Hulu getting huge, YouTube flat-lines

October numbers from ComScore also signal more video viewers moving online

Looking for video? Online is where it's at.

The latest ComScore report on online video viewing shows that more and more consumers are flocking to the Web to watch videos to their hearts' content.

With nearly 28 billion videos watched during the month, October 2009 set a record high for online video viewing. The number of unique viewers remained relatively constant, dropping ever so slightly from 168 million in September to 167 million last month.

As for individual Web platforms, the big winner in October was Hulu, whose views saw 47% inflation, from 583 million views in September to about 850 million views in October.

Coming at the expense of competitors Fox Interactive Media, Viacom Digital, Yahoo!, and Turner Network, the two-year old company's growth in the last month may be signaling trends to expect over the next year: video viewing is transitioning from TV to the Web. Hulu, a joint venture of NBC, News Corps, and ABC, has already set the stage for that monumental transition.

Also interesting in ComScore's numbers is YouTube's lack of change in numbers, neither growth nor decline. The site saw a ridiculously large 10.4 billion streams in September and a similarly huge 10.5 billion in October. YouTube already has the traffic, and it has for awhile, but its parent, Google, is still struggling to collect revenue from the site to match its popularity.

Matching up with Nielsen's own data, released less than a week ago, social networking is also becoming a force in video viewing. Facebook entered the top ten list of the most popular online video properties, with 245 million views and a nearly 1% share of the market.