MySpace squaring up to YouTube by pushing video features?
TechCrunch has picked up on a fairly small, but possibly significant, change on the MySpace social networking home page that pushes MySpace videos more prominent and accessible.
It reports “The top-left of the homepage now has 4 videos that entice users to start viewing videos at MySpace. The user profile pages now have a section called Video Space that automatically displays a video if the user has one uploaded.” and concludes that the changes should have a significant effect on MySpace video usage.
They say the feature is easier to use than YouTube (marginally in my view but then every second counts) because things happen automatically upon uploading video rather than copying and pasting code from YouTube.
Depending on whose stats you go by, YouTube leads by a significant market share over MySpace videos – ~45% to ~23% according to HitWise, though comScore reports that MySpace has the top spot for video streams and unique users. Either way, MySpace aren’t going to relax, particularly now YouTube have the might of Google behind them, so this will surely be just the start of a number of changes to push video services to the MySpace masses.
