NEW YORK – The video-sharing site YouTube.com suffered an outage Tuesday, the same day a Web measurement company said the site had broken into its list of the Internet's top 50 for the first time.
Few details on the outage were available.
Although the company's Web site had greeted visitors, "We're currently putting out some new features, sweeping out the cobwebs and zapping a few gremlins," an e-mail from YouTube blamed a temporary database problem.
The outage lasted hours. The site was restored by 5 p.m. EDT.
YouTube is the one of the most popular video-sharing sites where amateurs and professionals alike can share and view videos — of a recent trip, of a new dog or even of themselves burping.
According to comScore Media Metrix , YouTube had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July, a 20 percent increase from 13 million in June.
The site did not even have measurable traffic until August 2005, when it had 58,000 unique visitors.
For July, YouTube debuted in the Top 50 at No. 40, up from 58th in June.
ComScore also recorded a doubling of traffic to News Corp. (NWS)-owned MySpace.com's video site, with 20 million visitors, trailing only Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) video site, which had 21 million.
"Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the Web," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. "The trends we're witnessing indicate that online video is emerging from its infancy and entering the mainstream."
FOXNews.com is owned and operated by News Corporation, which also owns and operates MySpace.com.
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