I like to think I'm being productive. I don’t like Web time-wasters, I can waste enough time on my own and watching YouTube and other online videos often falls into that category.  I’d even rather quickly read the news on cnn.com rather than watch a news video. Sure seems like online video is popular though.  ComScore, a firm that measures usage in the digital world, released their July 2008 data and reported that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month. While I don’t watch videos of people’s pets or their babies (except my own in both categories) on YouTube, I do find that I’m watching more and more YouTube-hosted training and informational videos are embedded in product website and blogs. Other findings from their July 2008 data include:

• 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).

I was recently surprised when I mentioned to my 91-year old mother the death of a popular singer, she said she knew about it and had watched some of his videos on YouTube.  Read the Comscore Press Release [Via ReadWriteWeb]