AllThingsD » Nielsen Online

As Traffic Booms, Is HuffPo Ready to Make Some Real Dough?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:21:53 +0000

For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and in its hiring of some big talent for key positions.

Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site.

How to help marketers to better understand the site and, therefore, spur this significant monetization will be his main focus at the Huffington Post, said Greg Coleman to BoomTown in an interview over the weekend.

Coleman–a former Yahoo (YHOO) advertising exec, as well as one for Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL–was named president and chief revenue officer a month ago by Huffington Post’s new CEO, Eric Hippeau.

Hippeau, who was himself just appointed in June, is another well-known online media exec and has been a big investor and board member of the Huffington Post. (You can read a thorough interview by Staci Kramer with Hippeau on paidContent.)

“It’s important for advertisers to know how big we have gotten, while also highlighting this amazing audience of influencers we have gathered,” said Coleman, in his first media chitchat since taking on the job. “I think it is the beginning of a tipping point.”

Well, of course, Coleman would say that, as the guy looking to drum up interest among marketers in spending their money on the Huffington Post.

But stats seem to indicate that consumers are increasingly liking what the Huffington Post is creating, because it is starting to surpass some well-known media icons on the Web in traffic.

While more of this increase is going to be due to a socialization of the news–the Huffington Post has an aggressive deployment of Facebook Connect called HuffPost Social News–the growth is more about building a brand people trust and seek out.

According to recent reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online, for example, the site just became larger than several online brands of big media companies, such as the Washington Post (WPO), in terms of unique monthly visitors.

In its September report, Nielsen clocked the Huffington Post at 9.47 million uniques, up 26 percent, while the Post site was at 9.2 million–a drop of 30 percent.

According to the Nielsen, the Huffington Post is within spitting distance of USA Today’s Web site (9.9 million), a Gannett (GCI) property.

And, it is bigger than Hearst Newspapers Digital (7.9 million) and the BBC (7.2 million).

For September, comScore has the Huffington Post (at 6.83 million) besting the Post (6.77 million)–as well as WSJ.com (6.7 million), a unit of Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS).

(The Wall Street Journal site, to be fair, makes a chunk of its revenue from subscription fees, rather than relying solely on advertising from traffic like the Huffington Post. And full disclosure: Dow Jones owns this site.)

In any case, big traffic is key for most news sites, and internal numbers from Google (GOOG) Analytics that Huffington Post execs cite are higher, as is typical for most sites, pegging traffic at about 27 million monthly uniques with more than two million reader comments per month.

Huffington Post co-founder and blogging icon Arianna Huffington attributes the recent boost in traffic to the site’s proclivity to “start conversations” that interest readers, such as her recent suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should resign.

“We are aiming to go beyond just facts, to create a narrative,” said Huffington, who thinks the speed of news helps attract visitors to the site. “We think bringing journalism to a new level is exactly what people are looking for.”

Perhaps. But, even if traffic increases continue to bear her theories out, she and others have said that the Huffington Post still has not been regularly profitable despite doubling annual revenue–mostly in advertising–to what some estimate to be about $8 million in 2009.

While the site is aiming to invest rather than focus too hard on showing profits, Coleman said he would like to make revenue seven times larger in the next years, building on the performance of the site to vaunt past old media giants online.

“This kind of thing is a milestone for the marketing community,” he said. “Our goal is to be the top Internet newspaper, and this points out that we are on our way.”

To do that, he will have to spend some of the $37 million in funding that the Huffington Post has raised from venture investors.

While the edit side is using the money to expand the number of news categories, Coleman said his focus will be on building a higher caliber team of sales and marketing execs with deeper relationships to big clients.

“Unlike selling an auto page on Yahoo (YHOO), our site has a more complex sales process that takes some time for people to understand,” said Coleman. “But once they get it, it should be an easier sale.”

Until then, check out the video of the entire interview I did at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Huffington and Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth in which they talk about the future of journalism and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

Former Yahoo and AOL Ad Exec Coleman Poised to Join the Huffington Post as President

Kara Swisher — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:40:28 +0000

In the ongoing game of Internet exec musical chairs, Greg Coleman (pictured here), who has been a top exec at both Yahoo and AOL, is poised to become president of the Huffington Post, as well as chief revenue officer, several sources said.

The deal for Coleman to come on board at the privately held online news site–which has grown significantly over the last year and just added well-known online media exec Eric Hippeau as CEO–came together only recently.

And it is not clear what the role of current Huffington Post Chief Revenue Officer James Smith will be going forward.

The Coleman hiring is most likely the work of Hippeau, who has known him from Coleman’s days as head of ad sales at Yahoo (YHOO). Hippeau has been on the board of the Internet giant for many years.

Hippeau was also a key player in the $5 million investment in the Huffington Post by SoftBank Capital in 2006.

He has also been a director on its small board, which also includes co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenny Lerer, as well as Oak Investment Partners’ Fred Harman.

Oak recently added $25 million to the funding kitty at the Huffington Post, which is headquartered in New York.

The money will be used to expand the site into the local arena, investigative news, and verticals such as tech, a section set to debut Sept. 21.

It is all being done to build on what has been a strong traffic year for the Huffington Post, which claims it has over 21 million unique monthly visitors.

Nielsen Online has pegged that at the lower figure of 8.9 million, but reported that the Huffington Post was one of the fastest-growing, year-over-year news sites.

Despite that, the site still has not been regularly profitable, despite doubling annual revenue–mostly in advertising–to what some estimate to be about $8 million in 2009.

Presumably, goosing that revenue is what Coleman is being pegged to help do–and he certainly has a lot of online advertising experience, having made stops at a lot of Internet companies in the past few years.

He was head of advertising sales at Yahoo for seven years, after another long stint at Reader’s Digest. Yahoo’s ad business grew strongly under him.

But Coleman ran into Yahoo’s management buzzsaw after trouble hit the company in 2007. He was one of the first in a long line of execs to leave the troubled company, departing in one of its many controversial reorganizations.

He was soon running a Los Angeles-based start-up called NetSeer, which focuses on ad targeting.

He then headed to AOL in February to run its Platform-A division.

But when new management was suddenly put in place by Time Warner (TWX) in the spring, Coleman left after only a few months on the job.

After taking the summer off, several sources said, he has recently been looking at a variety of jobs.

That included MySpace, where former Yahoo colleague Wenda Harris Millard–now with Media Link–was hired recently as an outside consultant to help the News Corp. (NWS) social networking site rejigger its ad business.

The Huffington Post spokesman declined to comment when BoomTown inquired about Coleman’s hiring.

Tell Me Again How Twitter Is a Premier Source of Breaking News?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:59:06 +0000

According to a recent study by Nielsen Online, Twitter’s audience-retention rate is currently about 40 percent. Which means that about 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users end up abandoning the service after a month. Why is Twitter struggling with low retention rates? Perhaps because so many tweets are utter nonsense.

Research outfit Pear Analytics randomly sampled 2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a two-week period and categorized them as News, Spam, Self Promotion, Conversational, Pass-Along Value and Pointless Babble (click on image to enlarge).

Unsurprisingly, the largest portion, 40.55 percent, fell under Pointless Babble, which Pear Analytics loosely defines as those “I am eating a sandwich now” tweets. Conversational ranked second with 37.55 percent, and Pass-Along Value a distant third with 8.7 percent of the tweets captured. Oddly, Self Promotion and Spam ranked fairly low, with 5.85 percent and 3.75 percent of total tweets captured, respectively. Still, both were higher than News, which ranked at the very bottom, with 3.6 percent.

“We thought that both Spam and Self Promotion percentages would be much higher,” Pear noted in its study. “Also, we thought the News category would have more weight than dead last, since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the premier source of news and events.”

Facebook: 250 Million Users. If Only We Could Monetize Them…

John Paczkowski — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:03:57 +0000

In August 2008, Facebook claimed 100 million monthly active users worldwide. By April 2009, the social-networking outfit doubled that number. Today, Facebook tells us it has reached 250 million monthly active users.

Fifty million new users in under four months: Impressive.

“For us, growing to 250 million users isn’t just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post to the company blog.

If Facebook is able to maintain its growth, it will easily hit 300 million users before the end of the year, perhaps as early as November. And as a recent study from Nielsen Online found, users are spending increasingly more time on the site. Americans spent an average of four hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site in June–significantly more than any other Web site.

Clearly, Facebook is a lot more than “the flavor of the month,” as News Corp. (NWS) chairman and owner of rival MySpace (and this site) Rupert Murdoch once called it. But how long before it’s able to turn its popularity into profit befitting its user base?

An Hour and 14 Minutes on Apple.com? Wow. Try Spending That on Dell’s Web Site Without Falling Asleep.

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:20:48 +0000

Here’s an interesting metric: Apple’s Web site last month drew more than 55.7 million unique visitors, more than the site of any other computer hardware manufacturer, according to a report released this week by Nielsen Online. The number of Apple (AAPL) visitors was more than double that of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which drew 21.9 million people, and triple Dell’s (DELL), which drew 16.8 million. May visitors to Apple’s Web site spent an average of an hour and 14 minutes on it.

Not much of a surprise here, I suppose, given the level of anticipation that typically accompanies the release of a new iPhone. Nielsen says “anticipatory buzz” for the iPhone 3GS was near-deafening. “The new iPhone 3G S sent blog mentions up 1,226 percent week-over-week on June 8, the day of the announcement. After the initial announcement, buzz dipped but again picked up after the phone became available to consumers on June 19, with blog mentions more than doubling compared to the week prior.” The chart, below (click to enlarge):

BoomTown Interviews Arianna, Ken and Eric About Huffington Post Exec Changes: BAM!!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:18:43 +0000

Apparently, if you want to think about the growth of the Huffington Post as a culinary dish, perhaps today’s replacement of CEO Betsy Morgan with longtime online media powerhouse Eric Hippeau might appear under the Emeril Lagasse cooking cliché: Let’s kick it up a notch!

Both co-founders of the online media site, Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, said as much in interviews I did with them this afternoon, after news of the change got out–even as they praised Morgan for the strong work she had done in the 18 months she had been in charge.

“The deal is that we simply have been growing so fast that we needed more firepower to accelerate in expanding the site and monetizing it,” said Huffington, who is also editor-in-chief of the Web news site (and pictured above).

“Things are going great, but things could be going even greater,” added Lerer, who is chairman of the Huffington Post, noting that a more experienced exec was needed at this juncture to take the business to the next level.

“Eric is a peer at all the big companies we need to partner and deal with…and right now, while things are difficult in the economy, is the time when you can really build a company and we had to take advantage of that opportunity.”

So, ipso facto, Morgan was out in favor of Hippeau, who was the key player in the $5 million investment in the Huffington Post by SoftBank Capital in 2006.

Hippeau is a director on its small board, which also includes Huffington, Lerer and Oak Investment Partners’ Fred Harman. Morgan will be vacating her board seat.

Oak recently added $25 million to the funding kitty at the Huffington Post, money that Lerer and Huffington said had not been used yet.

But it soon will be, both noted, with the site expanding aggressively into the local arena, investigative news and verticals such as tech.

It is all being done to build on what has been a strong traffic year for the Huffington Post, which claims it has over 21 million unique monthly visitors.

Nielsen Online has pegged that at the lower figure of 8.9 million, but reported that the Huffington Post was one of the fastest-growing, year-over-year news sites.

Despite that, the site still has not been regularly profitable, said Huffington, despite doubling annual revenue–mostly in advertising–to what some estimate to be about $8 million in 2009.

Hippeau (pictured here) has a lot of experience working at a panoply of early online media businesses, including as CEO of Ziff-Davis.

He has also been a longtime Web investor, pushing for SoftBank’s early investment in Yahoo (YHOO), where Hippeau remains a board member.

That should not present a conflict for Yahoo, said Hippeau, which had a short-lived publishing partnership with the Huffington Post.

Hippeau, who has been a managing partner at SoftBank, will become a special partner and adviser to the investment firm. In this capacity, he will continue to work with three start-ups–Buddy Media, BuzzFeed and ThumbPlay.

Hippeau, who is now diving back into an operating role for the first time in almost a decade, said it was hard to pass up the chance to run the New York-based Huffington Post.

“I could not pass such an opportunity, especially with the explosion in the delivery of the news and opinion on the Web,” he said. “This is really the place to build the next really big brand.”

To get to that level, Hippeau said that a lot of things have to happen at the site going forward.

“Clearly we have got to make the revenues commensurate with traffic of the site and size of the opportunity,” he said. “At the same time, we have got to make sure we are very community-focused and using all kinds of new tools to increase engagement.”

Hippeau noted that journalism was changing radically, and “what people want to know is what are people thinking and how can I contribute and we are just at the beginning of this phase.”

Of particular interest to him are real-time data and real-time communications–on sites like Twitter–and the growth of smartphone usage.

“We are getting into a situation in the U.S., where it is so much easier to access all kinds of information and so much more portable,” said Hippeau. “Everyone has talked about convergence for a long time and it is finally here and we are poised to take great advantage of that.”

The moves at the Huffington Post were first reported by paidContent.org.

Huffington appeared onstage at the recent D: All Things Digital conference with Washington Post (WPO) publisher Katharine Weymouth.

Here is a highlights video of the interview I did with them:

[ See post to watch video ]

April Video Winners: Hulu, of Course. And… MTV?

Peter Kafka — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:41:03 +0000

Here’s an online video story you haven’t seen before: Viacom’s MTV sites had a really good month last month.

This news comes from Nielsen Online, which just released its video traffic numbers for April. The top line is more or less unchanged. Google’s (GOOG) YouTube dominates the field, generating more video traffic than the next nine biggest sites on the Web combined.

And of course, Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and GE’s (GE) NBC is continuing its rocket ride. The No. 2 site saw streams increase 7.1 percent over the previous month and 490.4 percent compared with a year ago (though bear in mind that April 2008 was Hulu’s first full month out of beta).

None of which is surprising. One thing I didn’t expect: MTV grew faster than anyone else in the Top 10 last month. The site posted a 15.7 percent increase in month-to-month traffic–in a month when overall video usage actually declined 2.3 percent compared with the previous month.

Here’s the full breakdown (click table to enlarge):

Bonus data point: Nielsen breaks out Web traffic by brand, not by corporate owner. But cobble together MTV’s video traffic with corporate cousin Nickelodeon’s, and parent company Viacom (VIA) gets a total of 319.7 million video streams in April. That’s enough to qualify for third place, and not that far behind No. 2 Hulu’s 373.3 million.

Not bad for a company that spent a long time frittering away what should have been a very big lead in Web video. And perhaps promising for Vevo, the YouTube/Universal Music site launching later this year.

Usually when a company has a banner month–or even a passable one–according to Nielsen or Comscore (SCOR), I get barraged with celebratory press releases. Nothing from Viacom to date, though I’ve asked the company for comment.

Anyone else want to explain why MTV’s sites spiked in April? In the meantime, here’s MTV’s version of the newish Eminem video:

Eminem – New Music – More Music Videos

Weekend Update 5.03.09–Special Musical Chairs Edition

Beth Callaghan — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:00:44 +0000

If there was an over-arching theme for this week at All Things D, it would have to be musical chairs.

Brand new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta started things off Monday with his first day on the job. He was joined by new COO and former AOL exec Mike Jones and new chief product officer and former Sling Media exec Jason Hirschhorn. Down in Los Angeles at the AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference, Boomtown ran smack into Huff Post mastermind Arianna Huffington, who extolled the virtues and abilities of new managing editor Jai Singh, former editor-in-chief of CNET Networks. At AOL, in preparation for spinning off the Time Warner (TWX) Online unit, new CEO Tim Armstrong began appointing new senior execs and spinning off existing ones. Platform-A president and former Yahoo (YHOO) sales exec Greg Coleman, who joined the AOL team in February, is leaving the company, to be replaced by Jeff Levick, who is leaving Google (GOOG)–where he had a close relationship with Armstrong. CFO Nisha Kumar is also leaving AOL, and a search is underway for her replacement. MediaMemo has more on Time Warner’s decision to spin off AOL. A number of Flickr engineers were laid off Wednesday, but Chief Architect Cal Henderson has left the company of his own accord and is working on a stealth start-up with Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Last, but not least, one of the voices covering the digital scene has found a new gig. Owen Thomas, self-described “scourge of [Silicon] Valley,” is leaving Valleywag to head up GE (GE) unit NBC Universal’s new “Bay Area” Web site, whose motto is “Locals Only.” He’ll be replaced by fresh-faced Ryan Tate, recently the night editor for Gawker. Both reporters talked to BoomTown on Friday about the changes.

MediaMemo wrote on Monday about Condé Nast shutting down Portfolio–both the print magazine and the accompanying Web site. On a cautionary note, MM outlined the reasons why Portfolio’s business magazine peers should not celebrate the loss of a competitor, even (or especially) during tough economic times. Is the meteoric ascension of Twitter flattening out? According to a Nielsen Online study, 60 percent of Twitter’s users leave after a month. This was met with a lot of skepticism so Nielsen ran the numbers again with the same results–and this time it’s sticking with them. MediaMemo also had an explanation for why the long-awaited deal between Disney (DIS) and Hulu took months and months and millions of dollars to finally come together. Digital Daily had more on that story.

Digital Daily also had more info on the ever-evolving Palm (PALM) Pre story. First, a rumor that Palm plans to launch the handset on June 7–which would be crazy, given the fact that June 8 is both the first day of Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference and the day that those in the know expect the next-generation iPhone to drop. Then, there’s an assertion by Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar based on supply chain research that Palm has greatly reduced its production numbers. Time will have to tell, though, because Palm certainly isn’t talking yet. Of course, things could be worse. Dell (DELL) hasn’t even solidified plans for its rumored smartphone, and already, no one really cares.

Dell’s new Adamo laptop and Studio One 19 desktop aren’t causing much excitement either. In this week’s Personal Technology column, Walt Mossberg reports that although both machines look good and function well, neither is groundbreaking. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered readers’ questions about improving performance on a PC, using peripheral devices with an iPhone and installing Apple’s OS X on a Windows machine. And in this week’s Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret tested three apps from the iTunes App Store that make it possible for the iPod touch to function like an iPhone.

More next week.

Social Networking More Popular Than Email, More Profitable Than…Er…Um

John Paczkowski — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:55:19 +0000

Hard to believe, but social networking has eclipsed email in popularity. The latest Nielsen survey (PDF) found that 66.8 percent of the global online population spends time at “Member Communities,” a category that includes both blogs and social networks. That makes social networking about two percent more popular than email, with one in every 11 minutes online globally spent on Facebook, MySpace, etc.

That’s a lot of Superpokin’….

Apparently our self-righteous outrage over Facebook’s tweaks of its Terms of Service or claims that social networks are haunted by sexual predators has done little to dampen our enthusiasm for them. “Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience,” said Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank in one of those “Fire: Hot, Bread: Good” announcements. “While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large.”

Unfortunately for the companies playing in the space, social networking hasn’t yet done the same for the advertising experience. Indeed, as Nielsen notes, “The current level of advertising activity on social networks isn’t consummate with the size–and highly engaged levels–of the audience.” Nor will it be, unless the sites figure out a way to exploit the personal data of their users without making them feel like their privacy has been invaded. Nielsen’s big idea for achieving that goal: trial and error. “New approaches to the ad model are required for this challenging and complex arena,” the company explains. “It will take time to work out the magic formula for successfully advertising in social networks. The diversity and personalised nature of the environment means standard ad models–such as contextual search and standard unit sizes–won’t cut it. Different approaches across ad units and ad inventory will have to be tried, involving a trial and error mindset.”

Trial and error, eh? That’s been Facebook’s strategy hasn’t it? And as I recall, it hasn’t exactly been working out too well…

Seniors Take Job Hunt to the Web

Elizabeth Holmes — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:57:32 +0000

It’s not just kids who are Googling “unemployment.” Grandma and Grandpa are looking for jobs online too.

Nearly 3.6 million people age 65 and older visited career-development Web sites in January, according to a Nielsen Online report released Thursday.

The majority of job site visitors–18.7 million–are still between the ages of 35 and 49. But people 65 and older were the fastest growing group by far, up 41 percent from the same time a year prior.

Chuck Schilling, research director at Nielsen Online, says the figures represent a “desire to stay employed longer” in order to “sock away more retirement savings.”

Read the rest of this post

On the Web, the New York Times Really Is the Paper of Record

Peter Kafka — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:50:18 +0000

While we rend our clothes over the demise-to-be of the New York Times, all the while bemoaning the company’s inability to adapt to the Web, let’s take a second to acknowledge something: By the standards of every other newspaper company in the world, the Times really has gotten the Web down pretty well.

Evidence: This eye-popping traffic chart, created by the smart fellows at Nieman Journalism Lab, using data from Nielsen Online, via Editor & Publisher (and yes, if you’re counting–this is the third time this info has been repurposed).

Boilerplate caveats: Nielsen data are different than internal logs, Nielsen data are different than comScore, Gawker Media has a bigger audience than the Los Angeles Times, etc., etc.

Big picture: No other daily newspaper that employs actual journalists to write real news stories comes close to the Times online. This includes my employers at News Corp. (NWS), who are making a concerted effort to position The Wall Street Journal as a Times competitor for general interest readers. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns the Journal and this Web site.)

As always, this distinction won’t do much for the Times if paper can’t afford to stay in business. But it’s worth noting that in a world where all of us are supposedly creating our own news aggregators and building our own microsites full of news that appeals only to us, more and more of us end up visiting the paper of record. Surely that’s worth something, no?

Liberty Seriously Considering Sirius?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:28:17 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Just Another Cyber Monday …

John Paczkowski — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:01:08 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Selling Off Personal Possessions on eBay Top of Mind for Holiday Shoppers This Year?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:08:58 +0000

Consumers may not be buying as in years past, but they are browsing. Nielsen Online reports that traffic to online retail sites on Black Friday grew from 28.8 million unique visitors in 2007 to 31.7 million unique visitors in 2008. That’s 10 percent year-over-year growth. (Click on tables, below, to enlarge.)

An impressive showing. And though increased traffic to online retail sites doesn’t necessarily translate into increased spending, Nielsen touts this metric as evidence that consumers are firing up their browsers, credit cards in hand.

“Even with the weakening economy, an unstable stock market and a rising unemployment rate, Black Friday traffic to online retail sites grew at a double-digit rate this year,” said Ken Cassar, vice president, industry insights, Nielsen Online. “Consumers are continuing to shift their holiday shopping to the Web for the convenience of not having to fight the crowds and to further stretch shrinking budgets. The fact that the Shopping Comparison/Portals category was the second fastest growing segment indicates that consumers continue to see the Web as the source for determining the best deals and prices of the season, which we expect to be top of mind for holiday shoppers this year.”

Now, in all likelihood that’s the case. Still, it’s worth noting that Nielsen’s top-ranked Black Friday site was eBay (EBAY), a site visited as often by people looking to sell things as buy them.

How many of the 9.8 million consumers who visited the online auction site on Friday were looking to sell something off for some extra holiday spending money, or simply to make ends meet?

Nevermind the Baallocks, Here's the Econolypse

John Paczkowski — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:00:58 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Nevermind the Baallocks, Here's the Econolypse

John Paczkowski — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:00:58 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Yahoo Video: You've Come a Long Way, Baby

John Paczkowski — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:02:05 +0000

The economic crisis has been as much a boon for Yahoo as a bane. Earlier this week, we noted that Yahoo’s share of the search market had increased slightly, thanks to investors obsessively checking Yahoo Finance and its Stock Message Boards. Yahoo Finance had 19.9 million unique users in the month of September, according to comScore–an all-time high for the site (see chart; click to enlarge).

It seems that morbid interest in the stock market’s decline is driving up Yahoo (YHOO) video streams, as well. The much diminished Internet major claimed 265 million video streams in September, a 56 percent increase over the 169 million it claimed in August. And that puts it in the No. 2 spot on Nielsen Online’s monthly VideoCensus. Impressive, no? Presumably, October will be even better, given the upcoming presidential election.

That said, as in search, Google (GOOG) is the one to beat in Web video. The company’s YouTube property served up an astonishing 5.3 billion streams.

PREVIOUSLY:

Yahoo Search Market Share Apparently Inversely Related to Yahoo Share Price

Yahoo Video: You've Come a Long Way, Baby

John Paczkowski — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:02:05 +0000

That said, as in search, Google (GOOG) is the one to beat in Web video. The company’s YouTube property served up an astonishing 5.3 billion streams.

PREVIOUSLY:

Yahoo Search Market Share Apparently Inversely Related to Yahoo Share Price

Things That Are Comcastic

John Paczkowski — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:00:16 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

New Plan: "Reset Default Search" Roofie Cocktails …

John Paczkowski — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:50:27 +0000

In the past year, Microsoft has spent $1.2 billion to acquire enterprise search outfit Fast Search & Transfer. The company spent more than $100 million on Powerset and its natural language search. And it spent untold millions on search-related R&D. Microsoft (MSFT) has even taken the rather extraordinary step of paying people to use its MSN/Windows Live search (“The Search That Pays You Back!”).

None of this has helped. None of it has bolstered Microsoft’s laggard search service, which continues to toddle along behind Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO)–a very distant third in the search market. In fact, MSN/Windows Live seems to be suffering from the company’s efforts. According to Nielsen Online’s MegaView search ranking for July, searches on MSN/Windows Live declined 2 percent month-over-month and 10 percent year-over-year. Its July 2008 share of the search market: 11.9 percent. Meanwhile, Google gained a share point from June to July, claiming 60 percent of the eight billion searches conducted during the month. And it posted 16 percent year-over-year growth, more than five times the overall growth in search.

Clearly, Microsoft’s efforts to draw users to MSN/Windows Live has yet to make much of a difference in the search share race. Nor have the efforts of other companies. Searches on Yahoo dropped 11 percent year-over-year, leaving the company with a 17.4 percent market share. AOL’s (TWX) fell 9 percent over the year, leaving it with 4.6 percent market share. And Ask.com’s (IAC) rose 13 percent, leaving it with 2 percent share, Nielsen said.

New Plan: "Reset Default Search" Roofie Cocktails …

John Paczkowski — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:50:27 +0000

Insert Bad "Hulu Hoopla" Pun Here

John Paczkowski — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:47:11 +0000

As the lines between television and the Internet grow increasingly blurry, online video services are seeing quite a bit of audience growth. Predictably, YouTube has been top among them. The company served up five billion video streams to some 77 million unique users in July, according to Nielsen Online, which ranked it as the top Web brand for that period. Fox Interactive Media (NWS) ranked second with nearly 300 million streams and just over 20 million uniques. Not much of a surprise there, either. What is surprising, though, is Hulu’s July performance. The company saw a 20 million video stream spike for the month, thanks in part to the direct-to-Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” which brought quite a few viewers its way. And, with more than 105 million streams and 3.2 million uniques, Hulu placed eighth in Nielsen’s July ranking, surpassing CNN and Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network. Not bad for a service that only launched in March.

Insert Bad "Hulu Hoopla" Pun Here

John Paczkowski — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:47:11 +0000

Arianna Bests Drudge?

Kara Swisher — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:24:45 +0000

Could it be a digital indicator that the Blue states are taking back ground from the Red ones–at least in cyberspace?

In February, for the first time ever, Arianna Huffington’s liberal political mega-blog and news site, the Huffington Post, has apparently surpassed the longtime mighty blog leader, Matt Drudge of the conservative/populist-leaning Drudge Report, according to recent traffic data reports from both comScore (SCOR) and Nielsen Online. (Both are pictured here.)

According to data from Nielsen Online, for example, the Huffington Post’s traffic–as measured by monthly unique visitors in the U.S., at home and work–has more than tripled since February of 2007, when it had about 1.1 million unique visitors; by February of 2008, unique visitors had risen to 3.7 million.

In that same month, the Drudge Report had 3.4 million (it had 2.75 million in February of 2007).

Data from comScore is different, as measurement data often is, but shows the same trend (see chart below). The Huffington Post jumped from 457,000 unique visitors in the U.S. at all locations, but had risen to 2.3 million in February of 2008.

For Drudge, comScore reported that it had 1.2 million unique visitors in February of 2007 and 1.6 million in February of 2008.

Of course, internal logs at both sites are likely to show much higher numbers than either comScore or Nielsen Online, by a factor of even four or five times.

Sources at the Huffington Post, for example, said that logs show 12 million uniques for the last month, which they attribute to the addition of new vertical sites within the main site, as well as an increased interest in political news and analysis.

In comparison, Drudge’s site notes it had 21.8 million visits in the past 24 hours. But the site does not define this figure, and it is not and cannot be compared to unique visitors.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with our traffic growth and look forward to continuing to build out our brand,” wrote Arianna Huffington in an email, asking about the traffic spike on her site.

(BoomTown sent an email to the Drudge Report’s contact email on its site late last night, asking for a comment about the data, and will post a reply if I receive one.)

Seasonal Facebook Defection Disorder?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:01:11 +0000

Facebook shed some 400,000 members between December and January in the United Kingdom. This according to new figures from Nielsen Online, which charted a 5% decline in U.K. traffic month-to-month.

Which begs the question: Is Facebook nearing its saturation point? Is enthusiasm for the social-networking phenom finally wearing off? Have we all been spammed by the ironically named “Funwall” one time too many? Are the site’s privacy issues finally taking their toll? Or are its zombified members too busy seeking human flesh to bother updating their profiles?

Or were they simply on winter holiday?

That last scenario seems the most obvious explanation. December and January are the months at issue here. And Nielsen’s figures show that there are 712% more Facebook users than a year ago. Still, this is the first drop the firm has recorded in Facebook’s user numbers in the U.K. since the site became large enough to track. There wasn’t a similar drop in usage last year. Or the year prior. So maybe there is something more here. The early beginnings of a long-term erosion, perhaps?

“One month of falling audiences doesn’t spell the decline of Facebook or social networking,” said Nielsen’s Alex Burmaster. “However, most of the leading social networks are less popular in the U.K. than they were a year ago. It was inevitable that early growth rates couldn’t be sustained and the larger networks have been plateauing over the last few months.”

Seems the leading social networks to which Burmaster refers were also less popular in the U.S. According to the latest stats from comScore, Facebook attracted 33.9 million unique visitors stateside in January–down 2% percent from 34.7 million in December. That’s a decline of approximately 800,000 users. Again, this drop could also be chalked up to Seasonal Facebook Defection Disorder. Or not. After all, it’s not like we haven’t seen this sort of thing before. Remember Friendster?

UPDATE: Facebook disputes Nielsen’s metrics. “The number of users for Facebook continues to climb in the U.K.,” the company said. “Our internal monthly active user numbers rose between December and January in the U.K. and are now at more than 8.3 million. Facebook tracks active monthly users, rather than registered users or unique visitors. Active users reflect those who have used the site in the past 30 days.”