Glam vs. AOL
The Glam vertical network gets closer to AOL‘s portals: 91:104M unique visitors, a comparison; http://eicker.at/Verticals
The Glam vertical network gets closer to AOL‘s portals: 91:104M unique visitors, a comparison; http://eicker.at/Verticals
Nielsen study: Social media and gaming account for one quarter of time spent online; http://j.mp/aQUqDU
Network Box: More business internet traffic goes to Facebook (6.8%) than to any other internet site; http://j.mp/c0pEyf
Hitwise: Facebook is the #4 source of visits to news and media, after Google, Yahoo, and MSN; http://j.mp/c557Bo
Facebook: “At any given time, the news on your home page can consist of celebrity gossip posted by your sister, sports scores from the ESPN Page, and a political debate among your friends as they cite their favorite blogs. With so much information at your fingertips on one site, Facebook can serve as your personalized news channel.”
Hitwise: “News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site’s traffic. To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular). … Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space.”
RWW: “Facebook is the player to watch. Facebook – the dreaded privacy-violating, Farmville-drenched, closed-data, social networking megalith (which is also fun to use and great in many ways) – could be the web’s best hope for transforming the world through the power of online syndication and subscription.”
VB: “All of the metrics services rank Facebook in the top 5 of all internet sites. The only sites that get more traffic are search engines (Google) and portals (Yahoo and MSN). Clearly the status updates Facebook users post to their pages have the power to drive large amounts of traffic to media sources when links are provided.“
What would it mean if social networking over-took search in terms of sheer visits online? http://j.mp/4Rnbro
RWW: “It would mark a sea-change on the internet. No longer would our dominant use of the web be seeking out web-pages built by HTML web-masters! Now we would all be publishing tiny little updates that perhaps only our friends and family care about. We’d be subscribing, more than we ever did by RSS, to syndicated updates from organizations of interest, large and small. It would be (perhaps will be) a very different era and, to be frank, it’s going to be harder to monetize. There will be privacy battles. There will be new platforms for innovation. – It’s a pretty big deal. Things will really change if current trends continue and social networking rises to the top. That’s not as clear as this traffic analyst firm argues that it is, but it could happen. And that’s a big reason why Google and Facebook are rivals.”
1/3 of all netizens visit MSN monthly: time for a relaunch and integration of Facebook and Twitter; http://j.mp/lOguV
TC: “Half of their monthly visitors are already Facebook users, says Microsoft. And 15% use Twitter. So having the ability to read and create Facebook and Twitter messages right from the portal page is a good idea. For users with Silverlight, more advanced apps will be available.”
RWW: “The new site now puts a lot of emphasis on local news. The new local edition features extended weather reports, movie times, concerts, restaurant reviews and information about local gas prices. For restaurant reviews, Microsoft takes users to Bing’s local search.”
SEL: “Microsoft told me that the redesign was prompted by user feedback and a growing internal sense that the old design was cluttered and had grown stale. When I met with Microsoft we also discussed and compared the Yahoo homepage redesign of several months ago. … The new MSN will roll out globally over the next several months. Interestingly the look of the MSN portal may be slightly different country to country, depending on variables unique to each local market. Microsoft also says that it will bring the new MSN experience to mobile devices as well.”
NYT: “MSN, however, is not going nearly as far as Yahoo in its effort to integrate applications from other sources onto its home page. And unlike Yahoo and AOL, which have indicated that they plan to increase their production of original content, Microsoft will continue getting its content largely from partners like MSNBC.com and Fox Sports. ‘I wouldn’t anticipate seeing Microsoft invest in content directly,’ Bob Visse, general manager of MSN’s product management group. said.”
ClickZ: “Ad formats on the new MSN homepage include a 300×250 ‘Showcase’ format; a new horizontal top-of-page ad the company is calling ‘Sliver’; and a ‘Waterfall’ vertically oriented display ad. The Showcase ad unit was offered previously, but Microsoft has made it more prominent by removing editorial content from the space immediately surrounding the ad. MSN is also bundling these ads together for clients wishing to place synchronized executions.”
AdAge: “Consider: In 2005, AOL, MSN and Yahoo accounted for a combined 30% of all time spent on the web in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Today, they account for a combined 17%. In September, the average Facebook user spends 5.5 hours on the social network per month, while MSN users spend 2 hours, Yahoo users spend 3 hours and AOL users spend 2.5 hours. – Still, the 17% share means the death of the portal has been greatly exaggerated, and MSN boasts the largest global audience of any of the three. Moreover, MSN is a key audience vehicle for Microsoft to drive adoption of technologies such as Silverlight, Internet Explorer, Windows 7 and search engine Bing.com.”
Network Box: “This analysis comes shortly after the company researched 250 IT managers about their biggest security concerns over the coming year (research was conducted in April 2010). The top answer was ’employees using applications on social networks’ while at work, with 43 per cent of respondents saying this is a major concern. In a separate question, 36 per cent of respondents are concerned about malware passed via networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter, and employees trusting (and clicking on) links sent by contacts within their networks (more details of this survey on Network Box’s website). … Simon Heron, internet security analyst for Network Box, says: ‘The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work. There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity.'”