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Bebo: What Does 850 Million Get You?

March 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

bebo - AOL - 850 MillionIn the last couple of days one of the biggest stories has been the purchase of Social Network Giant, Bebo by AOL. With approximately 5% search market share and being one of the most visited sites on the planet, can Bebo really help make a difference to a search property which is been fairly average for the last few years? Here’s some coverage of the Bebo purchase around the Internet:

So what does 850 million dollars get you these days, below are some Bebo stats from Hitwise to help quantify AOL’s purchase:


  • Bebo ranked 4th among a custom category of 55 social networks, after MySpace, Facebook and MyYearbook for Feb-08 receiving 1.15% of all U.S. visits to the category.
  • MySpace’s share of U.S. Internet visits was 67 times larger compared with Bebo and Facebook’s share of US Internet visits (among all categories) was 11x that of Bebo in Feb-08.
  • Bebo’s share of U.S. Internet visits is down year on year. Share of U.S. Internet visits (among All Categories) to Bebo were down 23% last week and down 22% in Feb-08.
  • The average time spent on Bebo in Feb-08, was 30 minutes and 26 seconds, more than both MySpace (30m7s) and Facebook (21m0s). The average time spent on the site is flat year-over-year, MySpace is slightly down and Facebook is up 69%.
  • 22.15% of U.S visits to Bebo last week came from MySpace last week.
  • Of ‘www.bebo.com’s total upstream traffic in Feb-08, 17.37% consisted of new visitors and 82.63% consisted of returning visitors.
  • In the UK, Bebo is the most searched-for brand (ahead of eBay and Facebook) and has enormous brand equity.
Filed Under: AOL, Social Networking

Fubar, Ning and Twitter Show Major Growth

March 10, 2008 By 1 Comment
The Compete Blog recently published a post regarding the top social network properties on the web comparing February 2008 vs. February 2007. Some interesting findings that were of note included MySpace decreasing in visits by 1% from last year while Fubar saw a growth of over 3 million percent! Twitter and Ning also grew over 4000% percent while Social Network heavyweight Facebook saw a 77% growth in visitors from last year.
While fairly flat trend lines in MySpace traffic may provide an indication of the market reaching its peak, the rapid growth of some very new players in the space speaks to the opportunities in social networking that still exist… but only time will tell if Zuckerburg makes Forbe’s list next year

Below is a chart showing a year over year visitor comparison from the top 20 social networks:


Social Network Growth

Filed Under: Compete, Facebook, MySpace, Social Networking

MySpace Down Facebook, myYearbook Up

January 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Hitwise, today announced that MySpace.com averaged 76.35 percent of all U.S. visits in 2007 among a custom category of 53 leading social networking websites. Facebook.com, Bebo.com and BlackPlanet.com received the next largest number of visits, as each received 12.57, 1.24 and .87 percent, respectively. The remaining 49 social networking websites in the custom category accounted for 8.97 percent of U.S. visits. myYearbook had the largest year over year increaese with a jump of 407%.

Market Share of U.S. Internet Visits to Top 10 Social Networking Websites

Rank

 Name Domain

Dec-07

Dec-06

YoY % Change

1

 MySpace http://www.myspace.com/

72.32%

78.89%

-8%

2

 Facebook http://www.facebook.com/

16.03%

10.59%

51%

3

 Bebo http://www.bebo.com/

1.09%

0.99%

10%

4

 BlackPlanet.com http://www.blackplanet.com/

1.04%

0.96%

8%

5

 Club Penguin http://www.clubpenguin.com/

0.80%

0.54%

48%

6

 Gaiaonline.com http://www.gaiaonline.com/

0.76%

0.58%

31%

7

 myYearbook http://www.myyearbook.com/

0.73%

0.14%

407%

8

 hi5 http://www.hi5.com/

0.63%

0.64%

-1%

9

 Classmates http://www.classmates.com/

0.55%

0.58%

-7%

10

 Yahoo! 360 360.yahoo.com

0.54%

0.91%

-40%
Note – data is based on a custom category of 53 of the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of U.S. visits, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context.
Source: Hitwise
Filed Under: Facebook, MySpace, Social Networking

Social Network Comparison

November 7, 2007 By 2 Comments

The popularity and strength of social networks is heavily based on geographical region. The images from Google Trends below depict this very well: Facebook is more popular than MySpace in Canada, Orkut Dominates in India, MySpace is strongest in Russia/US (where Facebook is making a huge surge). The images below show Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and Hi5 compared on Google Trends for the regions: Canada, Russia, United Kingdom, United States and India.

Canada


India

Russia

United Kingdom

United States

Here are some additional resources which compare the most popular social networks:

Filed Under: Facebook, MySpace, Social Networking

Tagging as the Killer App

September 20, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I wanted to pass on a great article by a friend of mine, Chip Gallent. Chip discusses “Tagging: The New Killer App” on his blog ChipGallent.com

Tagging is replacing the way we search for information. By tagging articles and posts, it allows editors to alert the public on new information of a specific topic available.

Of course, this process is subject to abuse as well. If web editors start associating unrelated tags to their articles, just to attract users, then tagging becomes useless.

Now that’s not to say I am not a fan. The web will adjust to abuse. It always has and always will. Automatic tags may be down the road. This would not allow editors to decide on the tags. The tags will be automatically generated based on content.

Tagging has become the Killer App as Chip mentions. Users have become more sophisticated and have are starting to skip over irrelevant content. Tagging removes that process; it takes them straight to the data.

As search marketers, we have to be aware of this shift. We can not just assume that content is still king. We have to adjust. By staying aware of the user and their needs, we can adjust to their trends and habits. Social tagging is a part of Search Engine Marketing.

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/

Filed Under: john ellis, Social Networking, tagging, Technorati

Social Networking: Facebook vs. Orkut

May 28, 2007 By 41 Comments

Facebook and Orkut are two of the most popular social networking sites, with both offering very similar features and capabilities. Comparing FaceBook vs. Orkut from a market share perspective will show you that both are considerably behind MySpace with Facebook owning just over 11.5% of the market share and Orkut having less than 1%. Facebook has become very popular in North America over the last few months whereas Orkut is extremely popular in India.

I do have access to both an Orkut and Facebook account and find myself using Facebook the majority of the time. I actually prefer Facebook when comparing Facebook vs. Orkut from a usability perspective, here’s why:

- From an overall cosmetic point of view, Facebook is a much more professional looking whereas Orkut looks somewhat unfinished

- Facebook’s Mini Feed feature is useful in seeing a quick snapshot on the latest happenings within your network

- The ease at which you can customize layouts within FaceBook, especially the drag and drop option.

- The ability to supply how you know a person (through school, other friends, work, randomly, etc…). This is especially interesting when you and one your contacts know the same person, but through different ways.

Here’s what I like about Orkut:

- Within Orkut you can view people’s profiles regardless if they are a ‘friend’ or not.

- I like how you can see the number of times your profile has been viewed with Orkut.

- The integration of Google Chat (maybe there is an opportunity for Microsoft to go after Facebook for the same purpose).

Filed Under: Social Networking