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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

YouTube Falls Short In Facebook Popularity Contest, Dons Bib For Humble Pie

Facebook is becoming an increasingly important source of distribution and traffic for online video sites. And with over 3.6 million fans, YouTube has one of the most popular Pages on Facebook, and certainly the most popular Page for any video sharing site. But over the last few months, Google-owned YouTube has been making a major push to increase its Facebook fan base even more. In fact, 60 days ago, YouTube said it would surpass Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam Sandler, and Vin Diesel by yesterday, or else it would “eat humble pie” and spotlight a video on the YouTube home page for a nonprofit cause.Well, yesterday marked the end of the 60-day period, and YouTube didn’t quite hit the high numbers that it had promised. However, YouTube took the shortcoming in stride, and made good on its word to feature charity videos on its homepage for a day.YouTube ended the run with about 600,ooo new fans, which wasn’t even close to the number it needed to move up the list and challenge Will Smith, Megan Fox or Vin Diesel. The final count is about 3.65 million fans, which is still one of the higher numbers on Facebook. YouTube’s original challenge featured the numbers they thought they needed to move past more popular celebrities, but the site neglected to factor those celebrities also growing in popularity over the last 2 months.The promise to eat humble pie was fulfilled on Monday in a blog post on the site, along with the non-profits that would be featured on the site. The four winners were chosen through a fan poll, marking the first time Facebook fans chose what videos would be featured, with the top four receiving valuable real estate in the YouTube featured video tab on the home page.source: insidefacebook.com