AOL launched an update to its AOL Video portal with enhancements designed to make it even easier for consumers to find, watch and share more than 20 million videos from across the Web without having to visit multiple websites. New features of the updated AOL Video portal include:

• A redesigned main page that makes it easier for consumers to discover, search for and find millions of videos from across the Web;
• A redesigned video search experience that leverages industry-leading Truveo video search technology and features better presentation of Web search results to help users more easily find what they are looking for and;
• A new embedded playback experience where consumers can find and watch videos from other popular video sites on the AOL Video site.

”Online video consumption is likely the fastest growing behavior in the history of the Internet and AOL was one of the first to bring video content to the online masses,” said Fred McIntyre, Senior Vice President, AOL Video. “Consumers want just one place where they can go to find and watch all of the videos they’re looking for and our new AOL Video portal gives them just that: a single website that brings together millions of videos from across the Web.”

By combining industry-leading technology with a unique, easy-to-use user experience, the AOL Video portal has become one of the fastest-growing sites on the Internet. Over the past nine months, skyrocketing consumer demand for online video has propelled the number of unique visitors (UVs) on AOL Video to grow by 300% to eight million UVs per month. In the same period, page views have grown by more than 1200% to 76 million.1

The new AOL Video portal is available now at http://video.aol.com.

In addition, AOL also announced today the availability of a new Windows Vista-ready sidebar gadget which enables consumers to watch popular AOL Video content while using other applications. The AOL Video Gadget features five channels – News, Music, Movies, Comedy and Business – each showcasing 10 of the most recent or most popular videos in each channel. The Gadget features 12 “skins” in various colors and patterns, as well as a real-time ticker that highlights relevant videos as they are added to the Truveo search index of videos from all across the Web.

A preview version of the AOL Video Gadget is available now as a free download from the AOL Developer Network website: http://dev.aol.com/video_gadget.