In doing a bit of research for a talk I'm giving tomorrow here in D.C. (to the local chapters of IPRA and PRSA-NCC) I've been looking for stats on the growth in CGM - Consumer Generated Media. Here's one I found in yesterday's Washington Post, reporting on a new study by ComScore Media Metrix. From the Post:
"The number of people posting or reading material at [Blogger.com] jumped to 15.6 million last month from 2.5 million a year ago."
In other words, traffic to Google-owned Blogger.com increased 528 percent [scroll down for complete Washington Post chart] between Feb. 2005 and Feb. 2006. That counts those reading and writing blogs hosted on the free Blogger.com service.
There's been a similar explosion in traffic to MySpace.com,the social networking site of choice for young adults. MySpace is now the #10 most visited site on the Web. It attracted 37 million visitors last month, 28 million more than a year ago (a 318 percent increase).
I like this traffic metric, BTW. While we're bombarded with stats on the growth in number of blogs (over 33 million, according to Technorati), the number of people spending time on blogs - reading or writing them - is really more significant. It's people's behaviour online that tells us whether or not blogging and social networking sites are re-making our experience of the Web. Don't you agree?
Useful Links
Chart of the Top 50 Web Domains (as ranked by ComScore)
Pete Bradshow, chief marketing officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, coined the term CGM. Check out his Consumer Generated Media blog.
Previous Comments
Tim Collins said on April 6, 2006 at 03:38 PM
Great information, but have to point out the obvious..it’s an annoying habit of mine. The dramatic increase in blogger.com’s traffic is largely driven by it’s improved google search ranking. When you google “blog,” it’s at the top. That wasn’t the case a year ago. As the slogan goes: “membership has it’s privileges.”
Debbie Weil said on April 6, 2006 at 04:18 PM
Tim,
Hmmm… are you sure about that? I think what ComScore was measuring was visits to pages that have blogspot.com in them (which is the domain that blogger blogs are hosted on). And I don’t think that number is affected by Google rankings. Waddya think?
Tim Collins said on April 6, 2006 at 06:07 PM
Still a newbie at this, so had to go back and do some research. The ComScore chart measures traffic, not visits..and traffic is impacted by search rankings. Not suggesting that Google is tweaking the rankings…but isn’t it possible that the post-acquisition blogger.com now knows the Google algorithm to optimize it’s search rankings for new bloggers.
Plus there is the Halo effect from being associated with a trusted brand. Let me compare it to Neilsen’s acquisition of Intelliseek, which has always had credibility in the blogging community….but most c-level executives had never heard of them. With Neilsen involved, Intelliseek has instant credibility in the Board room.
Subscribe via RSS
Subscribe via Email
Social Media Blogs