June 29, 2009
New iPhone Boosts Mobile Video Uploads 400 Percent a DayBy Gary Kim, Contributing Editor Once again, we have evidence that Apple iPhone (News - Alert) users behave quite differently from other smartphone users, and in ways with broad ramifications for mobile bandwidth consumption.
Since June 19, when the Apple (News - Alert) iPhone 3GS came out, uploads from mobile phones have increased by 400 percent a day, YouTube (News - Alert) says.
By way of comparison, over the last six months, uploads from mobile phones to YouTube have jumped 1700 percent, say Dwipal Desai, YouTube product manager and Mia Quagliarello, community manager.
In part, the usage spike is a result of improvements to the upload flow when users post a video to YouTube from their mobiles, and also are the result of a new feature on YouTube that allows videos to be quickly shared through social networks.
That means links to videos propagate rapidly through Facebook, Twitter and Google (News - Alert) Reader accounts.
This sort of unexpected spike in usage has occurred before, when iPhone users drove unprecedented levels of mobile Web activity as well. Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page. Edited by Stefania Viscusi |