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Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America

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Of YouTube, Web 2.0 and Early Adopters

October 11, 2006

With last week's news of YouTube's acquisition for $1.65 billion, I thought I'd take an opportunity to post a chart that demonstrates the company's quick growth from obscurity in October 2005 to market dominance in mid-2006. The chart below depicts the market share of visits to YouTube.com based on all internet visits in the U.S.

youtube.png

One phenonomenon that we've found in the adoption of 2.0 sites is that the difference in site demographics from the early days to market dominance demonstrates who the early adopters of 2.0 apps are. YouTube is a perfect example of that. Below are the demographics of visitors to YouTube in January 2006:

YouTube.com Demographics January 2006
demo youtube jan 06.png

When comparing the demographic snapshot above to the one below which captures the four weeks ending October 7, 2006, it highlights the difference between the early YouTube visitor compared to today's mainstream user is that of age (with 18-24 year olds dominating) and to a lesser degree socioeconomic status (as evidenced by lower household income, likely college students, and higher household income of $150K plus), but independent of sex and geographic region.

YouTube.com Demographics October 2006
demo youtube 10 06.png

For a very interesting discussion of the definition of Web 2.0 see this report issued by Pew Internet. Mary Madden and Susannah Fox (with the help of some Hitwise charts) provide some great examples of 2.0 sites and their growth when compared to 1.0 counterparts.


Posted by Bill Tancer at 08:43 PM | (1) | (0)

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Comments

Interesting - beyond demographics, do you also observe discrepancies when you use the Priszm segmentation? I would anticipate most early-adopters to be in U1, right?

Posted by insights2.0 | October 12, 2006 04:53 PM

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Bill Tancer

General Manager, Global Research at Hitwise.

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