…without a doubt, YouTube. The arrival of near ubiquitous broadband access in Britain means online video-watching/swapping/posting/making has fast become the most popular activity for British netizens. In the past year, YouTube has shot past Wikipedia and Facebook to claim the honours as the UK’s most popular social media site with a commanding 10.4 million visitors in January, says web monitoring firm Nielsen Online, The FT reports. That’s a 56 per cent year-on-year jump. Rival video-sharing sites Veoh and VidShadow also clock in as the fastest growing sites on the web.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. YouTube and other video-sharing sites have soared in the U.S. as well. According to a recent BBC report, an incredible 15 per cent of American online users were each day either posting video or watching what someone else had posted to one of these sites.

What is remarkable about the growth in the UK and the US for that matter is that these countries truly are broadband laggards. Imagine the explosion in video-sharing/swapping/making/watching we’ll see when true high-speed broadband finally arrives here.