Ofcom report a treasure trove for media geeks

Every year Ofcom, the British communications regulator, releases a snapshot of the UK media landscape. This year’s report contains a vast treasure trove of data and analysis on everything from media consumption to device usage to spending on online advertising to trends in user-generated media. There’s more than enough to keep media geeks and business analysts occupied for days on end.

With so much on offer in this 337 page report it’s hard to decide what to comment on, but some of the web 2.0 trends are notable given that this is the first year Ofcom has tracked the impact of web 2.0 on the changing media landscape.

In terms time spent online, eBay is the most popular website for Brits by a wide margin, with users spending over twice as much time on eBay UK website than its nearest rival, social networking site bebo.com. Out of the top twenty sites where Brits spend their time, the BBC (which comes in 3rd) is the lone representative from the old media world.

In terms of unique users, YouTube and Wikipedia remain the most popular web 2.0 destinations in the UK, while Facebook is growing sharply and flickr is leveling off. In the seven months to May 2007, the monthly UK unique user base of YouTube increased by nearly a half to 6.5 million users, while Wikipedia’s increased by 30% to 6.4 million. MySpace’s audience has increased by 25% since November 2006, and FaceBook’s user base has quadrupled since October 2006. The one exception to the pattern of rising popularity is Flickr, whose audience in the UK appears to have stabilized at just under a million unique users every month.

Putting the sheer scale of user-generated content into perspective, the report notes that in addition to the 1,845 new articles appearing daily on Wikipedia, 3,744,000 new photos are uploaded to Flickr and 65,000 new video clips are loaded onto YouTube. Assuming an average YouTube clip length of 30 seconds, 542 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every day – a year’s worth of new video appearing on the site every sixteen days.

The report also points out that large media properties are finally understanding the utility of YouTube as a promotional vehicle for their content. CBS is particularly notable for the 2,059 clips it has uploaded since it first launched a branded channel on the site in mid-2006. It currently enjoys first place in terms of channel popularity with 117m views since it first posted content. Next up is Universal Music which has uploaded more content (3,747 clips) but received less audience attention with some 87m views.

The Guardian added its own take on the Ofcom data, announcing that “the feminisation of the Net” has at last arrived. For the first time, women aged 25-49 in the UK now spend more time online than men in the same age group.

Some other trends picked out by Guardian reporter Katie Allen: