Social networking, blog and local information sites are booming these days. Who doesn’t have one?
The drastic increase in online traffic to these web pages was documented in a recent study conducted by ComScore Media Metrix, which has been examining the top 50 sites since 2005.
According to the analysis, top-ranking sites with the highest jump in monthly visits were Blogger, MySpace, Wikipedia and Citysearch. Blogger.com, a personal publishing site, posted a whopping 528 percent upsurge in views while Citysearch.com churned 185 percent more views in just one year. MySpace.com catered to people who enjoy sharing and viewing photos, videos and music. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a reference site that has become the modern encyclopaedia without the heavy hardbound volumes.
This shows that cyberspace is still the venue where fledgling brands can be popular overnight, and older trademarks can revitalize themselves after their pages have been covered with cobwebs. Others, though, don’t have the same fate and get buried into oblivion.
More recently, the current favourites are Friendster and Facebook for social networking, Twitter for blogging and YouTube for video sharing. These sites are attracting millions of subscribers and visitors all over the world, mostly from the young adults who comprise the biggest chunk of cyber population.
Google, the preferred search engine by virtually every netizen, has in itself been constantly getting over 2 billion daily searches worldwide. Because of its success, Google Inc. has been acquiring sites left and right. As of July 2010 the roster has gone up to 73 companies, the largest being DoubleClick which is an online advertising company for $3.1 billion. Other notable acquisitions include Blogger (blog), YouTube (video sharing), Picasa (Image organizer), Gizmo5 (VoIP), and reCAPTCHA (security).
Yahoo!, another favourite search engine, also acquired a total of 58 companies as of October 2009. This includes GeoCities (web hosting), eGroups (e-mail listing), Musicmatch Jukebox (audio player), del.icio.us (social bookmarking), and Broadcast.com (Internet radio) which Yahoo! Purchased for $5.7 billion.
Another noticeable traffic trend is the rise in popularity of local directory pages or those sites that help people find local information. These sites are becoming strong because they have improved tremendously and the services they provide are what people need in their day-to-day lives. The likes of Citysearch, whitepages.com and Superpages.com have been gaining momentum for the past few years. More local info sites have sprouted and posted significant numbers to make it to ComScore’s list.
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