YouTube vs. MySpace videos

To everything, churn, churn, churn. There is a season, churn, churn, churn. If there is one word we'll hear often in this new media world, it's churn. Consider: It took MySpace's video service four days to top the charts, surpassing YouTube and Google Video, according to Hitwise, a measurement service company - which sells its data for $30,000 to $50,000 annually. It won't be long for that ranking to change since there's a lot of churn at these user-generated sites, according to Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Hitwise, who came to the MarketWatch studios recently. Tancer also clarified some traffic data.

Hitwise had been reporting that YouTube was generating more session times than vids.MySpace.com. But Hitwise wasn't exactly comparing apples to apples, resulting in what may have been overinflated numbers for YouTube. According Tancer, all of the hits on YouTube are counted. So, if I'm just navigating around YouTube's favorite or most-viewed videos, these are counted as sessions, even if I don't watch a video. Also, if I click back onto a video just to write a message, the video automatically plays. On MySpace, only videos that are  viewed are counted as sessions. MySpace videos also don't automatically play.