Watching a video on YouTube (News - Alert) is nothing new--with tons of video showing up on the site every day, it's not at all surprising that people watch in large numbers. But now, the United States' viewing habits are available for anyone to watch via the YouTube Trends map.

The YouTube Trends map is a fully interactive display, allowing users to break down the viewing habits of YouTube users in several different ways. Users can see what videos are big by geographic region, and can further break down the viewership trends by age range viewed, by gender, or even using shares or views as the basis for numbering. Users can even actually watch the videos that are trending by just clicking on a link from a thumbnail image.

While there's an easy to use map to show off, graphically, what's trending and where, there's also a handy list of trending videos by cities, as well as a bar chart located toward the bottom, further visually breaking down top videos by demographic group.

Some of the results are to be expected. A video called "Pittsburgh: The Movie" is currently number one in Pittsburgh, as well as in Erie, Pennsylvania. Much of the United States is currently watching footage of Charles Ramsey's interview following his role in the rescue of Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight. Yet some surprises are also in evidence, as the Chicago area seems to be enjoying a new "Grand Theft Auto V" trailer--the "Michael" trailer, specifically, though the Miami / Fort Lauderdale area prefers the "Trevor" trailer--and George Barnett's cover of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" seems to be doing well throughout the country.

Naturally, the preferences shift regularly, and the trends map seems to keep up with these, regularly and automatically updating. But YouTube has reportedly said that videos can take 48 hours to appear with age and gender breakdowns, as determined by registered YouTube users who have provided that information, so the breakdowns should be taken with a grain of salt. Right now the information is limited to the United States, but expects to expand to other regions--Google (News - Alert) suggests that users should "stay tuned for future updates and explorations"--down the line. Additionally, only regions that are "large enough to consistently return results with some reliability" are included in the measures.

It's an interesting perspective, sure--one more tool in a marketer's tool kit, really--and determining what videos are popular can help provide insight on potential trends. A major news event obviously destabilizes the results, as is currently being seen, and seeing what's being watched without a huge event in the news may be all the more interesting. Using this to predict some trends or potential ways to respond to trends may prove worthwhile, but the whole thing will need to be taken, again, with a bit of salt. Since the trending depends on users identifying themselves, and those identifications may be incomplete or inaccurate, using this as much more than a general framework may not work out.

Still, it's a handy tool to have on hand, and may prove to be a jumping off point for market research or to just spot new videos to watch on the user level. This may give YouTube a little extra help in terms of video discovery, something that's been proving difficult to deal with for some time due to the enormous amount of raw video that shows up every day. Improving the user experience is seldom a bad idea, and should ultimately pay off for YouTube.