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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Social Networking: ninemsn, Yahoo!7 and Ten

July 06, 2006

With the announcement this week that Network Ten would be re-focusing its digital efforts, it's also been acknowledged that Ten is the only commercial network without a major online portal. Nine Network's online component is ninemsn and Seven Network partnered with Yahoo! last year to form Yahoo!7.

ninemsn and Yahoo!7 both hold significant online market share in Australia. ninemsn ranked as the 3rd most popular website in all categories with 2.4% market share, followed by Yahoo!7 ranked at 6th position with 0.8% share for the week ending July 1, 2006. Network Ten in contrast ranked at #691.

In building Network Ten's online capabilities, in what areas should the network invest to emulate the online market share of the other commercial networks? The below figure shows how much online traffic is referred to ninemsn, Yahoo!7 and Network Ten proportional to each site by Search Engines, Net Community & Chat and News & Media industries.

While all online properties receive substantial referrals from search engines, with Ten receiving a huge 39% of traffic from search, a significant point of difference between Network 10 and the two portals is the traffic received by Net communities & Chat, which include social networking sites, MySpace and YouTube. Both portals receive more than double the amount of traffic from Net Communities than Network 10. News and Media upstream traffic is fairly level across all three websites.

The upshot of this is that there is a gap for Network 10 to leverage social networking and chat functionality to compete with ninemsn and Yahoo!7. This is highlighted by the fact that the search term 'big brother', a Network 10 show that has attracted some recent infamy, was the 21st most popular term in Net Communities & Chat out of a possible 1,248,052 for the 12 weeks ending July 1, 2006. According to Hitwise Search Analysis, the Big Brother website attracts 59% of traffic on the term 'big brother'. That leaves over 40% market share of discussion and interest which Network 10 could potentially capture on its home site.

Network 10 has the option to focus on providing a home-based platform for viewers to chat and share their own content - including photos and videos, rather than immediately build all the content capabilities of an online portal. Although it should be noted that in the marriage of search engines and networks, Google Australia is the only partner not yet matched. Interesting to note that Google Australia refers the greatest amount of traffic to Network 10 with 24.3% share.

The network's intention to provide TV show downloads is also something users can look forward to, with more than 400 variations on searches for 'tv downloads' for the 12 weeks ending July1, 2006.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:51 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Social Networking | Television