Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US

July 13, 2007

LinkedIn Traffic Up 323% in Past Year, Users More Likely to be on Gmail

Have you been getting a flurry in LinkedIn invitations in the past few months? I have been receiving a few requests a week, so I wasn't surprised to find that the market share of US visits to LinkedIn was up 323% in the past year (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 7/8/06), and up 17% in the past four weeks alone (week ending 7/7/07 vs week ending 6/8/07). As of last week, LinkedIn ranked at #23 in the Hitwise Employment and Training category.

What did surprise me in looking at the upstream data for LinkedIn was that Gmail figured more prominently than usual. As of last week, Yahoo Mail leads over Gmail in market share of total US visits by more than 10 to 1, but Linked In receives only 3X more upstream traffic from Yahoo! Mail as Gmail. This relationship can be seen by examining these two charts side by side. Hotmail is also less represented among Linked In users than normal. It appears that LinkedIn still has early adopter appeal, just as Gmail does, and is poised for even greater growth as the word gets out.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 11:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Employment and Training

July 09, 2007

Flickr Traffic up 38% in Past Four Weeks, Now #2 Photo Site

In June, Yahoo! Photos began to close, and users are being encouraged to join Flickr. Later in the month, Yahoo! began including Flickr images in Yahoo! Image Search. These efforts have resulted in an increase in Flickr's US market share of 38% in the past four weeks (week ending 7/7/07 vs. week ending 6/9/07). Flickr is now the #2 photography website in the US, with 6.42% of category visits for the week ending 7/7/07. Photobucket still leads with a whopping 43.5% share . Here is a list of the top 5 photography sites as of last week. Back in March 2007, Flickr was at #3 with a market share of 4.57%.

You can see on the chart below how Flickr overtook Yahoo! Photos at the beginning of June (in the purple and navy lines on the left axis). You can also see just how much Yahoo! Image Search results helped increase Flickr's traffic (in the thin lines on the right axis). As of last week, Yahoo! Image Search was the leading source of traffic to Flickr, accounting for nearly 18% of its upstream visits. Previously Google had been its largest souce of traffic.

It is worth noting that Flickr has a truly global footprint, and has greater share of the photography category in other markets. Spend a few minutes on Flickrvision and you will get a sense for Flickr's global reach. Hitwise global data shows that Flickr is the #2 photography site (with Photobucket at #1) in both the UK and Australia, with about 10% market share in both countries. Expect it to keep growing both here and abroad.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 12:47 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (2)
Posted to Entertainment

July 03, 2007

Social Networking for Moms, Retirees, and the Ill

Often we get asked about up-and-coming social networks. Three focused communities have been growing rapidly this year: CafeMom, a network for mothers, Daily Strength, a support community for those with health issues and other life problems, and Eons, a social network for the 50+ set.

Here are some stats on these sites:

CafeMom seems to be appealing to MySpace users as they become parents: in June 2007, more than 25% of upstream visits to CafeMom came from MySpace. In addition, 78% of its users were under the age of 34. Social networking is not just for the young and single, also evidenced by Eons, which of course is dominated by users in the 45-54 and 55+ age groups. Interestingly, Daily Strength, which is predominately female (82% of visits) has a broad age range, with 93% of its visits coming from users between the ages of 25 and 54.

While none of these sites ranks yet within the top 20 social networks, I am encouraged the growth of these niche communities as more users engage with Web 2.0.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 02:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
Posted to Social Networking

June 27, 2007

YouTube: 50% More Traffic than Other Video Sites Combined

YouTube's growth has not begun to slow yet this year. Hitwise traffic data shows that the market share of US visits to YouTube has increased by 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007 (this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos). In comparison, the market share of visits to a custom category of 64 other video sites increased by only 8% in that period. As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined. Here is a ranking of the top 10 sites in that custom category for May 2007.

Today I will be moderating a panel on video search optimization and marketing at Searchnomics 2007. Search engines are responsible for about 20% of traffic to video sites, including YouTube. Users are increasingly finding links to video pages in search engine results - and going to them. For the four weeks ending June 24, 2006 Hitwise captured 23,696 search terms sending traffic to the custom cateogry of 65 video sites. A year later, for the four weeks ending June 23, 2007, Hitwise captured 110,775 search terms sending traffic to the same category. Not only are more individual searches ending up at video sites, but clickstream data shows that more traffic is leaving search engines for video sites. The chart below shows a 300% increase in the amount of traffic leaving search engines and going to video sites in the past year. Clearly optimizing your videos for search is just as important as getting your videos up on the web. If you can, come to the session and find out what Google and Metacafe have to say about this topic.

Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 08:22 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (9)
Posted to Video