Content from Alexa.com's Home Page, March 10, 2006
MARCH 10, 2006 - Posted By Geoffrey Mack
MySpace... Taking Over the World
Traffic Rank Graph
Myspace has been in the news quite a bit lately, and for good reason. It has grown into a massive online phenomenon in just a little over 2 years. Take a look at this traffic graph and you can see its meteoric rise from absolute obscurity to Web powerhouse, ranking as one of the 10 most popular sites on the planet.
No, that's not a typo. Myspace.com is ranked inside the top 10 sites globally.
That's amazing stuff. But even more amazing is that we, and by "we" I mean most people reading this blog, had never heard of it until recently. Where did it come from?
If you go to MySpace, you will probably walk away with the impression that it is a joke... some kind of junkyard of personal pictures, blogs and random stuff clumsily plopped onto the Web. And, unless you are a studious observer of the Alexa Traffic Rankings, you would almost certainly walk away with the impression that it is no big shakes. But you would be dead-wrong.
So, how did MySpace get so popular? Kids. MySpace has tapped into a previously ignored market -- a market much more active than previously assumed. Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp must have run the numbers and saw a gold mine. They bought Myspace for $580 Million back in July of 2005.
I overheard somebody say that myspace.com actually has more page views per day than Google. I couldn't believe it. If that were the case, then myspace would have to be worth billions... with a "b". Turns out it wasn't true. A quick check of Alexa's PageViews graph comparing the two reveals that myspace gets a little more than 50% of the pageviews of Google.
PageViews Graph
I think the lesson here is not to discount the kids. They will become the prime Internet demographic in the years to come and they will determine what's hot and what's not. Just like with soda, music and movies, the marketing dollars are more interested in my kids than me... and judging from MySpace, the marketers may be right. The kids are a major force on the Web.
MySpace - myspace.com - site info
Comments: Alexa.com is 100% wrong about MySpace.com’s traffic growth success. It has nothing to do with marketing to young Internet users. See: the real reason for MySpace.com’s success.
MARCH 01, 2006 - Posted By Geoffrey Mack
Skype tops Movers and Shakers... Again
Once again Skype has broken into Alexa's Movers and Shakers. Their growth over the last 8 months has been phenomenal, going from a reach per million of 2000 to well over 6000.
As long as I am on the topic, I might as well explain this reach per million business. Alexa does not calculate the actual number of users visiting Web sites... what we do instead is release raw data about how many people in a sample population (Alexa Toolbar users, among others) visit a site. The data is normalized to a sample size of 1 million users so that the reach doesn't fluctuate as our sample base grows or shrinks.
Are you with me so far? So, for example, if we say a site has a Reach per million of 6000, it means that 6000 people in our sample of 1 million Internet users visited the site. Or, to put it more plainly, .6% of the population visited the site.
Where was I? Oh, yes Skype. Just for flavor, I added vonage on the graph. You can see that Vonage, despite millions spent on television advertising (I can't get that damn hill-billy vonage song out of my head "woo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo") is virtually flat, while skype has more than doubled its user base.
Skype - skype.com - site info
FEBRUARY 24, 2006 - Content From Alexa.com's Home Page
Posted By Geoffrey Mack
Zillow Gets Zillions of Users
You may have heard of the new site Zillow.com or maybe seen it in our Movers and Shakers recently. It made a big splash with a media blitz that was impressive; I read news stories, heard it mentioned repeatedly on the radio and saw it posted on blogs everywhere.
What is it? It will tell you the value of your home... or of any home for that matter. It combines a magical cocktail of hot technologies and real estate.
- Cool thing 1: Plug in your zip code and it gives you a satellite map of your neighborhood. The map is draggable, just like Google Maps.
- Cool thing 2: You can get a satellite map, a street map, or a hybrid map.
- Cool thing 3: As you zoom in, it will show you property lines and estimated values of the homes.
- Cool thing 4: Click on a property and a ballon pops up with estimated price (they call it "Zestimated price") address and home details like number of bedrooms and bathrooms and square footage.
- Cool thing 5: Click on home details and it shows you enough to make your head spin. Value of your home plotted on a graph over the last year, 5 years, etc. Plus lot size, year built, # stories, and more.
- Cool thing 6: Click on comparable homes and it shows you a clickable map with all the recently sold homes in your area. Click them and sale price, date sold, details of the home, etc.
That's a pretty neat trick. So, how do they do it? The data has always been out there -- Satellite maps, Street Maps, Property Line maps,
Zillow - www.zillow.com - site info
Comments: Web 2.0 programming, content organization and marketing are enabled by broad interests,
a broad educational background, social intelligence and abstract reasoning.
Web 2.0 Example: "Data from disparate sources mashed together into a cool new application"...Philosophy - not the "coolest" example, but a "useful" example of Web 2.0 programming, because it results in a large number of page views per visitor... the key to MySpace.com's success (along with Web 2.0 functionality). Page views per visitor will be high because the end result is useful, innovative, seamlessly merged disparate content into new knowledge - Web 2.0 in action (follow the ending link for each topic).
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