According to a new Nielson report, people’s attention is moving to Internet video and social networking, and online advertising is following.

Highlights of the report:

• The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339% since 2003
• Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000% over the same period
• In the last year, unique viewers of online video grew 10%, the number of streams grew 41%, the streams per user grew 27% and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71%
• There are 87% more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883% more time devoted to those sites.
• In the last year, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73%
• In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.

“The Internet has changed dramatically as people seek more personalized relationships online. In particular, time spent on social networks and video sites has increased astronomically,” said Charles Buchwalter, SVP, Research and Analytics, Nielsen Online. ” Advertisers are starting to positively re-assess the value of the online experience and create more meaningful relationships with consumers.”

Translate “Advertisers are starting to positively re-assess the value of the online experience” into English, and it means advertisers are moving their dollars to Internet media and social networking sites, because they realize that’s where people are spending their time.

Will this make it easier for indie bloggers, podcasters and vloggers to make a buck?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Image: Dustin Diaz

Pioneering video podcast Ask A Ninja has introduced a $1.99 iPhone app, I Am Ninja (App Store link) that lets you be a ninja and use your ninja skills to survive.

It’s also got some smart social media features, letting you watch the latest Ask A Ninja episode and submit questions to the Ninja.

Mobile phone giant Nokia this week announced another round of staff cutbacks, alongside an announcement that it was further opening its technology to mobile application developers.

Another 450 employees of the Finnish company were let go this week, on the heels of layoffs of 1700 staffers in March, and an initial reduction of 320 back in February of this year, according to PC World.

Meanwhile, in more upbeat news, Nokia announced its strategy to reposition its high-end phones, like its just-unveiled N97 touchscreen handsets (pictured at right), to compete head-to-head with the ubiquitous Apple iPhone. The company on April 28 also detailed plans for expanding and streamlining purchase of mobile online software and services.

The company plans a new “App Store,” with better links to its service offerings, and easier customer access with a single sign-in and single billing mechanism.

The company also unveiled an initiative to work with third-party developers to expand Nokia’s offerings of mobile applications. In an upcoming release of their API, Nokia will open up their Ovi Share service, which lets users share content via PCs and mobile phones, to developers. Nokia released technical information for its newest N97 phone at a Nokia event for developers this week.

The best new applications and services developed for the handsets will also be in the running for prize money from Nokia and partner Adobe, which makes the Flash software which runs many of the phone’s applications.

Finally, Nokia also revealed plans to cooperate more closely with social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, and “other outside parties.”

“The world is a mash-up,” Niklas Savander, Nokia executive vice-president for services, was quoted as saying in BusinessWeek. “The consumer at the end is the one who chooses what he or she wants to do.”

If Nokia is using its new app store and third-party developers as a strategy to challenge the Apple iPhone for a larger share of the mobile computing pie, it will likely be an uphill struggle. Nokia makes handsets that are superior in many ways (fantastic 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture that upload and stream video online, mobile podcasting apps, and 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory), but have yet to capture the mass-market attention of the iPhone.

Social bookmarking and news site reddit today announced the launch of reddit.tv, a video sharing and rating service. The new site takes the videos which are recommended and discussed on the main reddit site, and features them in a more video-friendly setting.

The original reddit site, launched in 2005, lets users post links to content on the Internet. Other users may then vote the posted links down or up, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the Reddit home page. The site also allows discussion of individual topics or links. Users who submit articles which turn out to be popular with users like, and who also “vote up” receive “karma” points as a reward for submitting interesting articles.

The new reddit.tv site features its users’ most recommended web videos, with broad categories like “geek” and “happy” for browsing, in the old “most popular” standby (like this “hard drive clock video, at right). They have also partnered with the TED conference to specially feature videotaped talks from that event.

Also, the new video site now has integration with Twitter, to pass along links to videos, “generat[ing] a random sentence to make you look awesome without even trying.”

Podcasting network Wizzard Media announced the release of Alchemy 2.1. The advertising-insert application “seamlessly” integrates advertisements into podcasts playing on the Wizzard Media Flash player, while also maintaining advanced tracking and interactive capabilities.

The updated app eliminates the need for separate systems to run (and track) advertisements in downloaded podcasts versus streaming audio or video podcasts. The same ads play whether the podcast is downloaded in iTunes, played through mobile iTunes on the iPhone, or played online through the Flash-based media player.

“By clicking on the ad while it is run in the Flash player, a consumer is automatically transported to the advertiser’s website,” said Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO. The company calls this new system the “technical foundation” of its advertising monetization plan for content producers. It is also of benefit to the advertisers themselves.

“Now, ad buyers can make one buy across streaming and downloadable media reaching consumers where they consume entertainment on their computer, on their iPods or on their iPhones,” Spencer added.

An example of an active use of the new flash player system can be found at Alaska HDTV.

Mac software developers Reinvented Software released an updated version of their RSS editor application Feeder on Tuesday.

Feeder 2.0 is an RSS editor for creating a variety of news feeds, including podcasts. This latest version adds weblog integration, announcements, editing and preview improvements, live validation, Amazon S3 uploading, iTunes U support, and an improved user interface.

Reinvented says that the updated Feeder interface simplifies the user’s work with RSS, with an e-mail-like editor. For media creators who lack experience (or interest) with coding their own HTML, the app includes ready-made templates and previews. For those who like to do their own tinkering, Feeder also offers HTML editing.

For podcasters, Feeder includes full support for the iTunes RSS podcasting extensions, drag-and-drop episode creation, an iTunes Store preview and the ability to tag all popular podcast media files. Feeder can publish feeds and associated files via FTP, SFTP, MobileMe and now, Amazon S3. The app also adds support for iTunes U podcasts.

For podcasters who use Feeder alongside their blog, the new Feeder 2.0 adds blog integration, to post updates when the feed is published. Feeder 2.0 can also automatically announce new content on Twitter and Facebook. This may not be a big deal for people who use podcasting plug-ins for blogging platforms like WordPress, but for those who use a feed editor alongside their blog, this could streamline the process a great deal.

Feeder 2.0 retails for $39, or $14.95 to upgrade from version 1.x. The upgrade is free if you purchased Feeder in the past six months. The app requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later, and is available as a 15-day trial that can be unlocked upon purchase.

Internet information provider comScore released March 2009 data for online video consumption. Their report indicates that U.S. Internet users viewed 14.5 billion online videos during the month, a jump of 11 percent over February 2009.

In March, comScore’s report says, 77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. Google Sites, (parent of video powerhouse YouTube) once again garnered the lion’s share of online video-watching: 5.9 billion videos viewed, representing a huge 40.9 percent online video market share. No surprise, YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at Google sites. 99.7 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.1 videos per viewer).

Fox Interactive Media, which owns social networking site MySpace ranked second last month with 437 million videos viewed (3.0 percent). 47.4 million viewers watched 349 million videos on MySpace.com (7.4 videos per viewer).

Breaking into the Top 3 ranking of videos viewed, Hulu chalked up 380 million video-views (2.6 percent). Yahoo! Sites tallied 335 million videos viewed last month (2.3 percent). Hulu accounted for only 2.6 percent of the online videos viewed, but 4.9 percent of all minutes spent watching online video.

comScore’s March 2009 report also showed that nearly 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 97 videos per viewer during that month. Google Sites (with their huge YouTube.com site) surpassed the 100 million online video viewer threshold again, after first achieving that milestone in December 2008. Fox Interactive (parent of MySpace.com) ranked second with 55.2 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (42.5 million) and Hulu (41.6 million).

The average online video viewer watched 327 minutes of video, or nearly 5.5 hours. The duration of the average online video was 3.4 minutes.

Humble Daisy’s ProfCast 2.5.0 – a lecture recording and podcast creation solution – has been updated with new functionality and bug fixes.

Among the most significant additions to ProfCast is the ability to export recordings in the .m4v format.

“A lot of users have requested the the ability to share their recordings in the .m4v format.” explained Dave Chmura, president of Humble Daisy. MPEG4 video (.m4v) files are commonly used in online file sharing and social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

2.5.0 is a free upgrade for registered ProfCast users.

Traditional radio, like newspapers, faces a bleak future, with audiences turning into portable media and radio ad revenues plummetting. National Public Radio, though, is beating the odds, growing while other broadcasters and news sources are collapsing.

Fast Company suggests that early adoption of podcasting may be one of the reasons for NPR’s success:

“We have to skate where the puck is going,” says NPR CEO Vivian Schiller.

An hour-long episode of This American Life about the financial crisis, The Giant Pool of Money, demonstrated how easily a strong NPR show can be repurposed as multiple digital streams.

It has been downloaded as a podcast more than half a million times and spawned a thrice-weekly NPR podcast and blog, Planet Money, which are getting 1 million downloads and 400,000 page views a month, respectively.

But NPR’s digital efforts are much broader. It was the first mainstream-media organization to enter podcasting and often has several programs in the iTunes top 10. An open platform introduced last year allows listeners to mix their own podcasts and otherwise play around with NPR content — one fan built an NPR iPhone app. And NPR is putting all of its editorial employees — every editor, producer, and reporter — through multimedia training, with support from the Knight Foundation. Traffic on NPR.org grew 78% from 2007 to 2008.

NPR’s numbers show how powerful it can be to let people download and listen to content on their own schedule.  This American Life‘s Ira Glass has said his podcast increased his audience by an half million people.

And podcasts aren’t just growing NPR’s audience, they are helping to ensure NPR’s future: the age of NPR’s median radio listener is 49; its median podcast listener is 33.

While podcasts have been wildly successful at growing NPR’s audience, they haven’t saved the organization from the pressures facing many other broadcasters. NPR is still struggling to figure out how to make podcasts help its bottom line and NPR member stations see the podcasts as competition.

What do you think? Do broadcasters need podcasts to survive? Will NPR’s bold leap into podcasting pay off?

BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis has posted an interesting look at the future of news, Journalists: Where do you add value?:

Journalism can’t afford repetition and production anymore.

Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing. This efficiency is necessitated by the reduction of resources. But it is also a product of the link and search economy: The only way to stand out is to add unique value and quality.

My advice in the past has been: If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And: Do what you do best and link to the rest. The link economy is ruthless in judging value.

The question every journalist must ask is: Am I adding value?

Jarvis raises an issue that’s very important, not just to journalists, but to anyone involved in media.

When blogging, podcasting and video podcasting emerged, there were a lot of people who saw them as get rich quick opportunities. The idea was that, since blogging/podcasting/video podcasting made it easy to publish and share media with the world, they would open up a world of opportunity.

These people only saw half the picture, though.

New media does open up a world of opportunity – but it also opens up a world of competition.