I really would’ve thought when YouTube went HD earlier this month that not only they would jump in viewers but their market share would increase. Not the case apparently.

The talk about going HD has been going on just about forever with YouTube and there were even some workarounds possible. Now users don’t have to add or do anything and the video’s stream all in High Definition.  Yet according to ComScore (via Ad Age):

YouTube.com, continued to grow — up 6.5% over July figures to almost 5.4 billion views. On the other hand, its share of the video category is down almost 10% over the same time period.

Is viral marketing dead? Or are people just going straight to the source instead of embedding the videos and sharing them via email/txt/tweet/plurk/etc?

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

It wasn’t YouTube that surprised me rather the NBC’s own Hulu. I have been fascinated with this business model and have yet to really see other companies do what this company has done with their television programs online. To be able to share and watch for FREE which was amazing:

When it came to unique viewers, the biggest riser was again Hulu, which broke into the top 10

Are we getting lazier now with the economy going downhill and the holidays fast approaching? From the looks of it it would seem that way. What do you think?