Hitwise NZ Social Networking Update

'Bebo' leading social network and brand online

Auckland 16 January 2008 - According to Hitwise New Zealand, the leading online competitive intelligence service, Bebo continues to be the market leader in the Social Networking & Forums online industry with 16.87% share of visits for the week ending 5 January 2008. Facebook followed closely at second position with 14.2% share of visits.

Brand recognition of Bebo is extremely strong amongst New Zealand Internet users; 'bebo' was the top term out of 9,343,431 unique searches measured for the 24 weeks ending 5 January 2008, ahead of 'trademe' and 'youtube'. 'Bebo' was the leading search term for most of 2007.

The importance of Social Networking & Forums websites amongst New Zealand Internet users is indicated by their continued growth throughout 2007, reaching a 2-year market share high of 9.22% for the week ending 13 October 2007. The Search Engines category is now only marginally ahead of Social Networking & Forums, accounting for 10.09% share of visits compared to 8.28% share of visits respectively for the week ending 5 January 2008. Social Networking & Forums significantly outranked web-based Email services with 4.98% share, suggesting that users prefer social networks as a channel for communication.

Social Networking & Forums websites attract high user-engagement, with session times well above the online average. Bebo had an average session duration of 26 minutes and 22 seconds for the week ending 5 January 2008, compared to websites across all categories, which have an average of 11 minutes and 8 seconds. The average session time by New Zealand Internet users on Facebook was 17 minutes, 54 seconds and on MySpace it was 13 minutes and 54 seconds.

Hitwise Clickstream data indicates content areas of interest to social networking users. After visiting social networking websites, amongst the top 20 downstream industries to receive traffic for the week ending 5 January 2008 were News & Media, Shopping & Classifieds, Multimedia, Games, Photography, Education and Sports. Leveraging the content interests of users of social networks will become increasingly important for marketers as standards for data portability on the Internet become established.

Source: Hitwise New Zealand

For media queries contact Rheika Tompkins on +61 3 8530 2400 or email press.au@hitwise.com

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Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 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.

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