Hitwise Australia Social Networking Update October 2007

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Hitwise Australia Social Networking Update October 2007

Recent study reveals 114% increase in Australian visits to social networking websites;

MySpace continues to lead, with Facebook gaining market share.

Melbourne - October 18, 2007 - Today, Hitwise Australia, the leading online competitive intelligence service released insights into how Australians are interacting with social networking and chat websites.

Since 28 July 2007 through to the week ending 13 October 2007, Australian visits to over 6,000 websites in the Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat industry increased by 114%.

As of the week ending 13 October, 2007, 33.9% of Australian visits to the Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat industry went to Australian based social networking and chat websites, while 66.1% went to international websites. In addition, Australian internet users spent 20 minutes and 8 seconds on these websites, which is on average approximately 9 minutes longer than the time spent on other websites.

The top 15 social networking and chat websites visited by Australians week ending 13 October, 2007 are led by MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Bebo. While the top players have not changed dramatically over recent months, their market share of visits has.

While MySpace is clearly the industry leader over the past two and a half months, Australian visits to Facebook has increased by 293%, while the other main players remained relatively flat or slightly lost market share.

Interestingly, for the week ending 13 October, 2007, 6.21% of MySpace's Australian visits came from Facebook and after visiting MySpace, 3.98% of traffic went directly to Facebook. In contrast, 9.19% of Facebook's traffic came from MySpace and 5.76% of Facebook's traffic went directly to MySpace.

Recent demographic analysis using Hitwise Lifestyle reveals some interesting differences between Facebook and MySpace. Looking at the MOSAIC^TM behavioural and attitudinal segments that visit MySpace versus Facebook for the 12 weeks ending 13 October 2007 the following is revealed:

Compared to Facebook, MySpace attracts more middle-class Australian segments, such as 'Family Room' characterised as young families in growth corridors, and 'Domestic Appliance' who are generally, better-off families in core suburban and rural fringe locations.

In addition, a higher percentage of lower income consumer segments such as 'Community Challenge' are also attracted to MySpace.

In contrast, Australian visitors to Facebook are skewed to be from higher income groups such as 'Leading Lifestyles' and young and affluent singles found in consumer groups such as 'Fashionably Wired'.

Swing Comparison of MySpace versus Facebook, 12 weeks ending 13 October 2007

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.