Glass-half-full and glass-half-empty types, prepare to be split.  New stats from Nielsen indicate that February of 2010 was a great month for the online video industry compared to February of 2009.  Last month was a little bit rotten compared to January of 2010, however.

The chart below shows how the big-picture data categories played out.  "Unique Viewers" and "Total Streams" made the most progress year-over-year, even as "Total Streams" and "Streams per Viewer" slipped the most month-over-month.  You’ll see the YOY gains are generally bigger than the MOM losses, at least.

As for how some specific brands performed between January and February, YouTube lost ground in terms of unique viewers, video streams, and time spent per viewer (-3.4 percent, -10.7, and -3.6 percent, respectively).  Hulu only slid in terms of unique viewers (-7.4 percent), while making small increases elsewhere.

At the same time, Facebook pulled in some more unique viewers (4.7 percent), and is actually coming somewhat close to matching Yahoo in this category.  Also, the CNN Digital Network and Microsoft’s sites racked up big gains on the unique viewers and video streams fronts (20+ percent in both cases).

Finally, on a somewhat related note, WebProNews will be generating some video of our own as we’re in Austin to cover SXSW.  Look for live video in addition to our traditional recorded coverage.