Nielsen released new stats today detailing online video metrics for January, and YouTube’s numbers actually dropped over those of December, both in terms of unique users and total streams. Now keep in mind that this is only the second report from Nielsen’s new Video Census service, so they could be working out the kinks, but this is the first time we can remember seeing the video-sharing site’s metrics take a dip. After what comScore did to Google’s stock last week, you gotta be pretty careful to get these numbers right.

DECEMBER 2007
JANUARY 2008

According to the data, YouTube had 65,226,000 fewer streams and 990,000 fewer unique users in January than it did the month before. YouTube is still miles ahead of everyone else, but perhaps the proliferation of video sites, new media studios and even major networks getting into the game are eating away at that lead. Nielsen also said the total number of recorded online video numbers fell as well.

DECEMBER 2007

• 116.7 million unique viewers
• 6.2 billion video streams
• 54 streams per viewer
• 170 minutes per viewer

JANUARY 2008

• 116.7 million unique viewers
• 5.9 billion streams
• 51.3 streams per viewer
• 124.4 minutes per viewer

Perhaps with the holiday and the writers’ strike, December was an anomalous month, and things are settling back down. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for Nielsen’s February numbers.