MySpace Cracks Top 20 Websites in New Zealand

Hitwise Press Release

MySpace Cracks Top 20 Websites in New Zealand

Auckland, 27th October 2006. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, social networking phenomenon MySpace has entered the top 20 websites in New Zealand for the first time since February, according to the latest data from Hitwise NZ.

The MySpace website (www.myspace.com), which recently became the #1 website in the United States, has been rapidly gaining popularity in New Zealand this year, coinciding with a boom in online blogging and social networking websites. MySpace ranked at #40 out of all websites monitored by Hitwise New Zealand in the week ending 11 February this year, but its traffic has risen steadily over the past five months, resulting in a 50% increase in rank to #20 for the week ending 30 September.

The latest boost in MySpace's ranking on Hitwise New Zealand brings it closer to current social networking leader, Bebo (www.bebo.com). Bebo is the sixth-most-popular website visited by New Zealand Internet users and the top website in the Hitwise Computers & Internet - Net Communities & Chat industry with more than 23% of market share, while MySpace currently ranks at #2 in this industry with just under 9% share of traffic.

Overall, traffic to the Net Communities & Chat industry has boomed this year. Traffic to websites in this industry, which contains all the major online social networking websites, has jumped by almost 10% since January - jumping from 4.8% of visits to all websites visited by New Zealand Internet users in the month of January 2006 to 5.3% in September 2006.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology captures the anonymous online usage, search, and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends and statistics, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

© Scoop Media