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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Social Media

Facebook acquires photo-sharing network Instagram

April 10, 2012

Yesterday, Facebook announced the acquisition of Instagram, a popular photo sharing network with over 30 million users, for $1 billion. Visits to the Instagram website have steadily increased over the past 24 weeks and reached 3.8 million last week, up... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 04:29 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Photo sharing | Social Media

10 Key Statistics about Facebook

February 02, 2012

As Facebook Inc. filed for its initial-public-offering yesterday afternoon, now is the perfect time to examine the website’s performance online and how its audience compares with that of other social networks. Given the expected $75 billion to $100 billion initial... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:09 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Social Media | Social Networking

Luxury Brand Report Studies New Online Trends

December 09, 2011

Every day, Experian Hitwise clients discover new trends and opportunities from our timely, insightful online consumer behavior database. We are happy to share these insights by having clients post their findings on this blog and today present analysis on the... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:20 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Luxury | Retail | Search Strategies | Social Media

Facebook: Where We Reach Out When Life Happens

September 27, 2011

For members of the “Facebook Generation”, Facebook has become the de facto conduit for communication when something important occurs in our lives. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg revealed further design upgrades at the annual f8 Conference, including “Timeline”, which will be a... Continue reading...

Posted by Hitwise Research at 03:38 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Social Media | Social Networking

Google+ growth since launch

July 20, 2011

On Tuesday, June 28th, Google launched their latest foray in the social networking arena with Google+. In the days following the launch, as invites became more readily available, visits to Google+ steadily increased, particularly between July 5th and July 12th.... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 06:17 PM | (7) | (1)
In Categories Google+ | Social Media | Social Networking

Presidential Race 2012: Tracking Candidates’ Social Efforts

May 18, 2011

To date, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich announced their official bids for the White House on Twitter and YouTube. Ron Paul raised over one million dollars in 24 hours online through his political action committee. President Obama hosted an online... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:07 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Presidential Campaigns | Social Media | Social Networking | Twitter | YouTube

Obama's Facebook Town Hall Meeting

April 25, 2011

On April 20th, President Obama visited Facebook headquarters to hold an online “town hall” meeting focused on the economy and The White House’s proposals for deficit reduction. Questions for the President were submitted in advance via The White House’s Facebook... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:33 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Politics | Social Media | Social Networking | Twitter

Impact of paywall on NYTimes.com

April 11, 2011

After months of speculation, the paywall for The New York Times went live at 2pm on Monday, March 28th, which limits online readers (non-print subscribers) to 20 articles each month. For smartphone and tablet applications, only the top news section... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 05:19 PM | (21) | (2)
In Categories Digital Subscriptions | Facebook | Google | News and Media | Search Engines | Social Media | Social Networking | Twitter

Social Media as a Social Change Agent

February 24, 2011

Social media sites are being lauded as enablers and conduits of social change in revolutions across north Africa. But the picture in the US has been slightly different – following the success the 2008 Obama Campaign’s online efforts, there has... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:18 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Social Media | Viral Marketing

Detroit Needs Robocop campaign

February 24, 2011

Once again, the Internet provides the opportunity to make dreams come true, or at least get a viral campaign off the ground quickly. Despite the mayor shooting down the idea to build a statue of RoboCop (from the 1987 movie)... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 10:35 AM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Fundraising | Social Media | Viral Marketing

Quora Gaining Momentum

February 10, 2011

Whenever I start to see friends posting about joining a new website on Facebook or Twitter, I always begin to monitor the traffic patterns to for more widespread adoption. One good example is Quora.com, a much-talked about crowd sourced question... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 04:11 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Demographics | Emerging Websites | Facebook | Social Media

Holiday retail gets more social

January 05, 2011

With Facebook ranked as the #1 website in the US, retailers have been increasingly turning to social media to communicate with current and potential customers, particularly during the critical holiday shopping season. As a traffic driver, the Social Networking and... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 05:22 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Google | Holiday | Search Engines | Shopping and Classifieds | Social Media | Social Networking

Facebook.com generates nearly 1 in 4 page views in the US

November 19, 2010

In March, we reported an important milestone when the market share of visits to Facebook.com* surpassed Google.com*. Since then, we have continued to watch the growth of Facebook.com, which increased 60% from the same week last year and represented 1... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 04:22 PM | (8) | (6)
In Categories Facebook | Google | Social Media | Social Networking | YouTube

Case Study – Social Security Administration

November 05, 2010

The Social Security Administration may not be the first website that comes to mind when thinking about search or social, but these two sources combined accounted for half of the traffic referrals in October 2010. Search engines referred 43% of... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:12 PM | (0)
In Categories Acquisition | Facebook | Government | Search Strategies | Social Media

Moshi Monsters in the US

March 26, 2010

My colleague Robin Goad wrote about the rising popularity of Moshi Monsters in the UK, so I was curious to see how the website is performing in the US. Moshi Monsters offers visitors the chance to adopt a pet monster... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 11:48 AM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Kids Websites | Social Media | Social Networking

1 Year Anniversary for Foursquare

March 12, 2010

Location-based services have been a popular topic this week, as Twitter enabled geo-location features and Facebook announced the launch of a new location-based feature in April. Another location-based social network, Foursquare, marked their one year anniversary of their launch yesterday.... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:21 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Mobile | Social Media | Social Networking | Twitter

Thank You Mom campaign from Procter & Gamble

March 09, 2010

During the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, P&G started a campaign called ‘Thank You Mom’ to help with the cost of travel and accommodations for the mom (or important supporter) of all of the Team USA athletes so they could see... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 05:50 PM | (0)
In Categories CPG | Coupons | Facebook | Olympics | Social Media | Social Networking

5 Minutes of Facebook Celebrity

February 04, 2010

Notice anything different about your friends on Facebook? Suddenly they all look a bit more like celebrities! The latest trend to hit Facebook has been to replace your profile picture with one of your celebrity doppelganger. Last week, the top... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 07:00 PM | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Social Media | Social Networking

Social network impact for retailers

January 29, 2010

Social networking has become the most popular activity online and visits to the category represented 13% of all US Internet visits in December. As the social networking audience continues to grow, the category has become a major source of traffic... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 08:40 PM | (3) | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Holiday | Retail | Social Media | Social Networking

Holiday shopping with social networks

December 01, 2009

Last week, our custom category of 155 Social Networking websites received just over 10% of all US Internet visits. With such a large audience, marketers have flocked to websites like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to consumers during the... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 11:22 PM | (1) | (2)
In Categories Black Friday | Cyber Monday | Facebook | Holiday | Social Media | Social Networking | Thanksgiving | Twitter | US

Facebook Turns 5

February 04, 2009

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Facebook, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at the website’s impact upon the social networking category. Overall, Facebook was the #5 ranked website by total market... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:33 PM | (2) | (0)
In Categories Facebook | Social Media | Social Networking

Twitter catches up to Digg

January 20, 2009

Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activities, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 03:34 PM | (4) | (14)
In Categories Social Media | Social Networking | Twitter

Twitter growth continues despite outages

July 08, 2008

Twitter has been a hot topic again over the past couple of days with speculation circulating that the company may purchase Summize. Although much of the activity on Twitter takes place via mobile, the traffic to the website has continued... Continue reading...

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 02:58 PM | (1) | (2)
In Categories Social Media

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Heather Dougherty

Director, Research at Hitwise.

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