Blogging, Social Networking, and Local Information Sites Growing Strong

According to Washington Post Staff Writer, Leslie Walker, sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information are growing tremendously. Her article, New Trends in Online Traffic, highlights findings from ComScore Media Metrix, which examined visitor growth rates among the 50 top Web sites over the past year.

Key highlights:

• Top-ranked sites growing with the most visitors from Feb. 05 to Feb. 06 include Blogger.com (528%), MySpace.com (318%), Wikipedia (275%), and Citysearch (185%).
• The number of people posting or reading material on Blogger jumped to 15.6 million last month from 2.5 million a year ago.
• Although Yahoo has the largest US audience, its visitor growth slowed to almost 5 percent last year.
• Google's user rate rose to 21 percent in the past year largely as a result of expanding its market share for Web search and attracting new users with new services such as e-mail, mapping and personal publishing. Combined traffic, from all the properties it owns including Blogger.com, Google's total audience jumped 27 percent last year.
• MySpace experienced the most recent dramatic growth with pulling 37 million visitors last month, 28 million more than a year ago. Based on total pages viewed and the time spent by each visitor, MySpace ranked No. 2 on the entire Internet, behind Yahoo.

Gary Arlen's, a research analyst and president of Arlen Communications Inc, statement-"The growth in blogging reminds us the Internet is fulfilling its original promise about participation. This medium empowers users in such a way that they can do what they want and be heard"- confirms the huge marketing potential for businesses to reach and interact with customers and potential customers.

Filed In: Blogger MySpace Citysearch Wikipedia Google Yahoo Visitor Growth Rate Marketing