YouTube says video uploads increase 400 percent since iPhone 3GS released

YouTube says in its blog that since the Apple iPhone 3GS (see above) was launched last Friday, video uploads to its site have increased 400 percent.  Also, during the past six months, uploads from cellular phones to YouTube have increased 1,700 percent.

Why?  YouTube says, “This growth represents three things coming together:  New video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks.

“It takes just a minute to connect your YouTube account to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts.  Complete a simple, one-time connection on our upload page to allow all your friends and followers to get a real-time stream of your uploads to YouTube, which can be essential in this age of citizen reporting and ubiquitous sharing.”

iPhone’s influence

YouTube doesn’t say the 400 percent increase was specifically because of the iPhone 3GS, but the implication seems clear that it was.  This is the first iPhone with video recording capability, and the reviews have generally praised the recording quality (given that it’s from a phone).

We don’t know whether this significant spurt in video uploads will be just a brief phenomenon that won’t continue or whether it will increase.  Apple said on June 22 that one million 3GS handsets had been sold in three days — June 19 – June 21 — since the launch.

However, people who purchase iPhones are typically very data-centric, and it’s easy to record video with the handset.  As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised if the proportion of users who shoot and upload videos on their iPhone would be larger than most, if not all, other handsets.

Lack of video recording marketing

I’m not impressed — to say the least — with the way U.S. cellular operators have encouraged the use of phones for recording videos.  Indeed, I’ve written numerous times that the cellular operators’ after-sales customer education typically is terrible.

But if iPhone users continue to record videos in large numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the operators decide that maybe there’s something to this newfangled camera phone video recording, and perhaps spent a little more time marketing that feature.

Comments

[john555]

Thanks for sharing these interesting stats. It's good reason to think that the potential for online video marketing continues to grow hugely. And YouTube's not going to be the only place people are going to. Small businesses will want to make sure their videos are not just there but also up at places like Veoh, Vimeo, and AdWido.