HITWISE UK NEWS & MEDIA UPDATE

Digg.com Fastest Growing News and Media Website in January;  

News and Media category among fastest growing categories in UK. 

London, 27^th February 2007

New data from Hitwise, the leading provider of online competitive intelligence, reveals that the News and Media category of websites was among the fastest growing categories year-on-year in January. News and Media websites experienced 28% year-on-year growth in market share of UK Internet visits in January, with IT media websites and Digg.com leading the growth. Digg.com was the fastest growing News and Media website year-on-year in January among the top 100 sites based on visits.

Digg.com’s market share of UK internet visits grew more than 5-fold comparing January 2006 and January 2007. Digg.com was the #1 IT Media website in January 2007 and the #32 ranked News and Media website. The website’s ranking climbed from #85 in August and from #182 in January 2006.

“Traditional print media brands are learning the ways of the web and growth in visits to the category reflects a new lease of life for the sector,” commented Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK. “Yesterday’s positive earnings announcement from the Financial Times, citing online advertising sales up 30%, supports the resurgence that offline media brands are enjoying online. Print media websites enjoyed a strong year, with visits up 28% year-on-year in January, making it one of the fastest growing categories. However, challenging times lie ahead as more and more consumers turn to nimble social media websites for news and analysis.”

Hitwise UK Websites with the Largest Growth in Market Share of Visits Among the Top 100 News and Media Websites 
Comparing January 2007 and January 2006

Digg.com’s Growth Fuelled by Games and Video Sharing

Whilst Digg.com was the fastest growing News and Media website in the past twelve months, Hitwise clickstream data reveal that the growth was fuelled by games and video sharing, rather than news. In July 2006, Digg.com was sending 22% of its own traffic to the News and Media category. Since then a larger proportion of the social news aggregator’s traffic has gone to websites in the Entertainment category. In January 2007, 23% of visits from Digg.com went to websites in the Entertainment category, with video sharing websites YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe, and games websites Kotaku, Gamespot and Lovatts Website Puzzles, popular downstream websites in January.

Digg.com can be an important source of visits to Blogs, with 8% of the sites downstream traffic going to websites in the Hitwise Lifestyle – Blogs category in January. Technology blogs seem to fair best, with Boing Boing, Lifehacker, TechEBlog favourites downstream from Digg.com.

To register for your copy of the Hitwise UK News and Media Report, please click here:

http://www.hitwise.co.uk/registration-page/uk-news-and-media-report.php  

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 anonymously captures the 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

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

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