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The Hitwise UK Team

Audience Fragmentation of the MySpace Generation

The following article, authored by Heather Hopkins, Hitwise UK Director of Research, appeared in the 13th July 2006 issue of NMA.

"In your face, MySpace," said Bebo founder Michael Birch as he accepted a Webby Award in June, reflecting the fierce competition among social networking sites.

Social networks are viewed as an opportunity to lock in future brand loyalty. More immediately, teen and tweens can be important influencers of family purchases and a lucrative market for low-value purchases, such as music and ringtones. Some advertisers remain wary of the potential liabilities in this uncontrolled space.

Social networking is a fast-moving landscape. The current favourite, MySpace, is being challenged in the UK by rival Bebo. Hitwise data show that MySpace still holds the lead based on number of UK visits, but Bebo is catching up fast and has surpassed MySpace in both UK page views and average session duration. We predict that Bebo will overtake MySpace in UK visits before the start of the new school year.

MySpace isn't alone under pressure. The youthful audience these sites attract is a highly fickle one, with just under a third of sites disappearing from the top 100 since last year.

Focusing on league tables alone can be misleading, though. Rather than one social network replacing another, we're witnessing fragmentation of the audience. Moving networks incurs a high cost in that a member must also transfer his friends. Rather than abandon one site for another, Hitwise data reveal that consumers are using different sites for different purposes. For example, while Bebo's strength is in connecting classmates, MySpace's is in music.

Bebo tends to attract children living at home with their parents while MySpace's demographic profile is more varied, attracting kids living with their parents, those in university and those entering the workforce. Bebo was the most visited site in Scotland last week and its growth seems to have been fuelled by kids creating a network with their classmates online, resulting in swings by region.

Hitwise Search Intelligence further reveals that the search terms sending most visits to MySpace are for bands and artists, while Bebo is visited by people who have searched for individual 'Beboers'. In the four weeks ending 22/7/06, the artist 'lily allen' was the 7th most popular search term sending visits to MySpace.

Tweens, teens and people in their twenties have a knack for participating in and paying attention to myriad media at once. As it can be challenging to capture the attention of this audience, advertisers should look to tailor messages and allocate ad spend by understanding the strengths of the various social networks.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 weeks ending 22/07/2006 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'bebo' representing 6.02% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat' industry.

Fast Mover: Sport Relief

www.sportrelief.com


Position for week ending June 17: 2,813
Position for week ending July 15: 646
Positions jumped: 2,167

Sport Relief, the fundraising initiative from Comic Relief and BBC Sport, has seen its website rapidly increase in rankings over the last few weeks as tens of thousands of runners from across the UK prepared for their 1 mile run on Saturday July 15. The idea was for as many people as possible, of all ages and abilities, to complete a mile and raise money for Sport Relief.

Sport Relief (www.sportrelief.com) was the most visited Humanitarian site in the UK for the week ending 15th July, with just over 16% share of visits to the category. Further reflecting the massive public interest aroused by the fundraising initiative, the Sport Relief website accounted for 33% of visits to Humanitarian sites on the day of the fundraising event, up from 18% of visits the previous day.

Among the top search terms sending visits to the Sport Relief site were searches for David Walliams, whose cross channel swim in an impressive 10.5 hours received a great deal of publicity and helped fuel public interest in the day. The Little Britain star featured in four of the top 20 search terms sending visits to the Sport Relief website in the four weeks ending 15th July.

News In Brief

Visits To Travel Websites Soar As World Cup Draws To A Close

Despite the hype surrounding the World Cup and high hopes for England in early matches, attention of UK consumers does not appear to have been deflected from planning summer holidays. Summer is typically one of the busiest seasons for travel websites and this year looks set to be busier than ever, with visits to Travel websites up 15% in the 4 weeks to 8th July.

Analysis of the most searched-for destinations sending visits to travel agency websites reveals that while some consumers are searching for last minute summer holidays, others are researching winter escapes to long-haul destinations, such as Australia.

The most searched-for destinations sending visits to Travel Agencies in the four weeks ending 8th July 2006 include Australia, Turkey, Tenerife, Cyprus, and Florida. The top search terms sending visits to online travel agencies in the four weeks ending 8th July 2006, excluding brand names, were 'holidays,' 'cheap holidays,' 'cheap flights,' 'flights,' 'travel agents' and 'package holidays.'


John Prescott and Power of the Blogosphere

The impact blogging can have on the UK political landscape was highlighted earlier this month in posts from Guido Fawkes (the pen name of the notable political blogger Paul Staines), who made allegations of John Prescott's extra-curricular activities.

Prescott has become the subject of the first high-profile political story in the UK to be driven by bloggers on the back of a series of scandals - most notably a row over the hospitality he received from the American billionaire, Mr Anschutz, who is bidding to open a supercasino at the Millennium Dome. In the week ending 8th July, Guido Fawkes' blog (5thnovember.blogspot.com) ranked 13th in the Hitwise - Blogs and Personal Websites category, up from 32nd the previous week, with searches for John Prescott increasing almost 40-fold in the same period.

But whilst the news media have been madly covering the supercasino scandal, consumers are busy searching for news of John Prescott's affairs, with "john prescott affairs" currently one of the most searched-for terms for the Deputy Prime Minister.

Category Spotlight: Automotive

The Automotive category features websites dedicated to automotive distributors, manufacturers, car dealerships, classifieds, maintenance, motor sport and motorcycles. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 22/07/2006 » Ranks by 'Visits'.

Local Competitiveness Index 87.0% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.	Traffic Distribution The chart above illustrates the distribution of this category's traffic for the week among sites in various rank ranges.
Top 10 Upstream Categories 1. Computers and Internet 41.7% 2. Computers and Internet - Search Engines 31.5% 3. Shopping and Classifieds 17.4% 4. Automotive 16.1% 5. Shopping and Classifieds - Auctions 14.0% 6. Travel 8.8% 7. Travel - Maps 5.3% 8. Automotive - Classifieds 5.0% 9. Business and Finance 4.5% 10. News and Media 3.3%	Top 10 Downstream Categories 1. Automotive 25.9% 2. Computers and Internet 16.4% 3. Travel 15.4% 4. Shopping and Classifieds 13.8% 5. Travel - Maps 11.1% 6. Business and Finance 9.7% 7. Computers and Internet - Search Engines 7.5% 8. Shopping and Classifieds - Auctions 6.9% 9. Automotive - Classifieds 6.1% 10. Automotive - Manufacturers 4.8%

Media queries at Hitwise

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Additionally - if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact Jannie Cahill at jannie.cahill@hitwise.com.

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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, July 2006