Social Media: A Better Way to Discover New Videos

It appears that social media is now in a head-to-head battle with search engines in terms of video referrals, based on the latest quarterly joint research report of Brightcove and TubeMogul titled Online Video and the Media Industry.

Facebook has now gone way ahead of Yahoo in terms of video referrals and discovery, accounting for 9.6% of the referrals to media companies. This is definitely noteworthy as it marks the first time that social media has surpassed a search engine. It has yet to take out Google from the top spot, however, which analysts predict would happen in the last quarter of 2010.

So far both Twitter and Google have tied-in in terms of engagement. Twitter came out as the winner for the “engaging referral source” for magazines and online media with 1:57 minutes over 1:40 minutes, respectively (Facebook ranked second to Twitter at 1:55 minutes). Google, meanwhile, grabbed the top spot for newspapers, with 1:57 minutes as well. Brightcove and TubeMogul explain in their report that this reflects the search habits and trends of internet users, who go to their social networks for entertainment, while most go to Google for “the most relevant and breaking content.”

Twitter was also the number one engaging referral site for brands, so if you have videos for your business (and you should) make sure you’re actively sharing them on Twitter.

Whether or not social media websites will someday eclipse search engines in terms of online traffic and searches remains to be seen, but it’s very interesting to see how social media is exerting more and more influence on our internet culture everyday.