Continue reading Facebook Growing, Not Killing, Foursquare

Facebook Growing, Not Killing, Foursquare originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Five Social Media Marketing Stats That Will Blow Your Mind

Five Social Media Marketing Stats That Will Blow Your Mind originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How are readers finding the news? Well, increasingly, the answer is Facebook. The social networking site, which boasts well over 350 million registered users, is now the fourth largest referral source of traffic to online news destinations. Almost a year ago, only 0.5% of traffic to news and media sites came from Facebook. Today, that level is 3.5%, according to data from Web analytics firm Experian Hitwise.

Only Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO) and MSN (MSFT) send more traffic to news sites. Google News, a subset of the search engine giant, failed to keep pace with Facebook, despite the fact that it exists specifically to send Internet users to media outlets. Only 1.39% of referrals came from this source.

Continue reading Facebook Grows as a Source for News

Facebook Grows as a Source for News originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Facebook Tops U.S. Internet Traffic on Christmas

Facebook Tops U.S. Internet Traffic on Christmas originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Google powers 72% of all U.S. web searches in February

Google powers 72% of all U.S. web searches in February originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading How Bebo stacks up ... according to everyone else

How Bebo stacks up ... according to everyone else originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Those of you who have been interested in blogs for several years are probably well aware of the company Technorati. This website made a splash by becoming the first market-share dominator in the entire Web 2.0 space, especially in the blog search engine space. But times have changed and Technorati is struggling to hold on.

The situation in Technorati is quickly shifting to more difficult, seemingly by the day. As TheDeal.com reported on Friday, the founding CEO of the company recently stepped down. In addition, the company has been forced to recently slash eight jobs to adjust the company's expense structure. Perhaps the most startling of it all -- Technorati is quickly losing its dominant market share position.

According to research firm Hitwise, Technorati's number one market share position is now just secured by 1%. The company currently stands at 34% of the blog search market, while Google's blog search product is a strong and growing 33%.

As you can see from the chart below (courtesy of Alexa.com), Technorati's page views figures are well off of their peak. Understandably, this traffic decline has been a huge catalyst to a weakening position in the blog search market, as well as financial difficulties, because for most internet companies, traffic is everything.

Continue reading Tough times for Technorati

Tough times for Technorati originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Several sources have confirmed that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is in the closing stages of buying RSS management company FeedBurner. The start-up's traffic has increased over 200% in the past year, according to Hitwise. The company describes its business as Web-based tools to help bloggers, podcasters, and commercial publishers promote, deliver, and profit from their content on the Web.

Websites and blogs use FeedBurner to track RSS feeds and traffic to their sites. Google will pay about $100 million for the company.

The RSS feed business is one that has yet to be monetized, but FeedBurner does have a nascent advertising program. With the use of Google's Adsense program, this revenue could almost certainly be pushed up sharply.

Because FeedBurner is an important source of traffic and data for blogs, it also fits well into the Google Blogger platform, which is used to create millions of blogs. Many of these blogs use Adsense to get their revenue. With Feedburner, Google will have "one-stop shopping" that will offer RSS feeds, audience data, and advertising.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) could have used FeedBurner to enhance their relationship with the blog and RSS communities, but that's another story.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Google's planned purchase of Feedburner could add new revenue originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 24 May 2007 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hitwise was good enough to do a survey of traffic to the major e-mail sites. While the traffic to Google's Gmail (NASDAQ: GOOG) seems to be growing faster than it is to Yahoo! Mail (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft's Hotmail (NASDAQ: MSFT), the lead of the two older products may be insurmountable.

Champions of Google's ability to dominate most markets that it enters will likely grab on to the 17% increase in traffic from February to April 2007. But, Gmail only opened access to all interested users in February. Before that, users had to be invited by other users. Also, as the stat people like to say, the big increase in traffic was from a small base.

Visits to Yahoo! Mail are still thirteen times greater than Gmail visits. Although Gmail users tend to be younger, their income is not much different from users of the other two services.

Hitwise points out that Gmail users are more likely to use Facebook, but why anyone would care about that seems beyond easy analysis.

The survey shows one thing, and one thing only. Gmail is well behind its two major competitors.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Gmail still far behind Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 12 May 2007 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hitwise gets a $240 million hit originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace social network site will start to aggregate news and allow its 160 million users to rank stories.

As the content is ranked, it will be pushed down several "channels" like sports and entertainment. Advertisers can then wed their campaigns to the kind of content that they want to target. According to The Financial Times (subscription required): "The response from advertisers so far has been fantastic," said Brian Norgard, co-founder or Newroo, a news aggregation service that was acquired by News Corp last year and integrated with MySpace. "Every advertiser wants to reach a specific customer and we are helping them to do that through these [news] channels."

Well, maybe. Time Warner's Inc. (NYSE: TWX) Netscape and independent company Digg.com have been working this model for quite some time now. A look at their websites would not indicate that there is much targetting going on there beyond Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) text ads.

The problem with news ranking products is that they don't have huge audiences. Digg ranks No. 86 and Netscape ranks No. 539, according to Alexa. Traffic to both sites also is declining, making them less attractive to advertisers who spend most of their money on the top 20 sites.

MySpace obviously has a huge audience, but the advertising success of its news ranking service will depend on how many of its users decide that they want to rank news.

Do people go to a social networking site to do that? Maybe not.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

MySpace gets into the news business originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I had lunch with two attorneys last week (the good news was that they paid -- and it was a sushi restaurant). One of the attorneys said: "Hey, Google has video now. I want to see if I can find some Van Halen music videos."

Yes, my attorney friends are not of the MySpace generation. I said, "Actually, Google has had video for quite some time."

"Oh," he said. "I thought it came out today because the menu on the top of the front page changed."

That was certainly correct. One of the most valuable pieces of Internet real estate had an adjustment last week. The links to Froogle and Groups are now gone. In its place is "Video New!"

Basically, this is a declaration of war against YouTube, an upstart that now dominates online video. Hitwise, which measures and analyzes Web traffic, looked at the impact of the menu change. Of course, Google Video saw a doubling of traffic.

As I noted in a recent piece for BloggingStocks.com, Google is leveraging its huge distribution -- such as AdSense -- to take on YouTube, as seen with its recent deal with MTV. Basically, online video looks like the next hyper-growth market for advertising. And it's something Google must win at all costs.

Here's the Hitwise's chart on the spike in traffic for Google Video:

Tom Taulli is the author of a variety of books, such as The Complete M&A Handbook (Random House) and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Google Put a "Hit" on YouTube? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In the Web 2.0 world, the formula is pretty simple for pumping-up a valuation to nose-bleed levels. First, you need an inexplicable name for the company.  Next, users need to generate the content, so you can call it a UGC (user generated content) play. Oh, and make sure you use a cool programming technique, such as AJAX.  Finally, if you want a bonus, add video to the mix.

Profits?  Revenues?  Of course not.

Well, the latest rumor is that a new-fangled Web 2.0 play, Bebo, did a "just say no" to a $550 million buyout offer.  Allegedly, the suitor was BT.  Yes, that BT.  The company that makes money selling crusty stuff like telephone services.

This week, Hitwise published its list of top social networking sites. No doubt, the guerilla is MySpace, with nearly 80% marketshare. The #5 on the list is Bebo, with about 1% of the market. 

Assuming $550 million is an accurate offer, investors are valuing social networking in excess of $500 billion. That's several Google's.

Actually, it was not long after that BT said it has no clue about this latest Web 2.0 rumor.  But, in the Web 2.0 world, such niceties are a minor inconvenience. It's now mostly about cashing-out.

The web 2.0 world: Bebo's $550 million f*** you originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google captures 59% of U.S. internet searches in May originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.