Hitwise UK Social Networking Update

Facebook.com largest social network in UK with 45% market share
MySpace.com remains ahead in the USA with 72% market share

London, 22nd July, 2008 - Facebook.com accounted for 45.29% of UK Internet visits to social networking sites during June 2007, Hitwise announced today. This represents a 188% increase compared with a year ago. Bebo.com, which was the market leader last year, was the second ranked social networking site in the UK during June, with a market share of 25.04%. MySpace.com ranked third with a market share of 14.75%. Combined, the 'big 3' social networks accounted for over 85% of UK Internet visits to the category in June.

In America MySpace remains the market leader, capturing 71.92% of US Internet visits to social networking sites during June. Facebook was in second place with a market share of 16.91%, representing a 40% growth over the previous year.

Twitter UK traffic: up 485% this year, 70% higher than USA

One smaller niche social network that is currently growing rapidly in the UK and elsewhere is the 'micro-blogging' service Twitter. Weekly UK Internet visits to www.twitter.com increased by 631% during the 12 months ending 12 July 2008, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is currently more popular with British users than Americans - for the week ending 12 July 2008, the site's share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher than its share of visits in America.

"Although it is still most popular with classic early adopter segments of the population, the breadth of Twitter's appeal may surprise some people," commented Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise. "During the four weeks ending 12 July 2008, visitors were split 50/50 male/female, while only 15% were from London. 25-34 year olds are still the most over represented age group visiting the site, but 37% of visitors to the site are now aged 45 and over."

Another sign of maturity is that mainstream media organisations are starting to pick up traffic from Twitter. For example, BBC News now receives more Internet traffic from Twitter than it sends there. The BBC Sport feed is also very popular, and during the four weeks ending 12 July 2008, 'bbc sport' was the second most popular search term sending traffic to Twitter.

About Hitwise

Hitwise‚ is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 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.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

For media enquiries, please contact:
Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com
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