hitwise

Instead of exuberant rejoicing over the announcement of Facebook's mega-acquisition of Instagram yesterday, there's been a lot of woe-is-me chatter among the photo app's users. One of the reasons may be because the two social networks cater to different groups of people.

Instagram's users, on the whole, are quite a bit younger than Facebook's, according to a study done by consumer behavior research group Experian Hitwise.

"The audience for Instagram is relatively young, with over half of the visitors to the Instagram website are under the age of 35," research director at Hitwise … Read more

Yesterday Facebook gave the world its biggest inside peek into the company's inner workings, and the number crunching is far from over.

The latest batch comes from Experian Hitwise, which has posted a breakdown of what it says are 10 "key statistics" about the company's presence online in the U.S. according to data it's gathered. That includes the fact that one ouf out every five page views in January were on Facebook.com.

Some of the findings by category:

Prevalence "Facebook" is the most searched term in the U.S., Hitwise said, … Read more

Pinterest, an invitation-only site that describes itself as a pinboard to organize and share things you love, is growing at a phenomenal pace.

The site received nearly 11 million visits in the week that ended December 17, almost 40 times the number of visits it received during a single week six months earlier, according to Experian Hitwise, which measures and analyzes consumer behavior on the Web.

That's a 4,000 percent increase and lands Pinterest as the No. 10 social site among the 6,581 properties that Hitwise tracks. (See chart below.) It was beat out by the likes … Read more

Although it seems like many initial Google+ users might have dropped off after a few months since signing up, new research shows otherwise.

The latest traffic report from research firm Experian Hitwise affirms that Google+ traffic is up--so much so that last week (the week ending November 12) was the third best week of traffic in the U.S. since launching this summer.

Based on the graph below, it looks like Google+ really hit its peak in September. Although it dipped considerably in October, those figures are still much higher than anything before the week ending September 24.

Of course, … Read more

Here at the epicenter of social networking, birthplace of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it's easy to lose sight of just how much the rest of the world loves our homespun social-media creations.

As it turns out, social networking is enjoyed overseas even more than here at home in Silicon Valley. Underscoring this notion is a newly released international study from Experian Hitwise tracking the top eight countries spending the most time on Facebook and other social networks.

Here's the lowdown: Singapore loves Facebook more than any other country. In August, people in Singapore spent the most time on Facebook 38 minutes and 46 seconds per session, while those in New Zealand spent 30 minutes and 31 seconds. Australians spent 26 minutes and 27 seconds; next, folks in the United Kingdom spent 25 minutes and 33 seconds; and the United States came in 5th place with 20 minutes 46 seconds, followed by France, India, and Brazil.

Not surprisingly, Facebook was the most visited social network in the United States in August, leading with 91 percent of all visits. Second place went to Twitter with 1.92 percent of all social-networking visits. San Francisco-based Tagged.com came in third place for the first time with 1.04 percent of all visits, overtaking MySpace. … Read more

After surging during the first couple of weeks of July, the number of weekly visitors checking out Google+ has since been falling, according to data released this week by Experian Hitwise.

Google's new social network had been seeing a jump in weekly visits, rising from 200,000 the week ending July 2 to 484,000 the following week and then hitting a peak of 1.8 million the week ending July 16.

Since then, however, the weekly visits have been slowly but steadily declining, according to the data. The week ending August 20 saw a slight bump to 1.… Read more

Now that the initial excitement about Google+ (among those of nerdist disposition, at least) has subsided, one wonders whether real people have come to enjoy its environs.

Is there a disaffected Facebook-loathing underclass, ready to riot against the rule of Zuckerberg? Is there a subsection of humanity that is craving its own virtual space in order to meet its own kind of virtual friends?

I am grateful to GeekWire for offering something of a +1 to a piece of research by Experian Hitwise. This study attempts to analyze where Google+ might have gained sway.

In a blog post on its site, … Read more

In just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors, making it the fastest site to reach such numbers, according to data out yesterday from ComScore.

Google's socially networked audience is likely even higher now, as the 25 million mark is through July 24, more than a week ago, as noted in ComScore's report.

Growing at around 1 million users per day, Google+ has outshined Facebook, which took three years to grab 25 million people, and Twitter, which took a little more than 30 months to reach that level, ComScore said.

Drilling down by region, Google+ has seen … Read more

Microsoft's Bing captured 30 percent of all searches run in the U.S. last month, market researcher Experian Hitwise said yesterday.

Looking at the U.S. search engine market in March, Experian Hitwise found that the number of searches at sites powered by Bing rose by 5 percent since February. That includes searches run on Bing's own site as well as those on Yahoo sites powered by Bing. Individually, Bing.com itself accounted for 14.3 percent of all searches, while the ones on Yahoo tallied 15.7 percent.

Market leader Google continued to dominate in the U.… Read more