WASHINGTON (AFP) – The number of Americans watching video on their computers has doubled over the past year and growing numbers of younger viewers are enjoying movies and TV shows online, according to a study released Friday by ABI Research.

The study found that the number of American consumers watching video streamed through a browser had soared over the past year, from 32 percent a year ago to 63 percent today.

ABI Research said growth in consumption of online video was due to a number of factors, including an increase in the amount of rich content available and more broadband connections.

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The growth of broadband – and YouTube – have helped this of course; but also the fact that video is so passonable these days, through blogs, social networking sites and other websites. Hands up those who posted that Tina Fey spoof of Sarah Palin on their Facebook profile?

But it’s not just TV shows on YouTube, now that it’s easier than ever to create, as well as simply watch and pass on. According to McConnell and Huba in their book Citizen Marketers (UK | US), in most online communities, about 1% of people contribute content. So you can reckon on about 1% of YouTube users actually creating videos. But this will surely increase as it becomes cheaper and easier.

It’s what William Gibson referred to in an interview last year as our new ability to mediate ourselves – something that would have seemed like science fiction just a few year ago.

Publishers should really be in that 1%, if they want to retain their position as content creators. And they should be facilitating their authors’ self-mediation. After all, it’s the individual, the personal, the authentic voice that works here – not the corporate marketing message. Plus we need to be where our market is – and that is increasingly online.

So go on. Grab a camera. Get mediating.

E-marketer reported this week on the most popular websites in the world, ranked by page views. Half of the most popular websites are social media. The other half are search-centric. Leaving aside the four search sites (Yahoo!, Google, Live.com and MSN) – how can publishers – and authors – best tap into the top four social media sites?

MySpace is still the biggest in terms of page views and income. A number of books and publishing companies from HarperCollins to Snowbooks have their own MySpace pages. But I tend to think that profiles are for people, not products. Authors and publishing staff can create trust and engage their readers by being themselves online – while still linking to their books. For example Mitzi Szereto (author and anthologist) and Shiona McDougall (Marketing Director, HarperCollins), to shamelessly pick on my own MySpace friends.

Facebook is still where it’s at, in my opinion. Again, profile pages should be used by people. Authors, publishing staff – or how about book characters? Alison Kervin, author of the recently published The WAG’s Diary, has set up a Facebook profile for her main character, Tracie Martin – with a suitably celebrity friends list. An innovative use of social networking that I’ve not come across before.

But Facebook also makes it easy to create groups, which can be based around individual titles. You can add value with plenty of resources and links on the page – now including video. And you can send regular messages to the whole group, if you want. It’s a ready-made, opted-in mailing list of people who came looking for you – that’s incredibly powerful.

Canadian podcasting guru Leesa Barnes recently wrote a book called Podcasting for Profit, and has used a Facebook group as part of her marketing strategy. HarperCollins Canada (what is it about Canadians and social media?) have created a group called Business And Motivational Book Review – Foreword Thinking, as a fan club for their Foreword Thinking podcast – which is about motivational business books that they publish.

You see how three-steps-removed from books some of this stuff is? Lots of blogs and podcasts have associated Facebook groups, which help facilitate community (yes, including your very own publishing talk group – currently with 307 members). The great thing about using Facebook in this way is that people can find you. Given that the other half of top sites are search sites, this clearly matters. Try typing ‘publishing’ into the search box on Facebook, for example…

Orkut is a new one on me. It’s a Google thing – you sign in with a Google account. I’ll try it out, so you don’t have to (I love spending time on social networking sites and calling it ‘work’…) Meanwhile, if anyone has used this in a bookish way, do let us know.

YouTube is the biggest video sharing site – though there are others. Video is really taking off at the moment – for publishers and business generally – and it’s a topic I shall return to soon. Even if you just want an author-talking-head on your companion website, it makes sense to upload it to YouTube (or other video sharing site) and then embed it on your own site, if only to make it easy for people to pass on. Having said that, some videos are clearly more pass-on-able than others. I’ll review some different styles and approaches in another post.

All these things help engage your readership, build trust, community and two-way conversations. The people who find you on these sites are already interested in your products and what you have to say about them. Isn’t that a network worth joining?

To date, this video has been watched 2.3m times. And the production is hardly high-budget. Even the mighty Coca Cola are benefiting from (though not paying for) low-budget viral marketing campaigns. Although Eepybird have made some cash from sponsorship and merchandising as a result of their videos – in addition to winning the award – they have not received anything from Coca Cola. Or Mentos. So I guess this is also a case of ‘fans’ becoming brand ambassadors, albeit in a less obvious way than George Lucas’s followers.

The important point is that viral marketing and social media level the playing field. Small businesses can compete with huge corporations. Small, independent publishers can compete with the big players.

Does this sound far-fetched? Well, how about Pan Mac’s Colour Changing Card Trick? In one month, that video has been watched 1.2m times – half as many times as the Diet Coke one has in a year, with a measurable impact on sales of Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives. It wasn’t expensive to produce.

You just need a good idea and a camera.

They also launched a blog at www.bookvideos.tv. This is essentially composed of one blog posting per title, with a video, book jacket, blurb, ordering link and social media optimization links (e.g. ’share on Facebook’). That’s basically all you need.

What’s interesting is their video content, which isn’t just author talking heads. For example, to accompany the Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition, they have produced a series of short cooking demonstrations – everything from egg tips and tricks to turkey carving. Vegetarians look away now…

This is content that the publisher is giving away free. But the marketing impact far outweighs the cost of the content. Importantly, the focus is on genuinely useful content rather than a hard sell.

It makes sense for trade publishers to promote new and forthcoming titles in this way. For academic/educational publishers, I’d suggest subject-specific portals.

But don’t have carving anxiety about your market segmentation either. The important thing about social media is that the content can be found. The BookVideos.tv blog is covered in Technorati tags and social media optimization links. These videos and blog postings can be found via all sorts of search engines, social bookmarking and social networking sites – as well as via YouTube itself. Readers can also subscribe to new postings by RSS or email, and can join a community of readers using MyBlogLog.

And there’s an ordering link by each title. That’s a direct order from the publisher, rather than via Amazon.

Social content finds its audience. Interesting content finds its interest groups. Embrace it, have a go, have some fun with it. And don’t have nightmares.

The glitch in the Matrix has now been fixed, so, to celebrate the return of the viral video, and to brighten your Wednesday, let’s decide once and for all who’s best: nu meeja, or page-sniffing old media. There’s only one way to find out: fight!

Let it be known that nu meeja threw the first pillow.