Social Networking Dominates UK’s Fastest Growing Online Brands
Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, has revealed that five of the ten fastest growing online brands over the last year in the UK relate to social and professional networking.
Facebook was the second fastest growing – up by 1,646% – followed by another provider of applications and widgets for social networks, Slide, whose audience grew 649%.
| 10 fastest growing online brands by UK Unique Audience (UA)*: October 2006 – October 2007 | ||||||
| Rank | Brand | UK Unique Audience Growth Oct 06-Oct 07 | UK UA Oct 07 | UK UA Oct 06 | UK Active Reach Oct 07 | Nature of service |
| 1 | RockYou! | 2106% | 1,900,189 | 86,139 | 5.80% | Social network tool |
| 2 | 1646% | 7,825,148 | 448,211 | 23.90% | Social network | |
| 3 | Slide | 649% | 3,164,590 | 422,445 | 9.70% | Social network tool |
| 4 | HOT or NOT | 503% | 866,300 | 143,658 | 2.70% | Face rating / dating |
| 5 | Veoh | 399% | 659,877 | 132,367 | 2.00% | Videos |
| 6 | TravelRepublic | 313% | 557,231 | 135,007 | 1.70% | Travel agency |
| 7 | Metro Lyrics | 306% | 426,679 | 105,005 | 1.30% | Music lyrics |
| 8 | Bunnyhero Labs | 297% | 551,305 | 138,737 | 1.70% | Social network tool |
| 9 | 282% | 461,212 | 120,705 | 1.40% | Professional network | |
| 10 | About.com | 265% | 582,359 | 159,673 | 1.80% | Information / reference |
| Source: Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications, October 2006-October 2007 | ||||||
| *’Minimum requirement: Oct 06 Unique Audience = 85,000. E.g. between Oct 06 & Oct 07, RockYou!’s UK Unique Audience grew by 2,106% from 86,139 to 1.9 million (now visited by 6% of Britons online) | ||||||
Overall, the ten fastest growing online brands contain three social networking tools, one social network and one professional network (LinkedIn).
Alex Burmaster, internet analyst, Nielsen Online, said: “The phenomenal success of social networks has had a knock-on effect for providers of applications and widgets that personalise the web experience further. Services like RockYou! and Slide are heavily used by Facebookers – particularly 18-24 year old women – to organise photo slideshows whilst Bunnyhero is particularly popular amongst 12-17 year old girls, allowing them to adopt animated pets that live on their Bebo webpage.
“The success of these applications is very much dependent on that of the social networks. For example, 98% of Bunnyhero’s audience are ‘Beboers’ whilst 89% of RockYou!’s audience and 79% of Slide’s audience are ‘Facebookers’.”
A recent report from JupiterResearch found that social network advertisers are falling short in measuring results, with just 24% of European internet advertisers who plan to launch their own profiles on social networking sites measuring whether users interact with their online ads (see Social Network Advertisers Fall Short In Measuring Results).
Meanwhile, a forecast from market analyst Datamonitor predicted that global active memberships in social networking sites will reach 230 million at the end of 2007.
According to Datamonitor, by the end of 2007 Asia Pacific will account for 35% of the world’s social networking memberships. Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will hold 28%, North America 25% whilst the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) will account for 12%.
Adoption curves vary dramatically by region, but membership growth in all regions is expected to have peaked by 2009 and to have levelled out by 2012 (see Social Networking Site Memberships To Reach 230 Million).