Thanks to blogs, traffic has surged at image hosting Web sites since the beginning of this year, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report released Tuesday. As a category, image hosting sites have
grown 406 percent to more than 14.7 million unique users since January 2005, accounting for nearly 10 percent of active U.S. Internet users, Nielsen//NetRatings found. The top referring sites for the
top five image hosting sites during August included MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal, Blogger, and MSN Spaces. In July, 20 percent of active Web users, or 29.3 million people, accessed blogging or
blog-related Web sites, growing 31 percent since the beginning of the year, Nielsen//NetRatings said. The top five image hosting sites included PhotoBucket, with over 12 million unique visitors, and
ImageShack, with about 3.5 million, followed by Putfile.com, TinyPic.com, and Imagevenue.com, each with significantly fewer visitors.
-- Gavin O'Malley
