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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

Analyst Weblog

Facebook Largest News Reader?

February 03, 2010

Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web had an interesting piece suggesting that Facebook could become the world's leading news reader. A recent Facebook company blog entry encouraged members to set up a news feed on Facebook. Kirkpatrick contends that with a few tweeks, Facebook could become a major distribution force for news content.

The last time I wrote about feed readers, Google Reader was just about to overtake Bloglines. That was in May 2008 - things have changed. Google Reader's growth continued (with some setbacks) until November 2009. Since then, visits have been dropping off. As Kirkpatrick mentions in his article, RSS readers never really reached "change-the-world feed-reading mass adoption."

Last week, Google Reader accounted for .01% of upstream visits to News and Media websites, about the same level as a year ago. Google News accounted for 1.39% of visits and Facebook 3.52%. The following chart illustrates the increase over the past year in visits from Facebook to News and Media websites, relative to Google News.

Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn (see table below). News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site's traffic. To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular). (Note, my colleague Heather Dougherty posted an entry on Social Networks and Retail traffic earlier this week).

Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:06 PM | (8) | (7)
In Categories News and Media | Social Networks

Nexus One Appealing to Wealthy. Purchase Intent Seems High.

January 21, 2010

Google's Nexus One phone is a direct competitor to Apple's iPhone and the battle lines are being drawn. As illustrated below, the launch of the Nexus One attracted a great deal of excitement online, with searches for "nexus one" accounting for 1 in every 14,000 US Internet searches the week to January 9, 2010. As illustrated in the chart below, search volume settled down, and the share of searches for "nexus one" and "iphone" were even last week (week to January 16, 2010).

Purchase intent seems high. The #3 downstream website from Google Nexus One was Google Checkout, receiving 6% of downstream visits last week. The #4 downstream site was T-Mobile USA, the Nexus One carrier, receiving 3% of visits.

Wealthy Internet users seem most interested in the Nexus One. Hitwise Experian Mosaic Data reveals that 46% of visits to the Google Nexus One website were from the two wealthiest Lifestyle groups, Affluent America and Upscale Suburbia in the four weeks to January 16, 2010.

Finally, search marketers may take heart in knowing that Google is engaging in paid search marketing along with the rest of us. YouTube was among the top downstream websites (#4) from searches for "nexus one" last week with 31% of clicks going to paid listings.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:14 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Shopping & Classifieds

Canadians Searching for Winter Escapes

January 19, 2010

With no end in sight to winter and the charm of the ever-mounting snow banks wearing off, Canadians are turning to the web to book winter escapes. Visits to Travel websites have seen a sharp increase over the past two weeks. Canadian Internet visits were up 34% to Travel websites in the two weeks to 1/9/2009 (as illustrated in the chart below). Looking at the increase in visits to the Travel sub-categories we can better understand the drivers of that growth: visits to Travel Agencies were up 51%, Cruises websites 47%, and Destinations and Accommodations 45%.

Expedia.ca, which last week accounted for 12% of visits to Travel Agencies websites, experienced a 66% increase in visits over the past two weeks. Similarly, other leading Travel websites are seeing similar increases, including Air Canada up 54% in the past two weeks, West Jet up 69% and Trip Advisor up 67%.

Searches for last minute deals are proving popular, including "last minute vacations", "last minute travel" and "last minute flights". Popular destinations include Las Vegas, Disney World, Hawaii, Mexico and Jamaica. It's no coincidence that these are all warm and sunny destinations! At the same, we've seen an increase in searches that include the word "ski".

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:39 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Canadian Insights | Travel

Canadian Holiday Shopping & Hot Products

December 16, 2009

Canadians may celebrate Thanksgiving in October but similar seasonal trends are apparent in online holiday shopping. Canadian Internet visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites peaked two weeks ago, in the week ending November 27, 2009 - the same week as in the US. While Canadian Internet visits to retail websites reached a peak of 5.46% of all Internet visits in that week, in the US, visits were almost double the level seen in Canada, at 10.74% of US Internet visits.

Comparing visits to retail sub-categories last week (week to December 12, 2009) and eight weeks ago (week to October 17, 2009), the following categories have seen the biggest gains in visits:
- Flowers and Gifts +72%
- Appliances and Electronics +47%
- Video and Games +30%
- Department Stores +29%
- Computers +29%

In order to get an idea of the hot products this holiday season in Canada (my colleague Heather Dougherty posted hot US products last week), I looked at our Fast Moving Search Terms report for the twelve weeks to December 12, 2009 and compared it to the twelve weeks to October 17, 2009. This report shows the fastest moving search term, based on relative change, comparing those two twelve week periods. (Note the report can also be run with weekly data).

As you might expect, Zhu Zhu mania has also infected Canada. Other popular products include:
- Knifty Knitters
- Easy Bake Oven
- Jim Shore Figurines
- Skull Candy Headphones
- Sony eBook Reader
- Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit
- Vornado Foot Heater (With temperatures plummeting and snow banks climbing - this is perhaps unsurprising)
- Disney Karaoke

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:50 AM | (0) | (0)