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DEL.ICIO.USMySpace growth explosive
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, class, today’s quiz: What well-known U.S. Internet companies had triple-digit growth in unique visitors from May 2005-2006? And how did the search engines do?
John Battelle’s Searchblog points out research prepared by ComScore Networks and FactSet, and presented by analyst PiperJaffray:
Top Year over Year Growth by Unique Visitors
- Wikipedia sites: 302%
- MySpace.com: 230%
- Adobe sites: 118%
- Apple Computer: 80%
- United Online: 70%
Among industry giants:
Google sites: 28%; Ask Network: 26%; eBay: 21%; Yahoo sites: 9%; MSN-Microsoft sites: 8%
Today, Hitwise also reported that MySpace surpassed Yahoo! Mail last week as the most-visited domain on the Internet for U.S. users. To be clear, Hitwise does not provide figures for the number of unique visitors to a site.
Do these figures surprise you at all? Does anyone now question Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.’s decision to purchase the site?
Elsewhere:
— Mozilla’s Firefox browser continues to grow market share, although not enough to make Bill Gates lose any sleep. According to Web analytics firm OneStat.com, Firefox now holds 12.93 percent of the worldwide market, with 15.82 percent usage in the U.S. Coincidentally, Mozilla today unveiled a beta 2.0 version of its open-source Firefox browser. Internet Explorer has fallen more than 2 percent since May, but still holds 83.05 of the global market and 79.78 percent in the U.S., OneState reports. Apple Safari is third with 1.84% globally, 3.28 % nationally, followed by Opera and Netscape. What do users think of Firefox as a browser? Has anyone taken the beta version for a test drive?
— Media Daily News first reported today that a new study of consumers and portable video platforms reveals a lot more hype than reality. The study, conducted by Knowledge Networks, finds that portable video devices — from video cellphones to iPods, PSPs and Slingboxes, still have relatively low usage levels among consumers. The study found that half of those who subscribe to video cellphones never view video on them. Video iPods? The study reported 30 percent of those owning one never use it for viewing video. Are the media and Madison Avenue ahead of consumer tastes, with video interest still on the rise? Or has the video phenomenon been overly hyped?
Comments
By Mike
July 12, 2006 03:25 AM | Link to this
It’s no surprise to me that these sites have seen triple digit increases in viewership. As a rising senior in college, I know that you can’t go anywhere without a fellow student talking about either myspace or wikipedia. One question with the article revolves around facebook. I was wondering if any research has been done on this site. It seems to me that most people prefer facebook to myspace, and since it was only launched about 2 years ago, I have a feeling that it has as well seen tremendous growth. Either way, these websites are changing the way college students live their lives. Facebook/myspace allow for events to be planned with a mouse click and wikipedia gives you hours of entertainment on those nights when studying just doesn’t seem to be in time’s best interest.
By Jay Scott
July 12, 2006 01:01 PM | Link to this
Interesting comments, Mike. Facebook is indeed a growing site and will continue to grow. However, just to add some perspective, Facebook attracts an estimated 7.6 percent of the social networking audience. MySpace has an estimated 80 percent of the audience, with 4 percent growth since April. Those are incredible numbers.