• 50% of Internet users now watch online video weekly or more;
• That’s up from 43% in 2009;
• An additional 5 percentage points growth is expected in the next 12 months;
• Younger male viewers top the list as a category with 85% of males 18-24 watching online video weekly; and
• 38% are interested in the prospect of connecting their computers to TV to watch online video.

Android Wants In On the Mobile Video Rush — Granted, Apple’s getting on the lines, press (both good and bad) and attention recently on their video capabilities. But, when I saw this piece at Connected Planet on what Android is up to in video I thought I’d be contrarian and talk about that instead. To quote the article “While the latest version of Apple’s iconic device is designed for generating video content and communications, the Droid X’s powerful hardware core and new services gear the device toward consuming massive amounts of video content as well as producing it.” Verizon calls the device “a pocket sized home theater”. So, another example of a blur between computers, phones and TVs. Online video is everywhere.  So whether you’re a Apple or Android fan, the good news is they are both going after video if you’re an online video fan.

Happy 4th: And in closing, I embed a video from UStream.tv of fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. Happy birthday all you Americans!

To all those that celebrate Christmas, may you have a safe, peaceful and happy one with your friends and family.

Justin.tv Adds Subscription In an exclusive interview with Beet.tv, Evan Thompson of Justin.tv announced they were launching a subscription service next month with fuller roll out in Q2. Producers can charge what they want (with a minimum $1 fee) and Justin.tv will handle the authentication and payment.

The interview also had some impressive numbers on the current services:

• 35MM monthly views
• “On a daily basis, some 40,000 creators stream their programming live;
• About 1,800 shows going at any given time; and
• Some 800,000 individuals around the world are registered to upload to Justin.tv”

As an aside, I just love that this story is a .tv twofer with both Justin.tv and Beet.tv.

AppleTV Drumbeats Get Louder: Not this AppleTV (which Steve Jobs once referred to as a hobby), but the one that’s going to compete with the cable companies. TechChrunch’s headline on the topic even referred to it as “kneecapping” the cable industry.

An over the top subscription service by Apple has been rumored by those in the know for a while. But this week, the rumors got mores specific with Disney and CBS’ names thrown in the hat.  Given the ever tight-lipped Apple, one might be forgiven  some cynicism in thinking it had anything to do with last week’s timing on Comcast’s TVEverywhere roll out.

Mobile Video Applications to Reach $2.4B by 2013: iPhone and the expectations of Android are driving the trend according to UK researcher Screen Digest. as reported in Video Business (thanks to NewTeeVee for the pointer).

Hulu and Captioned Search: As discussed in a previous post on this blog, captioning on video allows for much more interesting search within videos. Hulu launched their version this week. There’s some fun searches you can do (how many times does  “Twitter” get mentioned or what’s the exact episode of where they said something). Besides those fun aspects, truly opening up search to the video world has the potential to really revolutionize the medium.

NPR Highlights Lightchurch.tv On All Things Considered this week, they had another installment of their exploration of technology and religion. In it, they highlighted an online church Lightchurch.tv. According to the piece “The Web site brings worship services to approximately 60,000 computer screens each week.”.  I did a little research and according to The  Hartford Institute there are 300,000 churches in the US alone. That makes for a large potential market. As I learn more about how .tv is being used, the creativity of people continues to impress me.