• by Ken Liebeskind , April 16, 2001

In its digital media property ratings for March, Jupiter Media Metrix reported that Web usage has gone up again: the average number of days people use the Web has grown over the past two years from 14.2 days per month to 15. The average hours of Web usage have grown even more, from 12.8 hours per month to 20.2.

The numbers prompt Doug McFarland, president of Media Metrix, to say, "People's comfort level with the medium continues to rise. Advertisers with an eye to the future should note that the audience and consumption of the medium continues to grow."

The ratings also rank the top sites and report the top newcomers. The top 10 sites are: AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo, Lycos, About, Excite, Walt Disney, NBC, Infospace Impressions and eBay.

Among the top newcomers, which are sites in the ratings for the first time with a minimum of 500,000 unique visitors, are X10.com, a discount retail store, Lowestbids.com, an auction site, Internetfuel.com, a marketing site, SBC Communications, a consolidation of telecommunications sites and EA Online, a group of gaming sites.

Jupiter also reported that traffic to sports sites increased due to the NCAA basketball tournament and the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. MLB.com, NCAA.org, Sportingnews.com and Sportsline.com were among the winners.

Also, traffic to Napster Digital decreased slightly due to the controversy over file swapping applications. But Jupiter also reports that Napster's usage, while slightly down in the U.S., has grown markedly overseas, becoming the seventh largest property with 29.4 million unique visitors in 14 major countries, from Argentina to Japan. Web users in these countries represent more than 85% of the total worldwide online population.