Hitwise Singapore Social Networking Update

‘youtube’, ‘friendster’ and ‘facebook’ the most popular search terms online

Singapore – 6 February 2008 - According to Hitwise Singapore, the leading online competitive intelligence service, YouTube is the current market leader in the Social Networking & Forums online industry with 15.54% share of visits for the week ending 26 January 2008.  Friendster closely followed with 13.16% share of visits.

YouTube emerged as the number one Social Networking & Forums website and has maintained this position since the week ending 3 November 2007, ahead of Friendster and Facebook.

Hitwise data reveals that online brand recognition of all three websites is very high amongst Singapore Internet users.  Out of 1,418,279 unique terms sending traffic to the All Categories industry for the 24 weeks ending 26/01/2008, ‘youtube’ was the top search term, followed by ‘friendster’ and ‘facebook’.

Participation on Social Networking & Forums websites amongst Singapore Internet users is significant and reflected in the steady growth of this online industry throughout 2007, which reached a market share high of 10.67% in the week ending 29^th December 2007. 

The Social Networking & Forums online industry is now ahead of Search Engines, accounting for 9.70% share of visits compared to 9.02% share of visits respectively for the week ending 26/01/2008.  Email Services is less dominant with 6.70% share of visits.  While this suggests that social networks are increasingly becoming the preferred method of communication, it is also the wider public reach and the opportunity to target specific audiences that make social networks most appealing for advertisers.  

Not surprisingly, Social Networking & Forums websites also attract high user-engagement, with session times well above the online average.  For the week ending 26/01/2008, the average time Singapore Internet users spent on YouTube was 27 minutes and 22 seconds, compared to websites across All Categories, which had an average of 12 minutes and 42 seconds.

Top 10 Social Networking & Forums websites, w/ending 26/01/2008

Source: Hitwise Singapore

For media queries contact Rheika Tompkins on +61 3 8530 2400 or email press.au@hitwise.com

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

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