Video streams on msnbc.com hit 32 million for the week ending February 9, the company said late this afternoon. It attributes this near-record traffic to the success of the snazzy new Flash video player.
The 32 million as the third highest weekly streams in the history of the site, a co-venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.
Surely the volume of streams is also a result of the intense interest in the U.S. presidential primary.
In January, msnbc.com decided to permit visitors to grab the embed code of video clips of NBC News and other news clips. Beet.TV reported this first.
In January, I interviewed Mark Lukasiewicz, Vice President of Digital Media at NBC News. I’ve republished Mark’s comments about the strategy behind making the files sharable. I interviewed him at CES. (I was in my NY studio and interviewed him via cell phone while a camera taped the interview. The interview was originally broadcast live via Mogulus.)
How much traffic is coming from cross posts from embedded players cannot be determined, but it is surely going to grow. I wonder when the other major television news organizations will follow.
Andy Plesser
