UKOM Data Report: September 2011

39.9 million people made up the UK’s online universe in September, growing 3.2% MoM. The negative focus on social media by the press following the civil unrest in August saw many big online entities losing users in September. Although the overall online population increased, major brands and social networking sites saw a loss in traffic.

While individual sites, such as Twitter and Tumblr, saw massive spikes of interest during the riots, overall activity actually fell – with August witnessing the lowest online audience of 2011 to date. September saw an impressive increase of 1.2 million users, suggesting that during August summer distractions held more sway over the population than breaking news.

Brands

All of the top ten brands, exclusing Microsoft, saw a fall in users in September. The software manufacturer saw a slight increase, 0.7%, enough to move it up one place. eBay lost 5% of its audience MoM, sending the auction site down one place. YouTube suffered the biggest actual loss out of the top ten, shedding over one million of its unique audience (-5.4%). Facebook also took a significant hit in September, down one million, but still held onto an impressive 26 million users (a 65% active reach) – although this is the social network’s lowest audience since February 2011.

Current Events

Those that were online in August focused their attention towards the latest news and commentary on the social upheaval that spread throughout the UK, causing a peak of interest among sites that fall under ‘Current Events’. So naturally all of the top ten sites in this category saw a fall in traffic in September.

BBC News was the hardest hit, down a massive 2.3 million MoM, resulting in a unique audience of 9.2 million for September (a 20% loss for the month). With less casual readers visiting the site, the amount of pages viewed per person actually increased from 45 to 52 MoM. This was also reflected by the amount of time spent per person, up over three minutes for September.

Although The Sun‘s audience was down 22%, the News International site managed to move up one place in the top ten with a total of 2.7 million users. Newsquest Media Group was pushed down a place as a result, witnessing a more significant loss of just under one million users (-27.6%).

Social Media

Google+ made quite an impact in September, increasing users by almost 500% MoM. After two months of secrecy since the soft-launch and invite-only access, Google’s bold venture in social media was open to the public on 20 September. Seen as the most direct attack against networking giant Facebook, Google+ saw a sharp increase in users (just under two million) with a total audience of 2.3 million for September. As more people flocked to the site, the average amount of sessions per person dropped from five to two MoM.

Although Facebook saw an unusually sharp drop (-1 million) it remained far ahead of the competitors, sitting comfortably with 26 million users. Micro-blogging platform Tumblr lost 24% of users in September, down 648,000 users MoM. Tumblr has seen a slow and steady rise in popularity through its lifetime, reporting a 150% jump in users YoY. Twitter activity settled back down to normal in September (-11.5% MoM), hanging onto 5.2 million users and remaining the third most popular brand of social media.

E-mail

Windows Live Hotmail remained the most popular form of browser-based emailing in the UK with 13 million users in September. This represents 33% of the online population in the UK. Hotmail usually sees a slightly higher reach but the Microsoft service lost 5% of users MoM. It wasn’t all bad for Microsoft though with Outlook.com seeing the biggest percentage MoM rise in the top ten. While only gaining 172,000 extra users over the month, this equates to an 81% increase.

Google Gmail received a healthy boost of activity, directly benefitting from the launch of Google+. The new social network requires users to sign up with a Gmail account, prompting many UK passive users to open or reactivate their accounts, reflected in the 10% increase (a total of 5.3 million users) in September.

Messengers

Windows Live Messenger lost 1.8% of its audience in September but remained the most popular messaging service. With 12 million users, the Microsoft product had an active reach of 30% of the online population. Skype Messenger saw the biggest actual loss, down 268,000 users MoM (-3.8%). Eight of the top ten reported a loss in traffic MoM with Google Talk and integrated service eBuddy bucking the trend. Although, comparatively, Google Talk has a small amount of users (311,000) there was a 20% jump in September.