Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

Analyst Weblog

« FA Cup Final Tickets Searches Spike ahead of Champions League | Cancer Research UK Online Growth »

Bebo set to overtake MySpace in UK Visits

May 04, 2006

We issued a news release today with some astonishing data on the growth of Bebo in the UK. The site climbed to take the #2 spot in the Hitwise Net Communities and Chat category last week, second only to MySpace. I wanted to share some stats from the release here and some other interesting items we found in our research.

The search term "bebo" was the third most searched for term, based on share of UK internet searches, in the past four weeks. MySpace ranked 24th. The share of searches for "bebo" overtook those for "myspace" in November of 2005. The chart below illustrates this nicely.

Bebo Searches.png

Whilst MySpace still leads social networking sites in share of visits and enjoys a 17% larger share of visits than Bebo (the #2 ranked site in the category), Bebo is fast closing the gap. In the eight weeks to 29th April 2006, Bebo's share of visits to all categories rose 45%, compared to 29% for MySpace. If the current rates of growth continue, we can expect Bebo to overtake MySpace in share of UK visits before the start of the new school year.

The geographic region of visitors to MySpace and Bebo differ quite markedly. In particular, Bebo is particularly strong in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The following chart illustrates the swing in the percentage of visits to Bebo and MySpace from the various regions in the UK in the past four weeks.

Bebo geography.png

I am speaking at What MySpace Means: Lessons for Every Brand next month. I am sure we will have a stimulating discussion on the opportunities for brands on Social Networking sites such as MySpace. Also interesting, is how can brands keep up to date on which sites are popular and with what audience.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 12:00 AM | (3) | (0)