First, some data points:

• Gawker Media’s Nick Denton reports a big traffic spike at his sites in January–298 million page views, a 30 percent year-over-year increase. That’s even though one of his biggest annual eyeball attractors–Steve Jobs at MacWorld–never materialized.
• Blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack tells me that uploads to his Web video network have increased 50 percent so far this year.
• Now News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, citing comScore numbers, notes that its U.S. traffic shot up last month as well: Unique visitors were up 10 percent, which is worth noting for a (relatively) old social network, and those folks spent 30 percent more time on the site than they did a year ago. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)
• Obligatory Twitter traffic stat: 2.6 million uniques in January, up 1,362 percent over the last year.
• ComScore’s (SCOR) overall numbers for Web usage for the last month: Uniques up 4.1 percent, page views up 3.1 percent, time spent per visitor up 2.5 percent.

Is any of this meaningful? Hard to say: Any single site can argue that it has done something to generate more visits and engagement from its users: MySpace has its MySpace Music site, Twitter is the buzziest start-up of the last 12 months, etc.

And last month also happened to feature Barack Obama’s inauguration, which was a huge Web traffic driver.

Still… there aren’t that many more Americans who are getting online for the first time at this point. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that a wide variety of sites is posting big traffic gains because many of us are now unemployed or underemployed? And that we’ve got more a lot of downtime to surf and click?

Alas, all those eyeballs aren’t translating to dollars for many of these publishers: Just ask Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, which saw page views increase 69 percent during the last three months of 2008, but saw ad revenue drop 18 percent.

But I digress. If for some reason you do find yourself with more time on your hands, might I suggest this trio of themed YouTube videos? Enjoy. And good luck.

[Image Credit: Daquella Manera]

Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, Blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack was one of the 20 20-somethings who appeared in “the video”–the now sort-of-infamous lip synch clip made by a bunch of vacationing Web kids.

And no, Hudack doesn’t feel bad about it or the brief blogstorm the clip created.

In any event, Hudack has real-world worries, like how to keep his video distribution site afloat.

The thesis behind Blip.tv, and every other video site, is simple: Lots of people are spending lots of time watching Web video and advertising will eventually follow.

But there are lots and lots of video sites out there (there will be fewer, soon), and advertisers have yet to really embrace Web video. Those who do buy Web video ads generally view them as experiments.

And experiments are hard to justify during a recession.

The good news, Hudack says, is that Web video only gets cheaper to produce and distribute–he says bandwidth costs have come down 40 percent in the last year. He’s now paying about a penny every time someone views one of his videos.

And the number of views keeps increasing: In September, Blip.tv said it had served up 51 million video views, up 250 percent year-over-year, and Mike says that number bumped up to 55 million in October.

And since Blip.tv only distributes clips made by pros and semi-pros, he can attach ads to most of those views, unlike YouTube, the Google (GOOG) video unit which can only monetize a small fraction of its inventory.

And the really good news is that Hudack has a new slug of cash to keep him afloat and allow him to expand. He won’t disclose the size of his newest round, led by Bain Capital Ventures, but I’m told it’s in the $3 million to $5 million range.

(Irony alert: Hudack doesn’t mind showing up on a widely distributed vacation video, but he won’t go into his company’s financials).

[This is normally the point in the post where I'd play you a clip of a video interview I've conducted with Hudack. But since the Amazon (AMZN) "Next Day Shipping" feature apparently just means "give us an extra $19 and we'll get it to you when we feel like it," MediaMemo is still camera-less.]

Instead, take a look at this episode of “Political Lunch,” a Blip.tv-distributed show and note the way that sponsor HBO has been integrated into the clip.

The hosts give the Time Warner (TWX) pay-cable channel a shout-out at the beginning. Then, there’s a brief overlay ad early in the piece, followed by a preview of an HBO show at the end of the clip.

It’s a good example of what Web video can offer an advertiser–a chance to get right in front of viewers, when they’re already engaged in the screen, without being too obtrusive.

Now the trick for Blip.tv, and everyone else in Web video, is convincing a lot more advertisers that this is worth their while.

I am sure this will be the dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers reasoning this group of Web 2.0 folks gives for this odd video effort, doing a lip-synch romp on their group vacation in Cyprus to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and then posting it for all to see on Vimeo.

It is titled: “20 world Internet citizens met in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in October of 2008 for a week of reflections on life, love, and the Internet.”

Um, kids, here’s a reflection: While you swim in that pricey infinity pool in your luxury villa, Silicon Valley is tanking all over the place. You might want to check your email and see if Sequoia Capital or Ron Conway has cost-cutted you out of a job!

Oh, sorry, BoomTown’s karma is so negative, isn’t I?

But the video gave me flashbacks to heedless-partying-until-the-bomb-fell attitude before the popping of the Web 1.0 bubble. It obviously still burns.

The group rollicking includes Blip.tv’s Mike Hudack, Facebook’s Dave Morin, Drop.io’s Sam Lessin and–well, um, eek, bad idea, awkward!–tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal.

Here is the video:

UPDATE: Apparently, the makers of the video have made it private on Vimeo and blocked it on YouTube, likely due to the reaction to it, but you can see it here.