Facebook won the bragging rights to being the world’s largest social network site last year, based on the worldwide number of unique visitors to its site.

But what about some of the other metrics that advertisers care about?

According to the latest figures from Nielsen, Facebook and rival MySpace each have key strengths to woo advertisers with.

When it comes to “engagement,” that is how much time people are actually spending on a site, Facebook is making big gains. In April, the total number of minutes spent on the site in the US surged a whopping 700 percent from April 2008, to 13.8 billion minutes.

By contrast, MySpace saw total minutes on its site decrease 31 percent year-over-year in April to roughly 5 billion minutes.

Facebook’s jump in total minutes was no doubt helped by the increase in the sheer number of people joining the service in the past year - unique US visitors to Facebook increased 217 percent year-over-year in April according to Nielsen.

But even taking the larger audience into account, Facebook is keeping people engaged longer. The average Facebook user in the US spent 3 hours and 14 minutes on the site in April, up 152 percent from the 1 hour and 17 minute average at the same time a year earlier, according to Nielsen.

When it comes to watching videos on a social network though, MySpace is still king.

Nielsen said that the average US MySpace visitors spent 38.8 minutes watching video on the site in April, compared to 11.2 minutes on Facebook.

And while Facebook streamed 41.5 million videos to its users in April, that’s a pittance compared to the Web’s top video destinations like YouTube and Hulu.com, which streamed 5.5 billion videos and 373 million videos in April respectively.

“This is not about going out of business. This is about getting down to business.”
So says the latest advertisement from General Motors, which hit the automaker’s web site and YouTube just hours after it filed for bankruptcy protection.

The theme is reinvention (”General Motors needs to start over to get stronger”) and it is the first glimpse of what the folks over at the Interpublic Group agencies that work on GM have planned post-bankruptcy.

Keep an eye on:

• Microsoft offered a look into a future where the Xbox 360 console is the centerpiece of any living room (Reuters)

• DirecTV Chief Executive Chase Carey may be headed back to News Corp (Reuters)

• Lions Gate Entertainment posted a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss (Reuters)

YouTube is becoming a dangerous place to search for porn.

Anti-virus company PandaLabs reports on its research blog that hackers have riddled the site with links to malicious software. The scheme works like this: Porn seekers searching the YouTube site for terms including Latina, kinky, girl, porn, sex and the names of popular porn stars are directed to another site, called PornTube 2.0. It looks like a legitimate video web site, according to PandaLabs, but is actually riddled with malicious software that can steal credit card data, passwords, install spyware and also attempts to sell users of infected PCs fake anti-virus programs.

Just so you know…

Hulu continues its rapid ascent up the video charts, cracking the top three online video sites in the U.S. for the first time in March.

Some 380 million videos were viewed on Hulu.com, up 14.3 percent from February, according to market research firm comScore.

That allowed the NBC Universal and News Corp joint venture to steal the No.3 spot from Yahoo, whose total number of videos viewed in March actually declined by roughly 5 percent from February. Hulu held a 2.6 percent share of the 14.5 billion videos viewed in the U.S. last month.

Hulu has seen its popularity grow following TV ads that ran during the Super Bowl in January. In December, it was the No.7 ranked video site in the U.S.

Impressive as Hulu’s growth has been, the site is still not even in the same universe as YouTube, owned by Google. Google remained the No.1 video site in March, according to comScore, with 5.9 billion videos viewed, for a 40.9 percent market share.

Fox Interactive Media, owner of MySpace, held on to its spot as the No.2 place for online vids, although its market share shrank from 3.5 percent in February to 3 percent in March.

Oprah Winfrey is expected to join the twitterati on Friday, as she posts her first message on Twitter.

According to her show’s web site: “Oprah’s getting ready to send her very first tweet! And, why Ashton Kutcher’s been crowned the King of Twitter.”

While the media mogul is certain to accumulate hundreds of thousands of followers in record time (she already has 66,000), we wonder: What does it mean for Twitter, the wildly popular mini-blogging service, which is essential to some, supremely confusing to others and whose business model (or lack of it) gives journalists fits.

PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff pulls no punches in a post titled: “Oprah and Ashton Will Destroy Twitter.” Their popularity alone will lead to repeated crashes of Twitter servers, he says. Then…

“…it will recover and get bigger than ever, but with more Twitter users like Ashton and Oprah, it will ultimately be hollow on the inside, just like a bubble. And we know what happens to them.”

There are already reports that the technology backbone at Twitter is not without its share of hiccups. And outages and service slowdowns in the Internet era could lead millions to other services, right?

Still all that gloomy talk doesn’t really address Twitter’s future as a business, and the very true cliche: If you build it, they will come. Build a service with millions of loyal subscribers and someone will pay handsomely to try to make money with it.

Let us know if you feel the room shake when Oprah tweets. Oh and one more thing (ahem). Don’t forget to follow MediaFile. You know…on Twitter.

Keep and eye on:

• General Electric posted better-than-expected quarterly profit, despite declines at NBC Universal. (Reuters)
• Media General reported a net loss and an 18 percent revenue decline because of falling newspaper advertising sales (Reuters)
• YouTube is preparing to offer movies and hundreds of TV episodes. (Reuters)
• Local Media is doing far worse than national media and may not come back (Business Week)

(Photo: Oprah on Twitter)

The big story in the media for the rest of the week is the annual National Cable Telecommunications Association Show, or “the cable show,” as its commonly called.

This year’s primary topic looks like it will be how the big, traditional operators in the business will adapt to an age when the Internet is giving people more options to watch shows, and not always in a way that feeds the bank.

Here is our own take on the show from the Reuters wire:

Both sets of companies will be brainstorming on how to cope with or benefit from disintermediation: consumers can now watch decent-quality video online whenever they want, and often for free.

“Last year, cable companies were in a more probelgradetectionist mode but now they’re facing up to the inevitable trend, because online video is really here to stay,” said Tuna Amobi, equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

Executives will also have the economy on their minds.

“The current recession has cut into consumer spending for household TV and telecommunications, while also causing most marketers to reduce their advertising budgets,” said Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan.

Longer term, the industry hopes to forge new tie-ups to capitalize on the online trend.

Broadcasting & Cable approaches the same topic, but with the requisite “it’s still early days” comment:

But with online viewing still amounting to a tiny fraction of actual viewing (not to mention revenue), the debate over a viable business model may be a lot louder than it needs to be. Cable networks, however, have to work with their pipelines to protect everyone’s interests.

“We’re constantly looking at evolving our economic models on our shows to ensure that we’re protected well into the future,” says Andrea Wong, president and CEO of Lifetime Networks. “I don’t think anyone has the magic answer yet. I think that we’re all trying to experiment and find new ways to do business together. I think we have to.”

Those last two sentences could have been taken from a newspaper executive.

MarketWatch reports on operators freaked out about the economic recession causing people to simply give up cable and do something else with their time.

Since last May’s Cable Show in New Orleans, the price of cable stocks have dropped by an average of 31%, with most of the declines coming after the September collapse of Lehman Brothers that triggered a worldwide financial meltdown.

The phenomenon of “cord-cutting” has been a concern of some cable executives, most notably Time Warner Cable (TWC) Chairman Glenn Britt, who has voiced his belief that the wide availability of free, ad-supported television shows online through sites like Hulu, Veoh and others has made it feasible to stop paying for cable or satellite service.

Keep an eye on:

• Speaking of cable and the Internet, Google’s YouTube signed a deal with Disney to offer ABC and ESPN clips on its Web video service. Disney might also put full-length shows on the Hulu joint venture betwen News Corp and NBC Universal. This is something that the cable guys mentioned above are watching with some alarm because, as we noted above, this stuff would be free, and no one wants to wind up like newspapers who gave away the store online for the past decade. (PaidContent and The Wall Street Journal)
• Speaking of newspapers, the Journal and The New York Times had the same bright idea: Profiles of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News on their first day of delivering the news without a print newspaper. It was either genius, dumb luck or just plain dumb, depending on how you lookat it; big events in the collapsing auto industry, not to mention some other noteworthy stuff, made for a huge news day. That either spurred online interest or made readers scream because they had no paper to read about it. (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times)
• More from newspaper land: The New York Times cut its staff and sought pay concessions on Thursday. Now the axe is swinging at the Times-owned Boston Globe. Thirty buyouts, 20 layoffs. (Boston Business Journal)
  Also, online ad growth “screeches to a halt.” Sigh. (Silicon Alley Insider)
• Google commits $100 million to its venture capital fund, according to unnamed sources, like it’s some kind of scandal. Google also names folks who will run it, fortunately showing its confidence in them by saying so on the record. (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times)
• Google Maps is good at catching cheating husbands for free, if you can believe this report. (The Sun)

(Photo: Reuters)

The jury is out on whether advertising will ever work for online video sites as they strive to become real profit-generating businesses. Well, it’s worked for Hulu, but not in the profit-generating kind of way — at least not right away.

Hulu jumped to become the fourth most-watched video site in the United States last month thanks to a major advertising spot during the Super Bowl, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore in this Reuters story. Those spots featured Alec Baldwin telling viewers about Hulu’s “evil plot to destroy the world” by turning people’s brains to mush.

Comscore said Hulu’s viewership grew 42 percent to 34.7 million unique visitors watching around 333 million videos.

The irony of Hulu’s “ratings” success on the back of a TV advertisement during one of the most watched events on the planet is not lost on us. Like many other Web video sites Hulu isn’t quite bringing in millions of dollars in profits for its owners yet, but this might be a start.

Google’s YouTube is also on the hunt for revenues and profits to match its huge popularity. We’re not sure if advertising on national television will help as it already has three times the number of viewers that Hulu does. YouTube’s issues might have more do with the reluctance of mainstream advertisers to make major commitments to advertising on its site which is dominated by user-generated clips rather than professionally made ones. Hulu, which only features TV shows and archive movies, has had more success with advertisers.

Even if YouTube decided to advertise during the Super Bowl, it might not have the same return on investment. As the New York Times explains here, Hulu paid next to nothing for Super Bowl ad spots worth nearly $3 million as this year’s football extravaganza was broadcast by part owner NBC.

Keep an eye on:

• MySpace, BT to offer Web contract domains to users (Reuters)
• Investor supports Comcast’s buyback strategy (NY Post)
• Houston Chronicle cuts 12 percent of staff (Reuters)

The big highlight of the McGraw-Hill media summit in New York when NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker took a couple of shots at Jon Stewart.

But our favorite story came at the end of the day, courtesy of Viacom top dog Philippe Dauman. The background to this story was a question about Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s YouTube  over copyright infringement.

That led Dauman to mention that his son, Phillippe Dauman Jr., happens to work at… wait for it… Google.

Here’s the CEO’s described the chain of events that led to his son’s hiring:

“It just so happens that he was being interviewed at business school by someone at Google on the very day we sent our massive takedown notice.

So he called me up the next day, Saturday. ‘Dad you really screwed me up.’

I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I had no idea.

‘I had a great interview with Google yesterday,’ he said. ‘And they aren’t going to hire me.’

I said, ‘Oh? Well, you’re right, they probably won’t. But you’re a smart kid and you’ll get lots of offers.’

Now I give Google a lot of credit because his interviewer — who was actually a very  senior guy — called him the next week. ‘We liked you,’ he said. But he couldn’t escape who my son was because he’s, well, a junior. But he told my son they make offers on merit, and he invited him out to Mountain View and ran him through the computerized tests — and he got a job offer.

It was actually down in the end between Apple and Google, he had offers from both companies. So my son called me up. ‘I know you have this thing with Google,’ he said. ‘But I really liked Google. I told him Google’s a great company, and we have a dispute at the moment at the top, but it’s still a great company.

‘You should go there.’

The next time I saw Eric Schmidt — because I did find out they ran it up the flagpole to him because it involved my son — I said to him, ‘I admire what you did. It could have come out differently.’

And my son’s doing very well there. He loves it. But we agreed, and my son is meticulous about this, that we don’t talk about it.”

And what exactly does Philippe Dauman Jr do at Google?

“He’s in content acquisition.”

(Picture: Reuters)

Video streaming Web site Hulu.com marked its one-year anniversary on Thursday by announcing new social networking features, as the site seeks to gain ground on other Internet entertainment hubs.
    
The Web site, a joint venture between General Electric Co.-owned NBC Universal and News Corp., launched "Hulu Friends" which integrates functions from social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, as well as e-mail providers Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, and allows users to see what their friends are watching, share new videos and leave notes for each other.
    
Hulu, which allows visitors to view television episodes and movies on their home computers, still has a long way to go if it hopes to catch up to video sharing giant YouTube.com. Internet tracking site comScore reported this month that YouTube accounted for about 43 percent of all videos viewed over the Internet in January. By comparison, Hulu.com had only a 1.7 percent share of all videos viewed. The Google-owned YouTube has reached out to mainstream entertainment companies, including Universal Music Group, as the site seeks to add more premium entertainment on its site. But unlike YouTube, which mostly has short video clips, Hulu allows users to view entire episodes, and it has positive trends in its favor.

Research firm Knowledge Networks reported in February that use of third-party video hosting sites such as Hulu to access network television shows doubled since 2007 among Internet video users age 13-54.

It’s Day 2 of YouTube versus PRS For Music, the British organization that collects royalties for songwriters and publishers whenever songs are broadcast over the air and the Web or performed in public venues .

As you may know by now, YouTube started blocking UK visitors from watching professional music videos and users’ videos that feature licensed music. The reason, as usual, is each side said the other guys are being unreasonable in their fee negotiations. YouTube says PRS wants many times more than a previous deal, while PRS says YouTube actually wants to pay less than they currently pay.

There was some signs of progress today when PRS put out a statement:

Talks between PRS for Music and Google took place today to discuss the licensing of YouTube following Google’s sudden decision to block premium video content on the service in the UK.

The meeting was positive. We are committed to ensuring our 60,000 songwriter and composers members receive a fair deal and that UK consumers continue to enjoy music videos on YouTube.

PRS said both sides are due to meet again in the next few days.

And like in the US and every other country on the planet, Brits will miss their YouTube music, so much so that the UK’s Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting Lord Carter commented on the row to a House of Commons business committee, according to the BBC.

The headline of the same BBC story might lead readers to think online radio service Last.fm was also about to fall out with the PRS: “Last.FM joins Google’s rights row”. But the story in fact quotes Last.fm founder Martin Stiksel saying while his company has an agreement with PRS, the licenses are getting expensive:

It is a fundamental problem that we have been facing in that online music licensing is getting more complicated and more expensive.

(Photo: Michael Jackson’s Thriller performance by prison inmates in the Philippines, which was made popular on YouTube/REUTERS)