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Leading Social Networks
Internet users in each Asia Pacific market show different allegiances to the major social networks. While MySpace and Bebo have a strong presence in the Australian and New Zealand markets, Friendster and Xanga are prominent in Singapore and Hong Kong respectively. Facebook and Windows Live Spaces featured amongst the top five social networks in all four Asia Pacific markets in January 2008. Facebook has risen to hold approximately one third of visits in each Asia Pacific market.
The high engagement of users with social networks is also demonstrated by a relatively long average session duration. The average session times for the three leading players in Australia were MySpace 27 minutes 46 seconds, Facebook 21 minutes 15 seconds and Bebo 26 minutes 39 seconds. This is almost double the engagement levels compared to an All Categories industry average of 12 minutes 1 second in January 2008.
Information and Communication Channels
Interaction with Email Services and Search Engines is changing as users increasingly prefer to communicate with friends and source relevant information through Social Networks. The Hitwise Social Networks custom category experienced growth in the past 12 months in all Asia Pacific markets, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, increasing 61.99% and 88.54% respectively comparing February 2007 and January 2008.
Segmentation of Networks
Based on Hitwise Mosaic household demographics data in Australia, major Social Networks attract key differences in online audiences. For example, Facebook users are generally welleducated and affl uent, while Bebo attracts multi-cultural and family groups.
When Social Networks do exhibit an overlap in key audiences, it suggests that users are benefiting from complementary functionality. For example, LinkedIn and Facebook are both likely to attract urban professionals, suggesting that business-oriented users are maintaining profiles on both networks concurrently.
Measuring Campaigns
Applications on social networks that create interactive experiences for users have the ability to increase referral traffic to third-party websites, such as advertisers, or lift brand or product searches. Successful examples include the Free Rice charity application and the Broadband Speed Challenge by ZDNet Australia.
Social Graph
Social networks send traffic to many other second tier social networks. This wide dispersal of traffic from the major players illustrates the concept of the social graph, where users maintain profiles on many different websites.
Of the traffic that MySpace, Facebook and Bebo send to other Social Networks, more than 89% of their downstream traffic is sent to second-tier players.
Social networking websites are online communities of people who share interests and activities, and who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. They typically provide a variety of ways for users to interact, through chat, messaging, email, video, file-sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. Social networking is a mainstream activity with the leading social networks in Hitwise Asia Pacific markets typically ranking amongst the top 10 websites visited by Internet users. While MySpace, Facebook and Bebo are current leaders in this space, market dominance is by no means assured as new networks can rise quickly to grab the attention of fickle users. Geographical differences also come into play, with varying allegiances across Asia Pacific to the major social networks.
The below figure examines a Hitwise custom category of 40 leading social networking websites that have a core function of facilitating social connections. (It does not include networks specialising in video or photo sharing).
Facebook and Windows Live Spaces featured amongst the top five Social Networks in all four Asia Pacific markets in January 2008. Facebook has risen to hold approximately one-third of visits to Social Networks in each Asia Pacific market. In the past six months, Facebook has risen most rapidly in Singapore, growing 4.8 fold comparing August 2007 and January 2008.
MySpace was the leading Social Network in Australia accounting for 44.16% of visits to Social Networks visits in January 2008. Geographical differences were highlighted by the fact that Bebo dominated in New Zealand with 41.77% share, Friendster in Singapore with 41.99% and Facebook in Hong Kong with 37.72% share.
Friendster has maintained its loyal following in Singapore retaining the top position since February 2006; Facebook has been its strongest competitor since September 2007, now accounting for 30.41% share.
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