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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Weather, Web 2.0 and Wikipedia: AU Online Media Update

March 25, 2006

The release of Senator Connan's discussion paper, Meeting the Digital Challenge, prompted discussion about the protection of media diversity this week. I decided to look at our Hitwise data to show where big media dominates and where new players are shaking things up.

A Hitwise Industry traffic overview for the week ending March 18, 2006 show that Search Engines dominate Australian Internet usage, accounting for 9.7% of website visits. This compared to News and Media websites -5.4%, Portals (FrontPages) - 5.1% and Net Communities and Chat - 4.2%. The fact that search engines are dominant, the first port of call online, indicates that content provision is anyone's game.

The Hitwise News and Media category includes the websites of pure Internet and traditional news providers. Visits to this category are by no means heavily concentrated, with the top 10 websites sharing 40.1% of overall traffic, week ending March 18, 2006. ninemsn News held 7.1% share of the category, followed by The Sydney Morning Herald (5.5%) and The Age (4.5%). The weather content was a compelling draw card to the Bureau of Meteorology, which was the top website (7.9%).

New web 2.0 properties gaining a following online include, Digg and Newsvine. Digg, a technology website where community members choose the stories, increased its share in the News and Media category by 433.2% between November 12, 2005 and March 18, 2006. Newsvine is another popular site where users can read, write and discuss news. Newsvine's mission is to "bring together big and little media in a way which respects established journalism and empowers the individual at the same time". These however are all US-based websites and are lacking in Australian content.

ninemsn.com.au continues to dominate visits to Portals, accounting for 34.7% of visits for the week ending March 18, 2006. Recently re-branded portal, Yahoo!7 ranked 4th, accounting for 15.2% market share. A comparison of portal frontpages however, showed that Yahoo!7 ranked second to ninemsn, with respective shares of 13.11% and 48.8%. It will be interesting to see what effect the online collaboration between Yahoo! and the Seven Network will have on ninemsn's dominance over time.

Consumer generated media is gaining increasing popularity with Australian Internet users.
The Hitwise Blogs and Personal websites category increased by 178.4% week ending March 18, 2006, compared to the same week last year. See Heather's post for a UK update on blogs. Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia which any user can edit, has enjoyed phenomenal growth, increasing its share of the Education - Reference category by 516.4%. It will be interesting to watch how big media companies in Australia adopt international trends in combining consumer with traditional media to provide quality journalism.

Weekly Market Share of Visits to Search Engines compared to News and Media

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:50 AM | (0) | (1)

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