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The Ever-Changing List Of Top Teen Sites

MySpace's popularity comes at the expense of traffic to Web portals like Yahoo and AOL, but will its popularity last forever? A CNET report illustrates how teens are a fickle bunch, as the list of top teen sites changes as fast as the Billboard music charts. This year, there are a fresh crop of newcomer sites, while only a handful of last year's favorites still host as many teens as they did in '05. Ever hear of Memegen.net, Tagged.com, Bebo.com or MyYearbook.com? Me neither, but these new sites are growing like weeds, each of them attracting between 500,000 and 1 million teens in April 2006, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That would place them in the top 20 teen Web destinations. The rest, measured by rival research firm comScore, are by now old standbys: from April 2005 to April 2006, MySpace grew from 3 million to 7.8 million teen users (12- to 17-years-old), an increase of 162 percent. Meanwhile, Yahoo, which tops in the age group with 11.6 million visitors, saw a 1 percent year-over-year decrease in teen visitors, while AOL lost 10 percent, falling behind Yahoo for the first time with 10.9 million. Google jumped 24 percent to 10.7 million; CNET, News.com's publisher, lost 19 percent of its teen audience, attracting 3 million users, and Wikipedia drew 2.9 million teens, up 221 percent year over year. Apple also increased its teen visitor base, growing 68 percent to 3 million.

Read the whole story at CNET News.com »

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