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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.
You don't need a research paper to tell you where the traffic is going.
Check out Alexa's Society Category. It's rife with the named blogging machines and even Slashdot!
All the report provides is the sheer visiting numbers and the rate of increase over the past year. And give proof that Tom over at MySpace is laughing all the way to the bank. You may call me a karma whore but that man has 68475709 friends!
My work here is dung.
There is a reason for this, google is a superior searchengine, putting aside the regular flamewars on 'evil or not' they offer a better service than their competitors, this is why they are continuing to grow, additionally basically everywhere you look you see something related to google these days, even the whole china upcry, all publicity is good publicity.
The reason for growth with the other sites is because of basic marketing treads they are cool, they are new, myspace has grown because they offered a unique service that people picked up on, blogging is also a major area of growth the fact that blogger.com is tied to google is a likely reason why they are going better than a lot of their competitors, as for wikipedia, it is a one stop shop for all your information needs that and it has a great google ranking it is an unsual day for me to perform a search on something contained in wikipedia and not have that entry returned on the first page.
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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.
Right now, to Washington Post :)
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
People want more specific information about their various interests. No longer do they just surf the web for stories that corporate entities write, they want to hear from REAL people and REAL opinions.
People are tired of being force-fed information that they may or may not deem useful and have no way of responding to that information.
Blogs and related ventures will be much more popular than corporate-only websites, and that is a good thing indeed.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Is this something else that is supposed to be news? Huge "super-sites", the website equivalents of multi-national corporations (Yahoo, Aol, MSN) have slower growth rates than new sites with much smaller userbases. 5% Growth in usage of Yahoo.com is still HUGE, when you look at the numbers. That's nearly 6 million more users, which is about 1/5 of Myspace's entire userbase!
This whole article seems to be stating the obvious. Trendy sites are growing quickly. Huge sites are growing not so quickly. Useful sites continue to grow at a steady (fast) rate. Is there something shocking, or newsworthy, mentioned here?
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
Freecycle lets you give or get free stuff in your community with minimal effort.
It's very important that each Freecycle node is geographically localized, e.g. one city, so that you're offering/accepting only to/from people for whom the offer is geographically practical. For this application, the internet does not annihilate geography, it only minimizes other transaction costs of offering/accepting free stuff ... but that's plenty of benefit!
Example: Seattle-area uses http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycleseattle/
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What I find most interesting about this trend, is that "social" interaction carried out online is world-knowable. Anyone who wants to look at, use, or even track what you do online, can do so. It's not like going to a party for a drink and then leaving for the day- it's like going to a party and having everything you do etched in stone so that a nice little memento can haunt you forever.
It will be most interesting to see how much fallout those who participated in sites like MySpace will endure as a result.
Yes, there is some inherent danger in giving away personal information. But there's always risk, in everything. Most of the trouble with putting personal info on the web, at the moment, is that they use it for marketing purposes. Most people don't mind too much about that. They'll happily sign up for Club Savings cards at supermarkets, take surveys without second thought, and generally don't mind if their name is in some huge database with millions of others. They know it won't personally affect them to any large degree.
With the vast userbase of MySpace and Facebook, how often do you hear of malicious use of the users' information? You can don your tin foil hat if you must, but for the most part, society isn't out to get YOU . You're just not that important.
Of course, Identity theft is a whole different matter. Handing out Account Information, Passwords, and SS #'s is dangerous, and people should be educated on those matters, but for the average Joe, having their address published online, along with their interests and job details, isn't that big of a deal.
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
It seems like we've seen a drop in slashdot numbers in the past few months. I've also seen drops at the local stores and at the local restaurants. Are people starting to have their debt catch up with them, decreasing their available time spent online or doing things they like to do? Or is there really some odd social network change going on?
My blogs have seen a decent increase in traffic over the 4-5 months I've been writing them. When they were e-mail newsletters (opt-in only), I had about 8000 readers, most of which have NOT returned to my blogs on a daily basis. As more people learn how to use RSS feeds properly, though, I'm starting to see more feedburner access than ever before (about a 400% increase in 3 months).
I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that is generated in short time with very little promotion, but I am also amazed at the blogs I read daily. The quality of many of them on my regular feed list is second-to-none! In fact, I can't even read the news anymore since it is all canned newswire feeds it seems. I just did this search at news.google.com and if the link is valid for others, it shows pages and pages of the exact same article at dozens of news papers. Boring.
Do people really prefer to be preached to as a choir from people with their same opinions? If so, will tomorrow's news networks serve only a la carte instead of packaged news as previous models had?
That's something that surprises me, actually: slashdot regulars here want a la carte cable channels, a la carte news, and a la carte lifestyles, but most prefer pre-packaged politicians. If we could just change that last part to being a la carte, I'd say we'd see the best social network change.
Quite a point. Google sees everything you do online, and a cunning questioner can get more information about you than you might think.
Some script kiddie got into a webforum I rather liked a few months ago. Obsolete version of Invision with more holes than a Sierpinski gasket. He Defaced it, deleted stuff, the usual crap. Gloated about his leetness under his leet hacker's handle.
Which led to other places he'd posted.
Which led to other names he'd used.
Which led to a website.
Which had a whois record.
Which had a phone number.
Which was answered by his mother.
We got a photo of him from his eighth-grade spelling bee, too. Cute kid :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This is true. Education is definately the key.
There is a high level of fear-mongering going on in the media. I have users come to me asking, "Should I block my child from Myspace? A reporter on the news last night said my kid is in grave danger using Myspace. Is he right?"
The problem with getting your technical info from *insert popular news show here* is they are rarely getting their info from real net savvy people. Add to that, fear makes good ratings. There is a risk of children seeing objectionable content. The truth is there is far more objectionable stuff on good old porn sites than there ever will be on Myspace or Blogger. I have both Blogger and Myspace accounts. I also have a six year old that I am preparing to enter the realm of the net. We have to teach kids that it is never OK to give out their real name, address, or phone number online to someone they have never met in real life. Parents, bookmark their blog and monitor their internet habits. You wouldn't let a child roam the streets without some guidance. Do the same for the internet.
At the same time, learn what these sites really are. They are tools for global communication with the possibility to elighten, expand horizons, or just blow a few hours reading funny stories. Children will find their way into the Blogsphere with or without help. If parents can just get their info from solid sources and pass it on to thier children we can make the Blogsphere safe and possibly educational.
Who am I kidding...Bloggers posting something educational...am I out of my mind...
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
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.
The study measured relative growth rates. Small things grown at a larger percentage than smaller things. "Fastest growing" is a claim often used as a marketing tool by small organizations to sound impressive. If my website gets 2 hits per month and now goes to 10 hits/month, I've grown 500%! Wow!
Currently hooked on AMP
Anyways... yes. The internet is changing, as users are given the ability to share opinions more freely and the average user begins to value those opinions more and more, the internet effectively becomes more human.
Funny. That's what everyone always said the Internet should be about. People freely exchanging ideas and conversations. Now everyone is bitching about all the stupid people and stupid sites. Just can't please anyone...
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Where-ever /. tells it to go, of course. :)
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The day your mother gets a blog, is the day you realize blogging has jumped the shark.
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