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October Marked First Decline For Twitter Visitors In A Year

Frank Reed — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:32:53 +0000

Before you read any further just lean back and take a deep breath. You are about to enter the “Research Zone”. You know the place well. It’s where we give you shocking numbers that someone has come up with using their “methodology” and it is then used to create shocking headlines around the Internet for your reading enjoyment. It’s almost like having an informant who whispers something in your ear then you get to blab it all over the place and set the masses running. It’s fun!

Today’s “OMG stat” is brought to you by comScore via TechCrunch. Apparently, Twitter had a rough October.

Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September.

On an annual basis, Twitter is still going gangbusters with 1,271 percent growth from 1.4 million visitors in October, 2008. And on a global basis, it still seems to be chugging away with 58.4 million visitors in September. But a hypergrowth company like Twitter cannot afford to slow down in its home market.

Things to consider:

Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, has acknowledged the slowdown so there must be some validity to it. His hope is new features will help slow or stop this trend
These results do not measure those accessing Twitter via third party clients. Only Twitter knows how many actual accounts they have and which are showing activity. Of course, I challenge them to present a number of accounts that are real users and not spammers. What would the numbers look like then?
This could be a hiccup
Facebook is possibly cleaning their clock
US growth is one piece, albeit a very important one, to the grand Twitterscheme of things

Here’s the pretty picture for you to look at wonder over.

So what’s your take? Twitter – thumbs up or thumbs down? Can adding new features attract more users or are they just tools that “preach to the choir” meaning only helping those already on board? Should anyone be worried about this?

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CPG Brand Sites Attract 66 Million Visitors

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:34:26 +0000

During the third quarter of 2007, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand sites brought in a total of 66 million U.S. visitors, an increase of 10 percent over the same period last year, according to comScore.

All of the top ten positions were held by food or beverage brands. The average visitor made 3.9 visits to sites within the CPG category, viewing 10.5 pages per visit, and spending an average of 9 minutes per site visit.

KraftFoods.com was the leader in the category with 10.5 million visitors (up 8 percent over last year), followed my MyCokeRewards.com with 8.6 million visitors (up from just 66,000 visitors a year ago), and Millsberry.com, a kids site from General Mills, with 5 million visitors (up 11 percent).

A number of other brand sites did well in the category during the past year. Candy sites attracted a significant number of visitors, including Wrigley’s candystand.com (up 1 percent to about 3.8 million visitors), MyMMs.com (up 79 percent to 2.3 million visitors), and Hersheys.com (up 12 percent to 2.1 million visitors).

UncleBens.com increased from just 191,000 visitors a year ago to 3.6 million visitors this year, using targeted banner ads on Oprah.com and FoodNetwork.com that attracted close to 2 million visits to the site. Pampers.com ranked as the 12th most visited site in the CPG category, drew 1.7 million visitors with its interactive site focused on baby development and parenting advice.

"To date, most CPG marketers have been reluctant to move a significant portion of their marketing budgets online because the Internet is not a primary sales channel for their products," said Carolina Petrini, senior vice president of consumer packaged goods solutions at comScore.

"However many brands have found success by attracting a wide audience online through effective promotions and site activities that appeal to consumers’ lifestyles. Savvy brand marketers are beginning to understand the importance of the online channel as a means of engaging consumers, which will ultimately lead to offline sales."

Compete: Republican Candidates Run For Visitors

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:31:12 +0000

When it comes to who’s paying attention to perceived frontrunners Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney among the Republican candidates, the trio receives virtually equal visits to their websites. You’ll never guess who trumps them, and a fourth candidate, easily.

We have fun playing with Compete and its ability to present snapshots of web traffic data that can be compared with each other. Since Doug Caverly looked at Democrats and Google Trends, I thought I’d check out the elephant side of the political circus.

The web traffic for Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney doesn’t look very exciting. Each of the trio tops 108,000 visitors by a small margin for November 2007. Thompson enjoyed a spike upon announcing his candidacy, but has since settled into the pack of web interest.

One might guess John McCain’s traffic would reflect a dropoff in interest as he has suffered from woeful fundraising and the need to make some cutbacks in his campaigning. One would guess correctly, as his visits in November hovered around 92,000.

Add up the monthly traffic for that foursome, and about 420,000 people have expressed interest in their campaigns. Then we have some fun and toss Ron Paul into the mix.

Paul’s site drew over 496,000 in November. His site traffic began to rise from June through September. After that, I’m surprised a Game Over sign didn’t light up on the other candidates’ sites, as about 350,000 visitors arrived at Paul’s site in October, on the way to November’s figure.

How that translates to the real world won’t even be hinted at until the primary season begins in 2008. The Republican machine could be astonished if Paul’s web interest converts into votes, but considering how McCain once challenged George W. Bush before being knocked back, Paul’s campaign may end up being noteworthy for its dynamic online activity.

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Product Details Encourage Site Visitors To Stay

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:22:40 +0000

The importance of authoritative content on websites becomes even more critical to site publishers during the holiday season.

Useful information discovered by consumers during their online browsing may be the key to keeping them as converting customers.

Site publishers have known of the necessity of quality content for their websites for some time. Without it, people will skip away to another destination as quickly as they can hit the Back button.

Webmasters who haven’t picked up on this trend as a reason to drive improved copy for their sites should note the recent survey by web marketing syndicator WebCollage. Their 2007 Survey of Online Consumer Product Research Habits found that people want complete product information.

When it isn’t present, those visitors tend to go in search of a site that does have it available. The survey found that two-thirds of respondents considered detailed product benefits and capabilities as the most useful information they can find online.

Some 37 percent of frustrated visitors will go to a competing retail site to find the details they want. 55 percent will head to a manufacturer’s site, as they believe the best product information about an item will be there.

Sites that run as small operations may not have the staff needed to obtain the best information and write it up as product copy. But the investment in that effort may pay off in better conversions and repeat customers.

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Black Friday Website Visitors Mostly Women

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:29:23 +0000

The droves of Black Friday shoppers are just warming up. Last week, traffic to websites specifically dedicated to America’s Other Holiday was up 145 percent, dominated by new visitors and young women.

Hitwise reports that for the week ending November 17, 2007, visitors to Black Friday websites like bfads.net and BlackFridayAds.com were mostly (61%) women aged 25-34. Visitors in that age group were the highest in general, comprising 37 percent overall.

What’s also interesting is that these sites are attracting a majority of new users rather than return users. Overall, 61 percent of the traffic going to these sites were first-time visitors. BlackFridayAds.com received the highest number of new visitors with 73 percent, and BlackFriday.GottaDeal.com enjoyed the most return traffic with over 47 percent.

“As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, consumers are taking advantage of the information available on Black Friday websites to prepare shopping lists before setting their alarms to take advantage of the deals this weekend,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise.

“Retailers should monitor the Black Friday websites to see which promotions are driving discussion and excitement among shoppers to make sure that they have those products prominently placed on their websites and in stores.”

Hitwise also reveals that the most-searched-for products this year look a lot like the most-search-for-products last year. Shoppers this season are still hunting for iPods and Nintendo Wiis first and foremost.

NYTimes.com Traffic Booms After Dropping Select

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:09:09 +0000

One has to wonder what kind of traffic and ad revenue the New York Times gave up while its Times Select subscription model was in place.

Visitorship to the Grey Lady jumped impressively in October 2007. Metrics from Nielsen Online cited in Editor & Publisher cited over 17.5 million visitors to NYTimes.com for the month. In September, the Times drew 14.6 million visitors.

Times Select operated as a subscription service from September 2005 to September 2007, when the publisher reopened that walled content to readers. They had plenty of motivation to do so, as Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer observed in August 2007:

The top website visited after www.nytimes.com last month was select.nytimes.com, receiving 8% of the site

IndiaTimes.com Exposes Visitors To Malware

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:43:23 +0000

Visitors to the Web site of the IndiaTimes.com were exposed to malware, according to a ScanSafe advisory.

Mary Landesman, a researcher at ScanSafe said in her blog that the company had contacted the IndiaTimes by email and phone last week. "Unfortunately, the person we spoke with indicated that it was a holiday in India and they would be unlikely to fix the problem until Monday," she said.

Much of India was on holiday because of the of the Diwalia festival. The India Times Web site was updated throughout the week. It is not known if the site still contains malware.

Landesman described the malware saying, "The installed malware included a cocktail of downloader and dropper Trojans, assorted other malicious binaries, and large amounts of scripts, cookies, and other non-binaries. We ran some of the binaries through VirusTotal and looks like overall detection among signature-based antivirus vendors is low."

"Given the nature of the downloaded files, it appears the malware may be intended to create sites used to attack others or that there may be some malicious peer-to-peer or other filesharing/communication purpose. ScanSafe continues to analyze the attack and we’ll update the blog and our Threat Alert Center with those findings."

ScanSafe first discovered and blocked malware on the site on October 25. ScanSafe is still researching the scope of this attack, but with its popularity and the amount of malware involved the company is telling users to use caution. Only a handful of pages of the Indiatimes are infected.

Compete: Biggest Gaining Sites Share Content

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:16:50 +0000

In analytics firm Compete’s measurement of the top 50 domains by unique visitors in September, five of the ten top gainers involve some type of content sharing.

YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Digg were among the top domains adding visitors year over year for September 2007. Out of the ten big gainers, YouTube topped the list by bringing in 21.6 million more unique visitors, to a total of 47.4 million for the month.

Compete blogger Jay Meattle said social networking darling Facebook saw an increase of 14.6 million visitors, but MySpace and its gain of 10.2 million should not be discounted.

At the top of the 50 domains, Yahoo and Google rated one and two in unique visitors. Despite Yahoo’s documented issues and reorganizations, they haven’t suffered in traffic. Over 130 million unique visitors arrived at Yahoo’s domains in September, 124.5 million at Google’s.

Microsoft likely had traffic to its domains shuffle from one to another during the month. Passport.net and MSN.com both lost visitors.

“My guess is that most of their lost traffic went to Live.com, MSN’s new portal. Live.com is up 10.2M unique visitors during the same time period,” said Meattle.

On a closing note, those looking for love, or at least a reasonable, physical facsimile of it, have increasingly turned to Fling.com. Their traffic rose by 17.4 million from September 2006 to September 2007 to 18.7 million. AdultFriendFinder had nearly 24 million visitors in the month.

MySpace And Facebook Visitors Drive Time Spent

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:24:46 +0000

U.S. Internet users between the ages of 12-17 who visit both MySpace and Facebook spend more time at each site than those who visit just one or the other according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

MySpace And Facebook Visitors Drive Time Spent

In August, teens who visited both sites spent on average 20 percent more time on MySpace than those who just visited a single site. Facebook saw an even greater benefit in time spent from dual visitors, who spent an average 26 percent longer at the site than exclusive Facebook visitors.

"Teens who enjoy social media are intensive users and highly engaged. They are venturing onto multiple networks to experience new features and broaden their connections," said Jason Lee, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

"This demographic is typically drawn to what’s new, and since they are growing up online, they are not afraid of learning the latest Web technologies."

Since Facebook opened registration to the public last year, the site has seen triple digit traffic growth, increasing 117 percent from 8.9 million unique visitors in August 2006 to 19.2 million unique visitors in August 2007. The growth rate for visitors 12-17 has been even higher, increasing 122 percent year over year. The majority of these new Facebook visitors are not new to social networking says Nielsen, more than 80 percent of Facebook visitors in August also went to MySpace.

"MySpace introduced a lot of people, especially young people, to social networking, and that forum continues to be overwhelmingly popular," said Lee.

"But Facebook’s innovative features, many born out of partnerships with third party developers, are driving user growth. Teens continue to interact with friends on MySpace, but have not hesitated to follow their peers to the latest social networking brand. At this point, each site has a unique offering, and teens are happily visiting both."

Yahoo Tops Google In August

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:20:26 +0000

comScore Media Metrix released today its monthly breakdown of U.S. consumer online activity at popular online sites for the month of August.

Yahoo Tops Google In August

With students and teachers returning to school in late August education sites saw strong growth for the month. The training and education category grew by 15 percent to over 12 million visitors, making it the top-gaining category for the month. College resource site Fastweb led the category with 2.5 million visitors, followed by The College Board with close to 1.9 million visitors and Nellnet, an education planning and financing company with 1.4 million visitors.

With the start of fall sports and football season, traffic to retail sports/outdoors sites increased 7 percent to more than 29 million visitors. Foot Locker Sites saw a 15 percent gain to 4.6 million visitors to lead the category, trailed by eBay Sports U.S. with 4 million visitors and DicksSportingGoods.com with 2.6 million visitors. NFL Internet Group, which includes NFL team sites, rose 78 percent to over 14 million visitors, making it one of the top gaining properties in August.

Multi-state lotteries Mega Millions and Powerball both had large jackpots in August causing lotto sites to rise 8 percent to more than 31 million visitors for the month. Powerball.com was up 123 percent with 2.3 million visitors and Megamillions.com saw its traffic spike by 100 percent with 1.1 million visitors.

The top properties for the month of August remained unchanged, as Yahoo sites led with 135 million unique monthly visitors, followed by Google sites with 128 million and the Time Warner Network with 124 million unique monthly visitors.