The 5th East Asian Games on 5 December is for the first time being staged in Hong Kong. This is the first time Hong Kong plays host to a large-scale multi-sport international event.

The East Asian Games brings together 2,300 athletes from 8 countries and territories competing in 22 sports including Badminton, Basketball, Football, Judo, Rowing, Tennis and Wushu.

The last major sporting event staged in Hong Kong was the Equestrian event as part of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The chart below tracks the share of visits by all Hong Kong Internet users to the official website (http://www.2009eastasiangames.hk) compared with the Beijing Olympics website at the same time leading up to the respective official opening days.

Alan Long investigates online interest in the East Asian Games and provides an analysis of the key websites driving traffic to the East Asian Games website.

To read the full article, please visit Hitwise Analyst Weblogs.

Social Networks provide marketers with the opportunity to engage consumers and harness the power of 'word of mouth' through open and authentic conversations around their brand. Marketers have been taken into unchartered waters where they do not control the communications, the tone or the content of the discussion on Social Networks.

The accelerated growth of the Social Networks over the past 12 months now make it imperative to understand different nuances of consumer behaviour, and the new marketing etiquette required to respond to these changes.

Top-level findings from this research include:

• Over the past 12 months the US has experienced the largest usage growth of 52.4% (the week ending 17 October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008), followed by Hong Kong growing at 38.6%, Singapore 30.5%, Australia 27.8%, UK 20.0% and New Zealand with an increase of 14.3%.
  
• In Hong Kong Social Networks and Forums are a dominant force with almost 1 in every 4 visits (23.9% share in the week ending 17 October 2009) and continuing to grow while the share of visits growth by Search Engines have been minimal.
• Social Networks and Forums hold 14.1% of the visits from Singapore Internet users compared to Search Engines' 10.1% for the week ending 17 October 2009, with a growth trend favouring Social Networks and Forums.
• Based on share of visits for the week ending 17 October 2009, Facebook is currently the number two website in other Experian Hitwise monitored markets - US, UK and New Zealand and is the leading website in Canada (since the week ending 15 August 2009), Singapore (since the week ending 22 August 2009) and Hong Kong (since the week ending 13 December 2007).
• The internal search results for each Social Network provide a picture on the consumer use and interests that marketers can align their campaigns against. For example, MySpace have a heavy music and entertainment orientation; Facebook: entertainment and utility; LinkedIn: career and professional and Twitter: topical and entertainment. The communal use of each Social Network is unique and requires a bespoke execution of your marketing initiatives.

Download this report and webinar recording for the latest Social Networking insights.

By using Hitwise Clickstream reports you can prioritise content to add to your website by analysing downstream traffic from your website and highlighting content your consumers are looking for - but may not be finding on your website. Furthermore, you can identify affiliate partners that are working for competitors that might also be good sources of traffic for your website.

For example, KFC (www.kfc.com) is attempting to identify affiliate partners that work for their competitor MacDonald's Hong Kong (www.mcdonalds.com.hk). By utilising Hitwise Clickstream reports, KFC can see the top ten sources of traffic to MacDonald's Hong Kong for the week ending 21/11/2009. These include: Facebook (www.facebook.com), Yahoo! Hong Kong Search (search.hk.yahoo.com), YouTube (www.youtube.com) and Discuss (www.discuss.com.hk).

KFC can compare their own traffic sources and evaluate how successful they are at attracting visits from search engines, email services, social networking and forums websites. Insight such as this is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your competitors.

To learn more view the Hitwise Clickstream Fact Sheet.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact your Account Manager or Hitwise Customer Support at csm.ap@hitwise.com or 852 2839 5285.

Cathay Pacific (www.cathaypacific.com) have no doubt been taking more and more notice of upstart airline, Air Asia (www.airasia.com) over the last year. A comparison of year-on-year traffic to the Hitwise Aviation - Commercial Airline industry (October 2008 to October 2009) reveals an enormous surge in visits to the budget carrier with a percentage increase in market share of 6.21% which equates to 170% more traffic to the website. Meanwhile, the Cathay Pacific category market share is down 25%, yet still has a commanding lead controlling over a quarter of all traffic to the commercial airline industry. Now You Know.

The Oxfam Trailwalker event garnered much interest online with the website www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk, moving 642 places to rank 200 in the Hitwise Entertainment category (for the week ending 21/11/2009).

The Oxfam Trailwalker which is one of the largest fundraising sports events in Hong Kong, increased its market share in the Entertainment category by over 650% in the week ending 21/11/2009. The money raised from the event goes to support Oxfam's various poverty alleviation and emergency relief projects in Africa and Asia including Hong Kong and mainland China.

The top three upstream News and Media websites visited before the Oxfam Trailwalker website were: Hong Kong Observatory (www.hko.gov.hk), Yahoo! Hong Kong News (hk.news.yahoo.com) and Google News (news.google.com).