New research from Brightcove and TubeMogul’s joint video analytics venture suggests that Twitter may be a magic bullet for online video consumption. While Twitter’s 140-characters aren’t exactly designed to cure adult ADD, Twitter’s referral traffic to video sites shows that those visitors actually watch videos longer than the average user, and especially the average user from search.

This research focused specifically on music videos from the four big music labels (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music). And they found that:

consumers that find online music videos via Twitter watch an average of 2:30 minutes per stream compared to the 1:30 minutes viewed on average by consumers discovering online music videos via search engines like Yahoo!. However, 76% of online music videos viewed on artist and label sites are found through Google searches.

So it’s also possible that a smaller sample size is affecting the amount of time spent on a video, too. Perhaps Twitter’s audience isn’t the same as Yahoo’s (gasp!).

TubeMogul released research last year that showed that more than half of all online video watchers moved on by about 60 seconds into a video. So either things are already looking up for average video consumption, or search is better than pure average, but not nearly as good as Twitter average.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka gives a logical explanation: “A search result may get you something you think you want. But a recommendation from a Twitter pal means even more — if they like it, and you like them, you’re probably more likely to invest more time.”

What do you think? Do you watch videos recommended by your Tweeple longer than Yahoo’s?

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