A spokeswoman for the Social Media Portal (SMP), a group which considers theuse of social networking websites and user-generated Internet content, said thesector was booming and would continue to do so.

Rachel Hawkes, co-founder and editor of SMP, said that video content had become"crucial" to the way people communicate online and said that websitesthat did not make the most of this would inevitably suffer.

"The computer really is becoming the second screen, and certainly has thepotential to surpass this," she added.

Video downloads and streaming content over the Internet is a growing area ofpopularity, with recent comScore statistics suggesting billions of videos arebeing viewed across the globe each month.

The company also found that Facebook is one of the most popular socialnetworking sites on the Internet with more than 70 million active users.

? 2008 Adfero Ltd