May 13, 2008

Meebo Growth - Web Based IM

I am a loyal user of Meebo. I never installed MSN Messenger on my Mac so use Meebo to connect to friends and colleagues from different computers and across Messenger and Google Talk. A couple of weeks ago Meebo received a handsome round of VC funding ($25 million) and so I thought it high time I share some stats on how the site is doing.

For those of you not familiar with Meebo, it is a web based instant messaging (IM) service that allows you to log in to all of your IM accounts and chat via their web interface. Last week (week to 10th May), Meebo ranked 13th among websites in the Social Networking and Forums category and 122 among All Categories of websites based on share of US Internet visits. The average session duration for the site was just over 9 minutes.

Meebo has enjoyed strong growth over the past year - with US Internet visits more than doubling year on year (+110%).

I compared Meebo's growth and standing compared with the alternatives listed on Meebo Now (an unaffiliated information site about Meebo) and found that Meebo is indeed the biggest of the web based IM players. The second biggest player is MSN's Web Messenger. Last week, Meebo attracted 19x more traffic than Web Messenger and Web Messenger's visits have declined 56% in the past year compared to Meebo's more than doubling.

Last week, Meebo received most of its traffic from social networks and search engines with MySpace the #1 source of visits. Websites in the Social Networking and Forums category accounted for 54% of upstream visits and Search Engines for 13%.

As many pundits pointed out when Meebo recently received their funding - traffic doesn't equal revenue. The challenge for Meebo is to monetize this traffic.

Posted by us-heather at 08:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted to Social Networks

May 09, 2008

Coldplay Compared to NIN and Radiohead

Last week we issued a news release titled Coldplay's Free Single Propels Website to #1 Online Among Bands and Artists. We found that U.S. visits to Coldplay.com increased 19 fold on the back of the band's new single, Violet Hill, being released for free online. On April 29, 2008, the day the single was released on Coldplay.com, the website ranked as the most visited website among the Bands and Artists category. A little more than 1 out of every 40 visits to Bands and Artists category went to Coldplay's website that day.

My colleague, Ben Kelly, pointed out that Coldplay is just one of many bands testing the waters with free online downloads. The record industry is at a point of major change and several established artists are experimenting with creative means of distributing and making money from music.

Last fall Radiohead released their album In Rainbows online with consumers given the opportunity to download the album at whatever price they were willing to pay. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor produced an album for Saul Williams which was made available as a free download or a high quality version was available for $5. Nine Inch Nails have since released two albums online, Group I-IV in March and The Slip this week. Fans were able to download the first nine songs of Group IV-V for free and the new album is entirely free.

Radiohead's release was much more popular than either Coldplay's or either of the Nine Inch Nails releases, as measured by share of US Internet visits.


The other really interesting thing I noticed is that Radiohead's website traffic has maintained a much higher average ranking since the release of their album than before. This indicates that the promotion worked to bring fans to the website and that they keep coming back. Radiohead.com has maintained a position among the top 100 Bands and Artists websites each month since the release of In Rainbows (with the exception of January when the site ranked 106). Compare that with the site's ranking before the release - as illustrated in the chart below. In the past two years, the site never cracked the top 100, reaching highs of 147 in April 2007 and 106 in May 2006 and lows of 352 in October 2006, 360 in July 2007 and 359 in August 2007.

One of the key questions facing record labels and bands is how to make money in the face of peer to peer filesharing. Bands that build a direct relationship with fans may be better placed to make money from special offers such as limited edition albums and concert tickets. We'll continue to watch Coldplay's website to see if website visits remain higher after the release of the single than before.

Posted by us-heather at 08:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)
Posted to Music

May 01, 2008

Grand Theft Auto 4 Set to Beat Halo 3

Whatever you think about the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the latest version (Grand Theft Auto 4) of the sex, guns and crime riddled video game is set to break all sorts of industry records. It is expected that Grand Theft Auto 4 will handily beat last year's record for sales, held by Microsoft's Halo 3 - and internet search data bears that out.

We've already seen searches for Grand Theft Auto 4 overtake those for Halo 3 by 22% comparing the week before the release of both games. Comparing the share of US Internet searches for the combined "grand theft auto 4" and "grand theft auto iv" last week (week to 26th April 2007) to the share of US Internet searches for "halo 3" the week prior to that game's release (22 September 2007), searches for Grand Theft Auto 4 were 22% higher than for Halo 3.

Last week, searches for "grand theft auto 4" and "grand theft auto iv" were sending visits to gaming sites and social networks. Retailers were not among the top websites receiving traffic from searches for the game. It is interesting that the so-called "game of the year" has attracted so little attention from the big retailers. This is likely a result of the controversy surrounding the game.

The top website receiving traffic for searches for the game was Rockstar Games (the studio that produced the game). Rockstar Games saw its website traffic soar on 29th April, the day of the release. Comparing the day of release (29th April) to a week prior, visits jumped more than 4-times. The top source of traffic that day was MySpace.com. This is likely a result of fans discussing the new game on the social network in one of the many forums on the topic.

Posted by us-heather at 07:49 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

April 29, 2008

Twitter Gaining Momentum But Still Niche

Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, has been in the news quite a bit lately (in particular for VC funding and rescuing a US blogger). This has helped drive US Internet visits up further to the increasingly popular service. Year on year, Internet visits to Twitter.com are up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month.

As the following chart illustrates, the growth has been slow and steady with an acceleration in the past few weeks.

The chart makes the growth look impressive - and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites. Twitter's size is notoriously difficult to measure as there are so many access points (mobile phones in particular). However, the website traffic data does give some idea of the rate of growth and also reveals that the service still hasn't reached mainstream adoption. We blogged about this last year, reaching a similar conclusion.

I looked at Hitwise clickstream data and it appears that Twitter is building on a loyal user base. The site's top sources of traffic last week were Social Networks and Forums, Email Services and Search Engines. The importance of search engine traffic has been declining over the past year. Using our new and returning visitor filter, I was able to see that 71% of visits from Search Engines are from new users compared to 33% and 38% respectively for Social Networks and Email Services. By and large, new users come from search engines whereas repeat users come from other sources. The decrease in visits from search indicates that the site is maturing - but still growing. As more and more of the user-base is made up of repeat users less and less of the traffic will come from search.

Whilst Twitter continues to be a niche website, it also continues to enjoy strong growth. Clickstream data helps us to understand that this growth is both from new users and repeat visitors. This is good news for Twitter and we'll continue to watch this site.

Posted by us-heather at 08:42 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (2)
Posted to Social Networks