Commentary
MySpace Is Everyone's Space
- by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 31, 2006
According to a recent Hitwise competitive intelligence study, MySpace.com passed Yahoo! Mail in the first week of July, becoming the number one ranked website in the U.S. based on market share of visits. And, among Social Networking sites in June 2006, MySpace accounted for 79.9 percent of the total market share of visits.
Bill Tancer, general manager of Global Research at Hitwise, said "MySpace continues its meteoric rise, to now claim the number one spot for all Internet visits in the U.S. ...The fact that MySpace was virtually unknown by the mainstream Internet users two years ago and now claims the top position, demonstrates how hyper-competitive the Internet really is."
Weekly Market Share of Visits Ranking Among All Websites (U.S. Data for the week ending July 8, 2006) | |||
Rank | Name | Domain | Market Share (%) |
1 | MySpace | www.myspace.com | 4.46% |
2 | Yahoo! Mail | mail.yahoo.com | 4.42 |
3 | Yahoo! | www.yahoo.com | 4.25 |
4 | www.google.com | 3.89 | |
5 | MySpace - Mail | mail.myspace.com | 2.85 |
6 | MSN Hotmail | www.hotmail.com | 2.39 |
7 | MSN | www.msn.com | 1.92 |
8 | eBay | www.ebay.com | 1.59 |
9 | Yahoo! Search | search.yahoo.com | 1.36 |
10 | MSN Search | search.msn.com | 0.93 |
Source: Hitwise | |||
Following MySpace in social networking, was Facebook, which received 7.5 percent of visits, ranked third was Xanga with 3.8 percent. Yahoo! 360 and Bebo rounded out the top five sites with 1.1 and .98 percent respectively. The remaining social networking websites from the custom category accounted for 6.5 percent of U.S. visits.
Monthly Market Share (%) of Visits Among Top Social Networking Websites (U.S.) | |||
Domain | June-06 | May-06 | April-06 |
www.myspace.com | 79.97% | 77.20% | 76.07% |
www.thefacebook.com | 7.58 | 8.73 | 8.24 |
www.xanga.com | 3.81 | 4.40 | 5.29 |
360.yahoo.com | 1.13 | 1.29 | 1.38 |
www.bebo.com | 0.98 | 0.77 | 0.73 |
www.tagged.com | 0.92 | 0.97 | 1.17 |
www.classmates.com | 0.83 | 1.01 | 1.30 |
www.hi5.com | 0.78 | 1.06 | 1.19 |
spaces.msn.com | 0.75 | 1.29 | 1.41 |
www.sconex.com | 0.6 | 0.70 | 0.81 |
www.gaiaonline.com | 0.57 | 0.50 | 0.50 |
www.bolt.com | 0.52 | 0.43 | 0.21 |
www.friendster.com | 0.46 | 0.53 | 0.58 |
www.orkut.com | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.30 |
www.myyearbook.com | 0.26 | 0.25 | 0.24 |
www.crushspot.com | 0.18 | 0.18 | 0.18 |
www.migente.com | 0.16 | 0.18 | 0.19 |
www.tagworld.com | 0.13 | 0.14 | 0.14 |
www.faceparty.com | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.03 |
www.xuqa.com | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.04 |
Source: Hitwise | |||
More information about Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is can be found here.
Jack Loechner is the Editor of The Center for Media Research's daily Research Brief. You can reach him at jack@mediapost.com.