UK: Google: pole position, Facebook: shooting star

News today that Google has managed to hold on to its top spot yet again in the rankings for most visited web property in the UK, bringing in some 28m visitors to its web sites in May 07, according to figures from comScore. Microsoft and eBay were ranked second and third, with 27.4m and 22.2m respective visitors to their sites. Yahoo was in fourth place with an estimated 20.6m visitors.

Interesting to note that Facebook had the biggest growth in traffic of all sites. Between April and May of this year, traffic on the social network went up by 30%, and comScore says Facebook's traffic has gone up by 2,123% over the last year. Despite this, with visitor numbers totalling 4.8m for the month of May, Facebook still doesn't make the top-20 rankings for the UK.

Part of the explosive growth surely must be down to the company having recently opened the site to new members--in the past it was restricted to people with college/university email addresses. That makes me wonder whether its growth will be sustainable in the longer term.

The way Facebook allows users to invite the entirety of their email address books in one click has definitely been used a lot lately. I'm not a high-volume Internet community type myself, but even I have had loads emails saying I've been added as a Facebook friend to other people's pages. (Each invite requires me to click in and approve the friendship, meaning more traffic for Facebook.)

When Google bought YouTube in 2006, there was a lot of speculation over whether Yahoo or a big media player would buy up Facebook. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he doesn't want to sell, but if this momentum keeps up beyond the 'signing up' stage, I won't be at all surprised if this actually happens.

Week in review: News Corp. and fiestas

(from the TC+M web site on Friday if you missed it...)

It's been another good week for big fish eating up smaller fish in the media world. This week that seemed to largely translate to big media giants consolidating smaller social media plays into their strategies.

On the same day that CBS snapped up the hipster online radio community last.fm for a relatively modest sum of $280m,, News Corp.'s online division, Fox Interactive, itself bought up two more social networking sites: the online photo organising site Photobucket and Flektor, a site that lets users create mashups, slide shows and other presentations of their user-generated content.

The two unknown-value deals will give News Corp.'s social networking sites, namely MySpace, another way of trying to monetise its still-growing user base.

Both sites are already popular with MySpace users who use them to incorporate graphics on their pages, so in a sense it was a matter of solidifying a relationship already in place.

It will mean that Fox will be able to embed the functionality of Photobucket and Flektor directly into its own site, which will make the experience easier for users.

But more importantly it helps the company consolidate any traffic that might be passing through Photobucket's and Flektor's services for its own financial gain.

This in fact was a touchy subject between Photobucket and MySpace only weeks earlier. MySpace had started blocking Photobucket usage when it said the image sharing site was using its service to encourage users to run ad-supported slideshows on their pages.

Now that MySpace owns the two sites, any potential ad revenue gained in such a way will be theirs to keep.

According to Fox, the two products will continue to operate as standalone entities and will still be able to be used on other sites like YouTube and Facebook.

(For a closer look at the Last.fm deal with CBS, you can read a blog entry I wrote on the day of the deal. There will also be a longer analysis, including an interview with one of the Last.fm founders, in the upcoming monthly issue of TC+M, out in two weeks).

Burritos in China
Saw an interesting item on the wires today about how Grupo Televisa, the largest broadcaster in Mexico, has done a deal with the Chinese government to export its reality TV shows and soap operas to the Mainland. Chinese broadcasters, like broadcasters in many other parts of the world, already dub Mexican programmes for their market, but this deal will let Chinese producers recreate the various shows for their own market.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. But what stands out about this to me is that despite the huge potential of the Chinese market, there seems to be a distinct dearth of content to fill the airwaves.

Back in Mexico, the Chinese government broadcaster CCTV will be providing a feed of its channel to Grupo Televisa, who will deliver it in its domestic market dubbed.

The two countries of China and Mexico may have more in common than previously thought, in addition to their tastes for telenovelas and raucous variety shows with mariachi bands. This week, the high court in Mexico struck down a ruling that effectively lets the country's two dominant TV companies, Grupo Televisa (70% of the market) and TV Azteca (30% of the market), to continue to stay on top. In fact, the CCTV deal shows that today there is an opening for smaller new channels to emerge, but it takes a deal with a big player to make it happen. Perhaps in the future you won't need a tie-up with one of the big-two to do this.

Facebook: a new social media ad model

Following on from Rob's post on the growth of Internet advertising, a lot of people have been noting how ad spend online is still wildly disproportionate to the amount of people surfing the net and spending time online.

One area this is particularly true is social networking, where sites like MySpace and Bebo are drawing in huge crowds but not the ad dollars to match it (although this is growing I hear).

Now one of their newer competitors, Facebook, is getting ready to initiate a new spin on how to promote brands and products on social networks: sell pages to partners like Amazon and Apple and Ebay (I guess...), where they can create portals to sell their wares, and then make it possible for Facebook members to embed into their pages links/portals/widgets to links to these. According to this article Facebook won't be taking a cut from the sales so presumably they will be charging a pretty penny for the privilege of accessing Facebook users (anonymously of course).

(I'm still waiting for a reply from Facebook about all this directly. Will post it here when/if I get it.)

From what I understand this isn't being done by the other sites yet but if the premium on these sites is their dedicated eyeball count, then this could be a good way of capitalising on it.

And it positions a social network like Facebook in a new position as a portal of sorts, like Google or Yahoo but more recommended.

MySpace moves up the age ladder

Is MySpace getting older and wiser?

Yesterday the News Corp.-owned social networking giant launched their new 'professional content' video service. (This is presumably where the News Corp./NBC Universal video will fit in once it is rolled out this summer.)

Of course most of MySpace's new video partners will be serving the 16-24 user base that makes up the bulk of MySpace members: Kush TV, LX.TV, Ripe TV, Octane TV, Flow, Young Hollywood and VBS.tv will be among the companies supplying content to its new lifestyle and news channels.

But other partners - National Geographic, the New York Times and Reuters - are definitely more synonomous with a distinctly older kind of consumer.

True, one of the sample segments from Reuters will be 'off-beat news stories from around the world' (and won't those be funny!) but there is every possibility that MySpace will tap more of what Reuters is known for--financial data and analysis--as (and if) the partnership develops.

The deal also gives companies like National Geographic and New York Times another way of trying to refresh their own demographic pools, which are of course getting older too.

Attila Gazdag, Euro head of Disney Internet, is gone

Just a short note to say that Attila Gazdag has resigned from Disney. Gazdag had been the vice president and managing director of the Walt Disney Internet Group in Europe, and has been with the company since 2001.

A spokesperson tells me that Gazdag's last day was Friday last week and that she does not know where he is going.

And it's not exactly clear why he left, either, although the Disney Internet Group is most certainly in a state of flux right now: Disney had a rude awakening last year when it realised that many youthful surfers out there were congregating around non-Disney web sites for their Internet entertainment. The company's currently in the middle of revamping its own home page, incorporating things like user-generated content, in order to try to win those kids back.

It's a little confusing how Disney organises (or rather, how it does not organise) its digital strategy overall--there is the Walt Disney Internet Group, there is Disney Online, and there are the web properties for all the different Disney subsidiaries such as ABC and the film studios; then there are different digital products sold online as well as through physical media. Reporting lines for all of this have never been completely clear.

The company is going to report its quarterly results on Wednesday, which may shed some more light on Disney's digital story.

Perhaps therein lies some answers for why Mr Gazdag is with Disney no longer.

Anyone out there with some info please get in touch with a comment below....