Women are Catching Up to Men in Online Video Viewing

According to a recently released Pew Internet report, the audience for video-sharing websites is growing, and women are an increasingly large part of the trend. The amount of online video viewers, who use sites like YouTube and Google Video, has nearly doubled since 2006. 62% of adult internet users have used these sites, up from 33% in December 2006.

The adoption of online video continues to grow across all demographic groups, and women, although behind, are rapidly catching up. The percentage of online women who visit video sharing sites has grown substantially over this past year, from 46% in 2008 to 59% in 2009. However, that compares with 57% of male internet users in 2008 and 65% in the latest survey. And online men are still more likely to have watched a video on a video sharing site on a typical day- 23% as opposed 15% of women.

Video sharing sites are becomming so common that they are far outpacing the adoption rates of many other internet activities. Watching video on sites like YouTube is more popular than using social networks, downloading podcasts, or status updating with Twitter or other microblogging websites.