Hitwise Intelligence - Asia Pacific

Department Stores fastest growing retail sector online in NZ

2010-03-19T00:25:02Z

Visits to Shopping and Classifieds – Department Stores websites grew by 55.6% year on year in February 2010 compared to all categories by New Zealand Internet users. Department Stores websites have attracted strong interest from shoppers since December 2009, when visits reached an all-time high.

NZ Visits to Department Stores Websites, Feb 09 to Feb 10

Amazon.com was the leading Department Stores website in December 2009 with 28.3% share of visits. Local brand, The Warehouse – New Zealand, ranked at second position, also held significant share with 21.9% of visits. Quick deals websites are also helping fuel growth to the online Department Stores sector, with 3 Deals, Dealaday, Snatchadeal and 6 Shooter all amongst the top 10. Other leading bricks and mortar brands included Farmers and Kmart New Zealand, while NZ Herald Shopping debuted at #10.

The prominence of discount players amongst the leading Department Stores websites is reflected by an audience swing to mostly middle-class and low-income groups. The top 4 Mosaic Lifestyle Groups over-represented in Department Stores visits included:

· “Grey Power” - retirees residing in coastal resorts, large towns and provincial cities.

· “Provincial Pride” – traditional households in provincial towns.

· “Suburban Comfort” - wealthy areas of educated professionals, family households.

· “Working Fringe” - mixed families with stretched budgets in outer suburbs.

Other consumer retail sectors in New Zealand that have enjoyed strong growth include Apparel and Accessories, Grocery and Alcohol and Video and Games.

Housing Bubble Searches in Australia at all time high

2010-03-11T05:23:01Z

Housing affordability in Australia is currently a hot issue with a recent rise in interest rates, an end to the first home buyers’ grant, and subsequent slowed lending. Despite this, pressure on house prices remains high with a fast growing population and a shortfall in housing development.

There is potentially an element of desperation amongst home buyers and this is reflected in their search behaviour. Search traffic around the term ‘housing bubble’ was at its highest point during the week ending 6 March 2010:

Property websites have attracted strong growth in visits year-on-year from two very different Mosaic Lifestyle groups - “Community Disconnect” and “Privileged Prosperity”.

“Community Disconnect” households are best described as ‘Older blue-collar workers and retirees in country and coastal locations’. Much of the visit growth was from the Mosaic sub-segment “Fractured Families” - Disadvantaged singles living in inexpensive accommodation. Their strong interest in property websites could be reflecting pressures on finding rentals amidst stock shortages.

“Privileged Prosperity”, the wealthiest segment online, was the second highest household type to increase visits to Property websites over the year. The prominence of this group is indicative of property interest by the investor community.

I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on other changes to search behaviours we’re likely to see from Australian home buyers this year.

Bushfires 2010 Online: What did we learn from last time?

2010-02-22T22:09:07Z

Last year I wrote about the online response to the Victorian bushfires and how Australians used the Internet to find out important information about this devastating crisis. In this post, I want to explore if there has been any ‘learned behaviour’ in the community about being prepared for environmental disasters as reflected in their search patterns.

The below chart appears to indicate that online users were quick to react online to the event last year, but the volume of searches around ‘bushfires’ this year is relatively small in comparison.

It is encouraging however to see in the chart below, that the types of searches around bushfires that I covered last year, namely, Appeal, Education, General, Informational, Services have had various ebbs and flows - most likely in response to some of the offline campaigns that have been run by the various state authorities. There has been some prominence around ‘education’ related searches in the past few weeks, indicating some desire by users to be equipped with knowledge about bushfire safety.

Who is being strategic about online crisis management?

Our data can also illustrate the types of websites that are receiving traffic on bushfires, to help determine which organisations are being effective in getting online community traction. The NSW Rural Fire Service received the most traffic on ‘bushfires’ for the past 12 weeks, reflected in the table below:

Other government groups are using tactics such as pay-per-click to get traffic (accounting for 2.5% of clicks from ‘bushfires’ searches), resulting in their appearance amongst the top websites.

For government and community organisations, both short-term tactics should be used to meet immediate information needs (e.g. PPC and Display), while long-term campaigns (e.g. SEO and Social Media) should be used to mitigate complacency and instigate cultural change around bushfire awareness in Australia.

Chatroulette: Sensation or fad?

2010-02-19T03:14:15Z

The water cooler talk on Monday morning was about a new site people had discovered called Chatroulette – a website that allows random strangers to talk face to face via webcam. Within days we had discovered articles in the Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning-Herald, the UK Guardian, the New York Times, and then yesterday my colleague, Robin Goad, in the UK ,beat me to the punch providing some statistical background of the web sites rise in prominence in the UK.

Online global sensations are far and few between and there is no guarantee whether Chatroulette is a flash in the pan novelty or whether it can be leveraged into a longer term idea of substance. This is a smart piece of hacking / mashing from a Russian teenager that makes use of Skype to connect people around the world, and as the name suggests, it is a bit of a roulette gamble on the strangers you’ll connect to via your webcam.

The chart below highlights the accelerated growth as the word started to spread, and a media driven peak on 16 February. Chatroulette currently stands as the 481th ranked website visited by Australian Internet users (17 February 2010), down from the peak of 356 the previous day and the number two webcam website behind Coastal Watch.

As reported in Robin’s blog, the UK profile of Chatroulette’s audience are wealthier and more sophisticated compared to the general visitor to the webcam industry. A similar trend has emerged in Australia with the three wealthier profiled Mosaic Groups being highly over indexed against the Australian online population – Privileged Prosperity (The most affluent families in the mist desirable locations), Academic Achiever (Wealthy areas of educated professional households) and Young Ambition (Educated and high-earning young singles and sharers in the inner suburbs).

Last week (week ending 13 February 2010) Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums were the main drivers of visits to Chatroulette, delivering 76.3% of upstream traffic (Search Engines 38.4% and Social Networking and Forums 37.9%) with Blogs and Personal Websites being the third highest upstream provider with 4.2%.

The novelty already may be wearing off for Chatroulette as average visit times have dropped from a peak of 14 minutes 25 seconds in the week ending 2 January 2010, to 6 minutes 38 seconds last week (although an increase on the previous week). The peak in January was more than likely driven by the holiday period, with users having more spare time to surf the web for entertainment whereas the lower average visit time experienced last week may be impacted by Australian time zones.

Whether Chatroulette will be a global sensation or a passing fad is sure to become clearer in the weeks ahead.

My School drives growth for My School Australia

2010-02-17T00:25:00Z

An inadvertent outcome from the launch of the Federal Government’s My School website was the huge traffic spurt to the social network, My School Australia.

The Federal Governments awaited education website, My School (www.myschool.edu.au) launched at the start of the school year, with much debate whether the website was simply a rankings table for schools limited value or if it serves a more substantial ongoing purpose.

My School publishes comparable results based on Australian schools with a statistically similar student population, versus being a straight ranking of schools from 1 to 9,000+.

As a parent I feel vindicated (perhaps a little smug) that my son’s school is performing well above statistically similar schools (and the alternate local schools). School children in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed by the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (www.naplan.edu.au), and the results are published annually on the My school website.

My School ranked as the 28th most visited website by Australian Internet users on 28 January across All Categories and the number three Education website by Australian internet users. Within five days it had fallen out of the top 100 websites (ranking 105th on 1 February) as the news and debate subsided, and has since fallen to 860th on 15 February.

The Computers and Internet - Search Engines industry delivered 61.4% of upstream traffic to My School in the week of its launch. Search terms containing a variation of My School (including misspellings), accounted for 87.9% of all upstream visits from Search Engines. The high level of branded search terms indicate the PR success / awareness of the My School website launch.

The top 20 upstream websites featured only five News and Media - Print websites, with Google.com.au and Google.com being the prominent referral websites. Social Networking and Forums were also prominent, with Facebook and the education specific network, My School Australia (myschoolaustralia.ning.com) capturing increased traffic and then referring visitors to the My School website.

The ranking of the social network, My School Australia, moved from 97,979 to 598 in week ending 30 January, an inadvertent by-product of the Governments My School launch. It has since dropped back to a ranking of 15,872 as of 15 January.

The debate will continue about the validity and value of the My School website, but there are 12,000+ happy social network members and one relieved father since the launch.

Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

iPad – which Aussie telco has the best audience fit with Apple?

2010-02-02T01:21:59Z

Last week Alan and Robin wrote about the hype leading up to the announcement of the Apple iPad. In Australia, major telcos are well aware of consumers' interest in the iPad, and are keen to replicate the success of the release of the iPhone in 2008. When the iPhone was launched in Australia, I noted how the initial interest in apps for the iPhone quickly transferred to the local carriers and their pricing plans.

A key tactic for telcos seeking to benefit from the Australian iPad launch will be to tap into Apple’s audience base. To understand which player is currently best placed to do this, I ran a report on telco websites that attracted a similar Lifestyle Mosaic profile to Apple Australia over the past 12 weeks. Vodafone Australia had the closest matching Mosaic audience to Apple Australia, with both websites highly-represented amongst affluent, tech-savvy households.

How can telcos target Apple users?

Social Networking and Forums can be an effective channel for creating viral buzz around a product or brand. Using the same principle above, I ran a report of the Social Networking and Forums websites that attracted a similar audience to Apple Australia over the past 12 weeks, which revealed some niche advertising opportunities:

It is no surprise to see popular tech-oriented websites in there, such as Mac Forums, digg and Whirpool. One surprise was fashion website, Vogue Australia Forums – but this serves as a good reminder to telcos they should be actively targeting a female demographic, with commentators noting that future prospects for the e-reader market are more likely to be female.

Another key tactic for telcos and retailers will be to get interested consumers pre-registered as quickly as possible. I noticed last week DickSmith linking a Twitter alert on the iPad to an email registration form – a great way to keep prospects engaged through to the point of sale.

The Apple Tablet - iWonder!

2010-01-25T05:50:45Z

The computing industry and no doubt a few other industries, such as publishing, are holding their collective breath for the announcement of the impending release of the Apple iSlate / iPad / iTablet this coming Thursday morning (8am Australian East Coast time UTC/GMT +11 hours)

There is already substantial hype about what the product specs and name will be and competitors are already scrambling to announce devices similar to what they expect to see in Thursday’s announcement, not dissimilar to what was experienced at the time of the iPhone announcement on January 9, 2007.

Pre-announcement there is more interest around the upcoming Apple tablet device than there was at the time of the iPhone announcement. The leading three search terms relating to the upcoming announcement, (“apple tablet”, “apple islate”, and “islate apple”) accounted for 0.0044% of all searches in week ending 23 January 2010, over seven times greater than the share of searches generated by the top three search terms relating to the iPhone (“iphone”, “apple phone” and “apple iphone”) in week ending 6 January 2007.

So strong is the interest in the announcement, “apple tablet” is the most searched for product related search variation of Apple in week ending 23 January 2010, with almost twice the search volume of Apple iPhone.

In the top 1,000 search terms containing “Apple” there were 30 tablet device related search variations, and only one related term in the top 1,000 search terms contain “Mac”. Consumers clearly understand the product distinctions between the line up of desktop and laptop computers carrying the Mac branding or designation and the portable devices bearing the “I” prefix.

With no prior announcement of the name, the rumour mill has run wild with all sorts of guesses, the most popular being the itablet, islate and ipad. The following chart indicates the search volume around the top related search terms in the week ending 23 January 2010.

While these don’t indicate Apple’s preferred name, it does indicate the names that have grabbed the most attention, most likely driven by influential blogs and news and media websites.

The main beneficiaries of the leading term ‘apple tablet’ in the past week (week ending 23 January 2010) has been a mix of Technical / Computer, Blogs and News and Media websites, with the most obvious exclusion the local traditional newspaper websites.

Apple has been tight-lipped as usual about the new product release and the interest is building. Whether this interest will translate to another successful product launch and transform another industry vertical as the iPod did with Music will have to wait until closer to launch of the yet unnamed product. iWonder what it will be?

Social Media overtakes Search Engines

2010-01-22T04:26:13Z

In our recent report on Social Media in Australia, ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network”, I highlighted Social Networking and Forums growth and predicted that it would overtake Search Engines in visits during the weeks either side of Christmas.

The chart below confirms that during the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time. While this looked like a short term lead, we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in week ending 16 January 2010.

A daily pattern that has emerged over the past three months is Social Networking and Forums attracting increase share during the weekends, predominantly on Sunday. The first daily lead by Social Networking and Forums compared to Search Engines was on Sunday 15 November 2009, and the first full weekend was Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd November 2009.

In week ending 26 December 2009 Social Networking and Forums gained its highest market share for the year peaking at 14.8% on Christmas Day. Search Engines highest market share day of 2009 was Saturday 10 January at 14.5%.

Underpinning Social Networking and Forums’ growth has been a number of key websites, including Facebook and YouTube. Facebook and YouTube both had their highest share of visits for 2009 on Christmas Day (25 December 2009) with shares of 8.0% and 2.2% respectively.

2010 is set to be another year of strong growth for the Social Networking and Forums category, and for marketers the challenge is to effectively participate and generate word of mouth that has measurable and effective business outcomes.

Paths to Retail Success

2010-01-19T22:29:33Z

In the lead up to Christmas retailers implemented varied strategies and tactics to deliver buyers to their online stores, some with outstanding success.

What stands out is that there’s more than one way to thrive online, and not just one strategy that should be implemented across the board for retailers to achieve success.

Each retailer and their customer base is different and react to different and multiple marketing stimuli. To highlight this I reviewed three of the top retailers brandsExclusive (www.brandsexclusive,com.au), EziBuy (www.ezibuy.com.au) and Threadless (www.threadless.com) in the Shopping and Classified – Apparel and Accessories industry (week ending 19/12/2009) and how they garnered website traffic in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2009

When each website peaked in market share differed leading into Christmas, as did how they generated their traffic. By reviewing the upstream clickstream data from the individual websites we are able to see the differences in strategy.

brandsExclusive, an invitation only website promising heavy discounts on fashion and designer brands, share of visits peaked pre Christmas during the week ending 19 December 2009. The clickstream chart below depicts the heavy industry influence of the Shopping and Classifieds – Rewards and Directories and Computers and Internet – Paid to Surf, reflecting a strong push of visitors from the website Rewards Central. Email Services, while declining in comparison closer to Christmas, was also a major contributor to the website’s success.

EziBuy has developed a strong customer base over many years as one of Australia’s most popular online Apparel and Accessory websites. From mid-November Email Services drove EziBuy’s share of traffic and was the most prominent driver of visits to EziBuy when it hit its peak during the week ending 12/12/2009. Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums also contributed strongly to their EziBuy’s pre Christmas campaign.

Threadless is a t-shirt website that relies upon contributors for designs and has developed a strong community, so it is no surprise that they have been able to leverage this community through social media websites. During the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) Social Networking and Forums websites were responsible for 67.7% of upstream visits to Threadless.

Facebook was the leading driver of traffic to Threadless represented 63.5% of all traffic from Social Networking and Forums. Threadless have an active community within Facebook with over 104,000 fans of their brand and combined with display advertising delivered a strong outcome pre Christmas.

As we have seen here these three leading Apparel and Accessories websites each had a different path to success over the crucial pre Christmas retail period:
· brandsExclusive – Rewards and Directories / Paid to Surf.
· EziBuy – Email Services
· Threadless – Social Networking and Forums.

There is no absolute strategy or tactic to apply for success, but through testing, meaningful measurement, benchmarking against competitors and by understanding the variety of strategies being applied you can apply a set of tactics or overall strategies that will best engage and activate your customers online.

How do your competitors drive their marketing online?

2009 Year of the Status Update: Spending more time on fewer sites

2009-12-23T22:10:13Z

To wrap up my blog for this year, I thought I’d look at how Australian Internet users divide their time online. This is a pertinent question as marketers battle it out for the precious attention span of consumers on what is now considered a mainstream channel.

The below table compares the average session time for each Experian Hitwise parent industry during November 2009 and November 2008.

Overall Australian are spending a longer amount of time online during each session, with the average visit time 11 minutes 30 seconds in November 2009, compared to 11 minutes 7 seconds in November 2008. This might seem like a marginal difference but what’s interesting is the spread in time spent online. There were only three parent industries which increased their average session duration over the year, namely, Computers and Internet, Shopping and Classifieds and Adult.

Computers and Internet websites attracted the greatest increase in average visit time over the year, with the sub-industry, Social Networking and Forums accounting for the longest amount of time. The average session duration to Social Networking and Forums was 20 minutes 43 seconds in November 2009, compared to 19 minutes 12 seconds in November 2008. Australians also spent a longer amount of time on Email Services, Portal Frontpages and Search Engines.

Greater concentration in visits to top sites

At the same time, we’re also seeing a greater concentration in visits to the top 10 websites, which unsurprisingly all fall under the Computers and Internet parent category. The top 10 websites accounted for 29% share of visits in November 2009, compared to 26.3% share of visits in November 2008. In other words, the ‘big’ players are getting bigger.

What we need to consider now is that users are doing more within each ‘web business’ ecosystem. There’s a lot of anecdotal commentary that ‘status updates’ are a popular form of user activity (and we can tackle the Hitwise evidence for this in a future post). The key point is that we’re spending more time engaging with more fragmented information, which also belies the phenomenal growth of Twitter.

So if I had one standout message for marketers in 2010: ‘Brevity’ and ‘Relevancy’ of communications will be the earmarks of success for engaging with the 24/7 connected consumer. Thanks for reading, and see you all next year!

More last-minute Christmas shopping this year

2009-12-22T21:53:37Z

Visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites in Australia this year have been slower overall than in 2008. A key factor has been the fallout from the global financial crisis with consumers overall more cautious in their spending habits. As a result, we’ve noticed more last-minute shopping, with daily visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites prior to Christmas peaking later this year than in 2008:

·The peak day for Shopping and Classifieds in 2008 prior to Christmas day was 7 December 2008 (which was a Sunday), with 7.26% share of visits.

·In 2009, the day that has attracted the greatest share of visits for Shopping and Classifieds so far is 13 December 2009, also a Sunday, with 6.74% share of visits.

Another reason why visits to Shopping websites are occurring later in the season is the greater connection between online and offline shopping (See Heather Dougherty’s related post). We certainly have seen searches for ‘trading hours’ and ‘store location’ grow each Christmas period in Australia, demonstrating how shoppers use online to support their in-store purchases.

So in the 11th hour, which Bricks and Mortar Retailers are set to benefit from the last-minute shopping rush?

Apple is performing strongly, with the Apple Store and its Australian website accounting for 14.5% share of visits amongst Bricks and Mortar Retailers. It is also interesting to note the appearance of The Westfield Group amongst the top 10 websites, reinforcing our observations on the importance of online for promoting physical retail outlets.

This wraps up my retail posts for this year. You can download the full Experian Hitwise Christmas Retail series here. Wishing you all a happy festive season!

Comparison shopping sites can help influence new shoppers

2009-12-17T09:00:36Z

A few weeks ago I wrote about the opportunity for retailers to build brand credibility through strengthening online content around consumer product reviews. This is part of a wider theme of understanding both the short and long term influencing factors during the customer online buying cycle.

In this post, I want to take a step back and look at how we can help identify where the customer ‘starts’ their shopping research. To that end, I looked at the downstream clicks of the largest distributor of traffic to retail websites in Australia, i.e. Google Australia (more than 1 in 4 clicks during November 2009), and used our ‘new visitors’ filter to understand where new customers were going.

You can see that eBay Australia and Trading Post Online get the most ‘new’ traffic which is probably more a factor of their sheer online size. What’s notable is the prevalence of comparison shopping websites, namely Shopping.com AU, GetPrice, MyShopping.com.au, and Lasoo amongst the top 20 websites.

While having a strong online brand presence is important in attracting customers direct via search engines, strong partnerships with comparison shopping websites is also key in influencing customers during the early phase of the buying cycle.

Update: Note that the websites in the table are listed in order of 'new click volume'. The horizontal bars in the far right column allude to the 'new' vs. 'returning' visitor rate per website.

The Politics of Leadership

2009-12-09T22:39:50Z

The change of Opposition leader last week piqued my curiosity as to whether we could have used the same theories that our colleagues internationally apply when looking to pick the winners of American idol or the UK’s X Factor. (See Richard Seymour’s excellent analysis of the remaining contestants in the UK’s X Factor.)

The chart below shows the search volume around each of the main players in last week’s saga, Joe Hockey, the deposed Malcolm Turnbull and the new Liberal Opposition leader Tony Abbott. Kevin Rudd has been included to provide some context around the volume of interest around last week’s events.

Using search volume as a guide in the weeks leading to the Liberal Party leadership spill, it seemed that only Joe Hockey had a profile to match Malcolm Turnbull in the party room.

Tony Abbott was not on the public’s radar, but once the first spill (25 November) occurred he shot to prominence and was able to create enough support within the Liberals as well as gaining a larger share of search volume the week prior to him garnering the role of Liberal Opposition leader.

While Kevin Andrews could not mix it with Malcolm Turnbull, the newspapers seemed to be anointing Joe Hockey if he decided to challenge and the search volumes responded accordingly, but what was the hoopla around Tony Abbott?

That photo of course, in week ending 28 November the search volume of search terms containing ‘Tony Abbott’ focused 98.3% on his name (including email, and mp) and 1.7% focused on his profile (age, photo and biography).

However during the week when he took the top Opposition job by slenderest of margins (week ending 5 December 2009), the public interest in Tony Abbott increased wanting to know more about the new Liberal leader.

76% of searches about Tony Abbott focused on his name (including email, and mp) and searches relating to his biography increased to 7.4%. The biggest mover was the now infamous ‘speedos’ photo, or as some searchers described them ‘budgie smugglers’. The balance of ‘tony abbott’ searches included family (2.5%), social media (1.5%) religion (0.9%), his book (0.9%), Labour Party (0.8%), Liberal Party (0.6%) and miscellaneous searches including jokes, sex and sport (1.0%)

Interest in actual policy searches was just 1.6% of all search volume.

Based on the uplift in approvals reported in the newspapers relating to preferred Prime Minister, it seems the image of Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers has done him no harm.

Social Networking and Forums take over Search Engines in New Zealand

2009-12-07T03:14:16Z

In New Zealand Social Networking and Forums has surpassed Search Engines in the week ending 5 December 2009. I have been tracking this on a daily basis and over the past 6 weeks Social Networking and Forums had been ahead across the weekends since the weekend of 25 and 26 October, and taking the lead on Fridays since 11 November 2009. In week ending 5 December Social Networking and Forums led over five days of the week, only trailing Search Engines across Wednesday and Thursday.

In the 12 months Social Networking and Forums share of visits has increased 30.7% compared to Search Engines growth of 3.6% of visits by all New Zealand Internet users, (comparing the week ending 5 December 2009 to the week ending 6 December 2008.).

In Australia our recent report ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network” we predicted that Social Networking and Forums industry would overtake Search Engines to become the most visited industry by Australian Internet users.

The trend we identified has continued over the past 6 weeks and the changeover is likely to happen in the coming weeks pre- Christmas as predicted. In Australia the Social Networking and Forums industry now sits just 0.1% behind Search Engines share of all visits.

In the past 12 months, Search Engines share of visits has increased marginally by 1.7% (comparing the week end 5 December 2009 and the week ending 6 December 2008), while Social Networking and Forums industry has grown 26.8%, mostly in the past 6 months.

We are still to see strong commercialisation of Social Networks which will then provide a strong alternative to Search and Display advertising methods, although anecdotally Facebook display advertising is starting to deliver positive results for clients across a range of industry verticals.

Facebook driving the Industry growth (NZ)

2009-12-04T04:58:01Z

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter make up 67.0% of the Social Networking and Forums industry, and receive substantial media coverage. They each sit inside the top 50 websites visited by all New Zealand Internet users in November 2009:

2. Facebook
6. You Tube

18. Bebo

35. Twitter

43. MySpace

The following chart represents the past three years of growth in the Social Networking and Forums industry and highlights Facebook as the engine powering the growth in share of visits by New Zealand users.

Since December 2007 the Social Networking and Forums category has experienced relative growth of 44.0% (as at November 2009).Facebook has been responsible for almost all of this increase gaining 4.3% share of visits by all New Zealand Internet users.

Facebook’s growth has not slowed in the past year, adding over half the volume growth of the past two years (November 2007- November 2009), and quadrupling its share of visits in the process from 1.4% to 5.8%.

In sharp contrast MySpace has suffered substantial losses of share of visits over the past two years, losing 56.3% to currently hold 0.16% share of all visits, or one in every 625 visits by New Zealand Internet users.

During the past three years MySpace’s share of visits peaked in the month of February 2007 when it held a 0.64% share, responsible for one every 156 visits.

Over the past 12 months the decline in MySpace’s share has continued, shedding 33.0% of its share of visits. This trend indicates further decline in MySpace share unless the recently launched MySpace Music can have a positive impact and halt any further degradation of their share of visits.

Bebo is also under pressure having lost 44.7% of its share of visits in the past year from a peak of 0.87% market share in December 2008, to 0.41% in November 2009, well down from the peak of 2.17% in October 2008.

Online video continues to increase in popularity with YouTube growing its share of visits by 64.2% over the past two years (November 2009 compared to November 2007) to currently hold 1.82% of all visits, or one in every 55 visits. YouTube’s share has levelled in the past year experiencing just 1.1% growth.

Micro-blogging service Twitter has been on an amazing growth curve in the past year and has taken the media attention from Facebook’s performance, largely due to Twitter’s growth numbers being so astonishingly high - 656.6% growth in the past twelve months (comparing November 2009 to November 2008). Note that this data is based on visits to Twitter's website, and does not include application and mobile traffic.

While fortunes have changed for individual websites, the industry has grown predominantly on the back of a single market maker – Facebook. The utility and ubiquity of Facebook through Facebook Connect and third-party applications has established not only a strong aggressive growth path, but sets it in good defensive stead to avoid the audience decline currently being experienced by MySpace and Bebo.