August 04, 2008

Montauk Monster gains notoriety online

As a frequent visitor to Montauk, I was fascinated by the story on Gawker last week about the ‘Montauk Monster’. After checking it out, I assumed that this would be a mostly local tale for New Yorkers that head out to the beach during the summer and the full-time residents of Long Island. Instead, the Montauk Monster has received national media attention as everyone tries to figure out what on earth this thing is (viral marketing stunt? product of animal experimentation?). The monster appears twice in our Fast Moving Search Terms for the week ending August 2, 2008 – ‘montauk monster’ came in at #5 (right behind earthquake) and ‘monster of montauk’ was #12.

For the week ending August 2, 2008, Fox News received the most traffic as a result of searches for ‘montauk monster’ followed by Gawker. Among the top 10 to receive traffic from the searches was one Long Island publication, the East Hampton Star as well as New York magazine who also posted continuing coverage along with Gawker. The story even reached British shores with coverage from the Telegraph.

Search queries for the Montauk Monster are a mixture of discussion topics around the mystery animal ranging from its authenticity, theories around what type of animal it could be, and of course, photos to see what it looks like. So far, raccoon and turtle are the top animals being named but recent stories are also bringing the pig into the mix.

Montauk Monster theories were all the rage this weekend on the beach and Twitter this weekend – what do you think is? I am still kicking around an X-Files viral marketing stunt theory while others point to Cloverfield 2. What I am really hoping is to never swim next to it!

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Entertainment | Fast Moving Search Terms | Viral Marketing

July 24, 2008

Pimp My iPhone

The new iPhone 3G is nearly 2 weeks old now and the high demand & enthusiasm for the new device has yet to die down. I’ll openly admit waiting in line waiting 3 hours and 20 minutes on the first day which seemed crazy until I heard reports of those waiting over 5 hours to get their hands on one. So far that wait has been worth every minute; especially with the addition of the application store (I personally heart Urbanspoon). I have been curious to see which applications are the most popular, so I have been checking the lists in the iTunes store and search behavior within our Hitwise Search Intelligence.

I ran a search term suggestions report for the phrase ‘iPhone app’ to get a sense of which applications consumers were searching for outside of the iTunes interface. Last week, social networking, instant messaging, and radio applications were very popular along with the game Super Monkey Ball, which has been prominently featured in the application store and receives many favorable reviews. Other applications that work with Twitter were also being searched along with the NYTimes application. A few brands are also coming up frequently in search that do not as of yet have official applications (although the services can be accessed through other applications) are for the two popular photo-sharing websites Flickr and Picasa, as well as Internet phone service provider Skype.

The non-branded iPhone applications being searched include video recording and photo/mms texting topped the list as well as utilities like turn by turn driving directions, account number management, budgeting, and calendar syncing.

Since their launch, the applications have been receiving lots of attention – and rightly so, but iPhone users are also seeking ways to personalize their iPhones with ringtones (free is particularly popular of course) and wallpapers.

Do you have a favorite application yet? i am dying to try Super Monkey Ball & GoSkyWatch Planetarium.

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Mobile | iPhone

July 23, 2008

Geographic divide of social networks

Today is Facebook’s F8 conference is taking place in San Francisco, helping to keep the spotlight omnipresent upon the social networking category. In the US, MySpace continues to be the largest social network and the market share of visits was 3.5x that of Facebook for the week ending July 19, 2008. However, in terms of growth, traffic to Facebook increased 23% when compared to the same week last year while MySpace was down 29%.

Now size is one difference between the websites and where the users are located is another. We have recently launched a tool at Hitwise where our clients can access DMA® level data for both websites and categories to understand the share of traffic from local regions. As an example, here are the top 10 DMAs by size for both MySpace and Facebook for the 4 weeks ending July 19, 2008. The top DMA for MySpace is LA while the top DMA for Facebook is NYC- which is not surprising considering that these two cities are the 2 largest DMAs in overall size and tend to be significant for most national websites.

When comparing the DMAs of the 2 websites to one another, an interesting trend pops out – MySpace visitors are more likely to be located on the west coast while Facebook has heavier representation on the East Coast (the coasts where each company was started). The 20 DMAs with the highest representation index for for MySpace when compared to Facebook, meaning the likelihood of the visitor to go to MySpace vs. Facebook (over 100 increases the likelihood, below 100 decreases the likelihood) are all located on the west coast. The trend is also illustrated below when looking at the top 10 DMAs for MySpace, where the West Coast DMAs dominate.

When the situation is reversed to compare Facebook to MySpace, the East Coast and Midwest becomes more prevalent. This trend is a good one for advertisers that are considering placing geo-targeted ads on social networks where each of the 2 major players are exhibiting strengths in particular areas.

Could the younger audience of MySpace potentially create geographical boundaries or is the starting point for each company simply continuing to dominate through networks of friends based upon proximity? Since Facebook is somewhat more widely distributed geographically, one random theory could be that Facebook attracts a higher share of users aged 25 and up that are more likely to be finished with college (particularly due to Facebook’s initial start with college students) and/or have relocated away from their hometowns, creating a wider group of geographically disbursed colleagues.

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Social Networking

Summer of the FitFlop

As an avid NYC walker I am fascinated by shoes that are designed to help you exercise – shoes that turn an ordinary walk into a ‘workout’. One of the first ones I learned about was the ‘MBT’ walking shoe, thanks to the Bliss catalog and now this summer the Fit Flop has become the latest craze. Recent reports cite that over a million pairs have been sold and traffic to the website has grown steadily for the summer season.

Increased searches for ‘fit flops’ and ‘fitflops’ also highlight the fact that consumers have become far more aware of the FitFlops this season and are seeking out information and where to purchase the shoes.

The most common destination from the searches is the official FitFlops website – which is informational only and refers visitors to online & offline retail outlets. Retail websites then followed as the next beneficiaries from the searches, most likely due to paid search campaigns. For Victoria’s Secret, ‘fit flops’ ranked 22nd among keywords driving traffic to the website for the 4 weeks ending July 12, 2008.

And for fun, here is more evidence of purchase intent for the FitFlops – the downstream traffic report for June from the FitFlop website is dominated by retail web sites where the shoes are sold with Macy’s, Bath & Body Works, and Victoria’s Secret receiving the highest volume of referrals.

The wisdom of crowds seems to be flip flop sales and possibly better toned legs!

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Shopping and Classifieds