Pew: Minorities more likely to visit video-sharing websites

African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than whites to visit video-sharing websites such as YouTube, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center.

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project surveyed more than 2,200 adult Web users earlier this year and found that 71 percent use sites like YouTube, with 28 percent saying they had visited such a site the day prior. Those figures were up from 66 percent and 23 percent, respectively, in 2010.

Hispanics were most likely to have ever used a video-sharing site, at 81 percent, followed by African-Americans at 76 percent. Sixty-nine percent of whites had used a video-sharing site before, further evidence that minorities are adopting mobile and Web-based technologies at a faster pace in recent years.

“The rise of broadband and better mobile networks and devices has meant that video has become an increasingly popular part of users’ online experiences,” said Kathleen Moore of the Pew Internet Project and an author of the report.

Sites such as YouTube are increasingly being used for longer videos, original programming and direct outreach from musicians and other content providers. But the report claims their use is still driven by the user-generated videos that have become synonymous with the site.

The online video market in general has heated up, as Facebook recently announced its plans to join services such as Netflix and Hulu in offering content for paid streaming.

In another notable finding, rural users are now almost as likely to visit such video-sharing sites as urban and suburban users, at 68 percent vs. 72 and 71 percent, respectively.

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