My How Things Have Changed: Msnbc.com Has Viral Video Hit of YouTube Clip!

Just about a year ago, Beet.TV broke the news that msnbc.com would be the first television network- affiliated online publisher to allow its videos to be embedded.  That strategy has been adopted by virtually all the U.S. news sites as well as Reuters.  Charlie Tillinghast, president at msnbc.com, told me that instead of sending viewers to YouTube, embeddable video makes it easier for visitors to share the video from msnbc.com. I've reposted that interview today.

Usually, it's YouTube that has success with content from broadcasters, but in an interesting twist, the Today Show attracted views with a hit video from YouTube, The Lion Reunion.  The Today show clip was watched 2.4 million times on msnbc.com, making it the most watched video clip of the year, Beet.TV has learned.  The video on YouTube has gotten 3.2 million views.

We don't know how many views of the Lion clip were watched on the original page on msnbc.com or how many views were on an embeddable player seen elsewhere, but the development in providing sharable videos by mainstream media is one of the most important developments of 2008.

Here' the take on this development by Peter Kafka at AllThingD.

-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer