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HITWISE UK SOCIAL NETWORKING UPDATE

Bebo and MySpace receive 67% of UK Social Networking Visits;

Facebook Traffic up 9-fold Since Opening up in September 2006.

London 22^nd May

According to Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, MySpace and Bebo continued to dominate the UK social networking category in April 2007, with 67% of category visits. Whilst MySpace maintained a slight lead over Bebo in April (less than 1%), Bebo looks sure to overtake MySpace in share of UK internet visits in May, ranking #1 each of the past three weeks.

The two social networking leaders continue to grow at a rapid pace, with UK Internet visits to MySpace increasing nearly two and a half times from April 2006 to April 2007 and visits to Bebo increasing 3 times.

Facebook, which opened up to accept all Internet users in September 2006, has seen its share of visits soar, up 9 times since September. Previously it had been limited to those with a college or high school email address and more recently to business addresses.

“Social networks are derided by some as last year’s fad, however UK consumers are showing that demand continues to rise”, commented Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK. “Social networks are increasingly part of the flow of Internet traffic, highlighting the importance for brands and advertisers to build a presence in these communities.”

Market Share of UK Internet Visits to the Top 10 Social Networking Sites April 2007
Rank	Name	Domain	Market Share
1	MySpace	www.myspace.com	33.77%
2	Bebo	www.bebo.com	33.53%
3	Facebook	www.facebook.com	12.82%
4	Faceparty	www.faceparty.com	4.00%
5	Piczo	www.piczo.com	3.36%
6	Friends Reunited UK	www.friendsreunited.co.uk	2.12%
7	Tagged	www.tagged.com	1.60%
8	hi5	www.hi5.com	1.47%
9	Windows Live Spaces	spaces.live.com	1.10%
10	Facebox	www.facebox.com	0.93%
Note - data is based on a custom category of the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of UK visits, which is the percentage of traffic to the site, based on the Hitwise sample of 8.43 million UK Internet users. The percentages represent the market share of visits among the websites within the custom category.
Source: Hitwise UK

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search, and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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Jannie Cahill
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