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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Photobucket losing market share

March 05, 2009

Posting digital photos online remains a popular activity among many Internet users, particularly as many are increasingly uploading to social networks along with photo sharing websites. Among the photo sharing websites, the market share of visits for the top ranked Photobucket, declined 24% to reach 27% in February 2009 from 36% the same month one year ago. During the same timeframe, both Flickr and Picasa experienced an increase in the market share of visits, growing 45% and 65%, respectively.

photo MMS.png

The decline in visits to Photobucket is most likely tied to the decline in visits to MySpace, which has been a major source of traffic for the website. In July 2008, the share of traffic referred to Photobucket from MySpace was 54%, but has since decreased to 38% in February 2009.

photobucket myspace MMS.png

In comparison, neither Flickr nor Picasa are reliant upon traffic referred from social networking websites. Instead search engines, with an increasing share coming from image searches and web-based email, from both Yahoo! and Google are more significant drivers of traffic for both websites than social networks. Both are owned by a search engine which is also likely to help boost traffic.