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Where the Online Traffic is Going
vitaly.friedman writes "While growth is slowing at most top Internet sites, it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information. The dramatic success of those Internet categories is apparent from a recent online-traffic analysis provided by market research firm ComScore Media Metrix, which examined visitor growth rates among the 50 top Web sites over the past year."
it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information.
Local information sites ARE growing. Sites like Bloomingpedia (city wiki for Bloomington, Indiana) are getting lots of new articles, editors and interest from people all over the place. There are also other city wikis starting to pop up here and there and I just started the first State Wiki for Indiana last week to help centralize information about the DST change here.
I think a lot of people are starting to get there information from wikis in general because they are showing up so high in searches for information. In just the past couple months, we've been getting lots of search requests for restaurants around Bloomington.
I guess this is the evolution of information on the internet. First it was "fan websites" in the 90s, then directories of information, now localized wikis and blogs.
It seems to me that this represents that the internet is maturing. A couple of years ago, it was mainly used as new way to do things we already used to do. i.e. read news, yellow pages, correspond, shop (this one may be a stretch). However, blogs and social networking are new thing that the internet has made possible. These sites are growing because this form of communication is growing. Such activities were not possible before the internet, but now, as it matures, new communication phenomena are emerging. Heady days, indeed.
When I joined Wikipedia (July, 2003) it had just broken into Alexa's top 1000. Since then, the traffic has doubled every quarter, meaning that it has jumped over 900 places in less than three years (it was at 18 last I checked), and traffic has grown by several orders of magnitude. This article lumps Wikipedia in with blogging, social networking, and local information, but I don't think any of those categories are appropriate. It's a general reference - it just happens to be a particilarly good one, delivering a service that you will not find on Myspace, Blogspot, or a local newspaper site.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Blogging and social networking sites feed our society's need for three things. For the Bloggers it feeds our need for attention and validation. As a blogger, I readily admit to that. For the readers, it gives us glances into the lives and minds of others feeding the voyeuristic tendancy that reality television has brought out in our culture. How else can you explain the popularity of sites like http://dooce.com/, a site where Dooce writes about her everyday life? Just like the rise of reality shows that follow around regular people 24/7, blogging feeds the inner voyeur in all of us. Finally, the social networking sites make us feel connected to other people, a need often unfulfilled in real life where we work all day and never really connect with anyone. Speaking of connected, I have a Myspace message...
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.