10 Million Strong and Growing

The broadband video space is getting a lot of coverage these days.  Beyond the hype of 2008, we can see the industry getting serious about building real online video businesses in 2009. I’d like to address a couple myths that seem to permeate the industry, and report on some interesting stats about Vuze.

Myth #1 — Consumers won’t download a video application.
According to our internal data (and Google and Quantcast), we’ve just passed the milestone of 10 million monthly uniques to our content portal, the Vuze HD Network.  We’ve been thrilled at the way our community has embraced the new design of Vuze 4.0, and think this disproves the conventional wisdom that people are only willing to stream videos from their web browser.  People do download applications that have compelling value propositions.  It’s the case for iTunes and Skype, and it’s the case for Vuze, which enables our users to Find, Download, and Play great videos – in HD – anytime, anywhere.

Myth #2 — Online video viewers are not engaged.
Well, this might not be a myth for some services, but we were surprised when we read research from TubeMogul, entitled How Much of a Typical Online Video Is Actually Watched?  This piqued our curiosity, so we did some number crunching and found that Vuze HD Network viewers are far less likely to drop off at any point during the video than the average web viewer watching a short-form web video.  This culminates in Vuze viewers being a full four times more likely to watch a five-minute video all the way to the end than the viewer of an average web video.

We suspect that more people watch videos to completion on the Vuze HD Network because they find content that is relevant to them, and because they love the superior picture and sound quality.  Which would you rather watch – grainy pixilated web video streams, or stunning full screen HD videos?

Some Interesting Stats About Vuze:
Here at Vuze, we haven’t been concentrating on industry buzz or PR.  We’ve been quietly focusing all our resources on building features for our growing community of users.   The results speak for themselves:

• Since our Vuze 4.0 launch in mid-October, 1 million unique users have signed up for the new Subscriptions feature, and more than 8 million total subscriptions have been created.
• Total Friend Connections among our users (to share content and get faster downloads) have increased more than 350% since mid-October.
• Search traffic on Vuze has increased more than 700% since June 2008, with our users currently conducting more than 1 million search queries per day.
• In the past 3 months, we’ve gotten more than 45,000 emails from our users with comments, constructive suggestions, and support for the direction we’re headed. In the words of one user (Josh K) who recently reached out to us:

I had this client since its humble beginnings – and I feel compelled to say that I believe Vuze is to other torrent clients as iTunes is to other music players. In my mind, that’s an accomplishment. Keep on in the direction you’re going – it’s awesome!

Thanks, Josh – and thanks to everyone who is using Vuze. We have a bunch of things in the hopper that we think will give the product a whole new dimension.  With our efficient cost structure and amazing technology, we’ll continue to innovate and scale into 2009 and beyond.

Stay tuned,

Gilles