PCs and laptops 'becoming the second TV screen'

With more people turning to their PCs and laptops for home entertainment purposes, one expert has highlighted the importance of online video.

A spokeswoman for the Social Media Portal (SMP), a group which considers the use of social networking websites and user-generated Internet content, said the sector 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 websites that did not make the most of this would inevitably suffer.

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

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

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

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