HITWISE UK CHARITY & SOCIAL NETWORKING UPDATE

(Product) Red Boost from MySpace Promotion

London, 18^th October 2006

(Product) Red, part of the (RED) brand established to raise awareness and money to invest in African AIDS programmes, received an online boost through a promotion on MySpace last week. According to Hitwise, the leading provider of online competitive intelligence, the website for (Product) Red (www.joinred.com) experienced a 70-fold increase in market share of UK internet visits to become the #1 website in the Hitwise Communities - Humanitarian category for the week ending 14th October, up from #73 the week before.

MySpace accounted for 89.5% of upstream visits to the (Product) Red website last week and MySpace Mail was the #2 referrer of visits, accounting for 3.83% of website visits. MySpace members received two emails from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, encouraging them to become friends of (RED). The email directed members to (RED)'s MySpace profile (www.myspace.com/joinred) which includes links to (Product) Red and other related websites. Last week (Product) Red was the #18 downstream website from MySpace, which last week ranked #10 based on share of UK internet visits to all websites.

Brands associated with (RED) also seem to be benefiting from the MySpace promotion. Converse Online received 9.34% of downstream visits from the (Product) Red website last week, Gap received 7.9%, American Express received 2.16% and Motorola, 2.16%. 

"(Red) is an example of an incredibly successful promotion on MySpace, leveraging the power of a social network to rapidly reach a large network of consumers", said Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK . "Brands are increasingly looking at social networks for opportunities to engage with a younger audience. (RED) offers a best practice example of how brands can engage with consumers in innovative ways online, whilst contributing to a good cause."

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 800,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is available at www.hitwise.co.uk.

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

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

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