commentary. Or, probably, both.
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Web 2.Oh. . .really? 
4, May, 2008 at 3:38 am
“For comparison, 2,237 person years would be the equivalent of:
-one human watching online video continuously, without bathroom break or time spent dying and being reborn, since the reign of Julius Caesar.
-2,237 people spending one year, day and night without rest or time to stretch, planting the Great Plains with switchgrass.”
Also, it is the equivalent of 19,596,120 people, wich is the 1.45% of the world total internet users, as of March 2008 (internetworldstats.com), watching just one hour of thirty second lenght online videos, out of a full 30 day month. Seem a bit less shocking to me.