YouTube Capture was reviewed by this blogger last week. It’s designed as a new app for the iPhone and will be available for the Android soon. What it allows you to do is upload videos from your iPhone to your YouTube account, and Facebook and Twitter.
In short, it does exactly what Viddy does. Thus YouTube Capture is Google’s nod to the observation that increases in the use of microvideoblogging apps like Tout.com, Viddy, Social Cam, and the new Vidoco, have actually taken users away from YouTube.
According to Fiddy, a firm that reports on the video sharing industry, mobile app growth has been led by video sharing. Fiddy’s Peter Farago noted as far back as May of 2012 that photo and video apps grew in use by 89 percent between October 2011 and March of 2012.
Then, Farago notes this:
Over the course of 2011, minutes spent viewing video content online grew from 276 minutes to 472 minutes, or 71%. Over the same time period, video apps grew from 63 minutes to 152 minutes, or 141%. While mobile app video consumption grew more than online consumption, the gap in usage at the end of 2011 was still meaningful. During 2012, however, is where things get interesting. As online video consumption dropped by 10%, mobile app video consumption increased by another 52%. By then end of March, consumers were spending 54% of amount of time in mobile video apps compared to Google Sites online, 231 minutes in apps versus 425 minutes online.
In other words, it appears that mobile video apps are fueling a path away from YouTube. Tout alone has 150 million uploads over its 19 month lifetime, and that number has grown at a 20 percent to 30 percent rate monthly. Tout.com’s relationship with WWE, where WWE Wresling fans use Tout to engage with its stars, is yet another use of a video app that then places video somewhere other than YouTube, and where WWE fans go to Tout and not YouTube to see their videos.
The question here is did YouTube jump on the bandwagon too late? YouTube Capture is something Google should have done sometime ago. The other question is will Google blunt the ability of Viddy users to upload to YouTube? That would seem like a logical next step in the evolution of YouTube Capture.
Stay tuned.