Don’t be taken in by videos of mobile phones apparently popping corn.

Bluetooth headset retailer Cardo Systems has claimed ownership of the hot viral videos that show people appearing to pop popcorn with their cellphones.

In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday titled “Cellphone Popcorn Mystery Resolved,” an advert for the company’s line of headsets follows the grainy footage of friends aiming phones at uncooked corn that’s been tallying millions of views on YouTube.

More: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/bluetooth-compa.html

And those original videos:

It started as a student assignment and it is now a worldwide film sensation.

The short film, the “Italian Spiderman”, was devised by students at Flinders University in South Australia. On the internet the film has attracted almost two million hits in just over five months.

Now it has attracted the attention of the South Australian Film Corporation, which will give the students funding to make ten more of the short films, as Nance Haxton reports from Adelaide.

Expect to hear a lot more about Italian Spiderman over the coming weeks.

More info: http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2269067.htm

MP3 news report: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/twt/200806/20080609twt10-italian-spiderman.mp3

To be honest, that’s kind of beside the point. Authentic or not, it demonstrates the enormous traffic opportunities available to creative folk tapping into video sharing sites.

For the record, both boyfriend and girlfriend work in advertising – their company’s website is here and its YouTube channel is here.

UK Internet traffic to online video websites increased by 178% between February 2007 and 2008. A Hitwise custom category of the top 25 video websites in the UK accounted for 2.22% of all UK Internet visits in February 2008, equivalent for one in every 45 Internet visits last month.

YouTube is the most popular video site in the UK and the eighth most visited website overall. The combined market share of its US and UK properties in February was 69.31% of all UK Internet visits to the custom category.

The third most visited video website in the UK during February was BBC iPlayer. The Beeb’s catch-up TV streaming service has increased its market share of UK Internet visits by 423% since December 2007, and is now the 50th most visited website in the UK overall.

More: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/03/online_video_traffic_up_178_in_a_year.html

comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released January 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, revealing that YouTube.com accounted for one-third of the 9.8 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. during the month. The total number of videos viewed in January was down slightly from the more than 10.1 billion viewed during a record-breaking December 2007.

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property in January with nearly 3.4 billion videos viewed (34.3 percent share of videos), gaining 1.7 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for more than 96 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 584 million (6 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 315 million (3.2 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 199 million (2 percent).

More: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2110