More Americans watching online video: survey

More Americans are watching online video amid greater access to broadband and improved mobile networks, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

Seventy-one percent of online Americans were using video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo as of May, up from 66 percent a year ago and 33 percent five years ago, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Twenty-eight percent of US adult Internet users are using a video-sharing site daily, up from 23 percent a year earlier, Pew said.

"The rise of broadband and better mobile networks and devices has meant that video has become an increasingly popular part of users' online experiences," said the report's author, Kathleen Moore.

"People use these sites for every imaginable reason -- to laugh and learn, to watch the best and worst of popular culture and to check out news," Moore said.

"And video-sharing sites are very social spaces as people vote on, comment on, and share these videos with others," she said.

YouTube receives more than three billion views a day, according to the Google-owned video-sharing site, and 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

According to Pew, 34 percent of US cellphone owners have shot video with their phone while 26 percent have watched video on their phone and 22 percent have posted videos or photos online.

Pew's national survey of 2,277 adults was conducted between April 26 and May 22 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

(c) 2011 AFP