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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Singapore: Social Networks continue to trump Search Engines

April 29, 2010

Having recently re-located to KL, Malaysia, I thought it timely to provide an update on the nearest market we’re tracking here, Singapore. Unsurprisingly, Social Networking and Forums was the most popular online industry visited by Singapore Internet users in March 2010. What’s of interest is that this has consistently been the case since September 2007. Contrast that to Australia, where Social Networking and Forums overtook Search Engines for monthly visits only during March this year. Visits to Social Networking websites by Singaporeans is therefore a deeply embedded component of Internet usage and has been for a decent amount of time.

Singaporean Internet use is dominated overall by web-based activities (i.e. navigation, communication, and publishing) reflected by the prominence of Search Engines, Portal FrontPages, Email Services and Blogs. Stocks and Shares was the only ‘commercial’ sector amongst the top 10 industries. Multimedia, Games, Software and Reference sites were also amongst the top 10, highlighting a strong learning-orientation to web use.

While Social Networking and Forums has been dominant for some time, it is still growing at a strong rate, moving 2.74 percentage points, or 24% year on year (see below table). Travel sectors have also been growing strongly, including Maps (27%), Transport (13%) and Commercial Airlines (20%). The debut of Google Maps Singapore in November 2009 significantly contributed to growth in Travel – Maps visits, while in the Airlines sector, visits to Tiger Airways, Jetstar Airways and Air Asia all grew by 29.5%, 10.7% and 17% respectively.

Facebook’s phenomenal global growth has not left Singapore untouched, attracting the highest growth in visits amongst all websites. Twitter notably was amongst the top 10 fast moving websites, growing at a faster rate than its predecssor, Plurk. Amongst Singaporean websites, inSing.com, a lifestyle, entertainment, business and shopping channel, grew at the fastest rate, debuting in April 2009. Both Google Singapore and Bing notably gained strong traction.

While it’s illustrative to gain an overall sense of fast moving industries and websites, I’ll be spending more time over the coming months examining a range of commercial and lifestyle industries in more detail in Singapore and Hong Kong. Feel free to post any topic requests in the comments section.

Tweet Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 07:39 PM | (0)
In Categories Singapore