Time For Business To Engage As Social Media Overtakes Search Engines In Australia
Those who think social networking, and Twitter in particular, are just trends take note of new figures from Hitwise who last week reported that more Australians used social networking than search engines during the Christmas 2009.
During the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time. While this looked like a short term lead, we are now seeing continued growth of Social Networking and Forums to now sit just 0.4% share behind Search Engines in week ending 16 January 2010.
In week ending 26 December 2009 Social Networking and Forums gained its highest market share for the year peaking at 14.8% on Christmas Day. Search Engines highest market share day of 2009 was Saturday 10 January at 14.5%.
The explosion of social networking usage in 2009, coupled with the news that search engines are indexing messages has made the likes of Twitter rival search engines as information gathering tools.
With news outlets like @breakingnews (who significance was illustrated when it was acquired by MSNBC.com) on Twitter and the rise of real-time citizen reporting – e.g. from the Iranian election protests or the Hudson plane crash – Twitter offers a distinctly different method of gathering news and information in real-time.
Further evidence of the significance of social networking comes from Google, Bing et al indexing messages from Twitter and Facebook continuing its drive to put all information into the public domain.
While the statistics from Hitwise show that social networking traffic was higher than search, they do not yet show that web users are shunning search to gather information over social media on a daily basis.
Christmas, the period of the statistical analysis, is a time when millions family and friends will communicate more making it the year’s peak time for social network traffic.
In week ending 26 December 2009 Social Networking and Forums gained its highest market share for the year peaking at 14.8% on Christmas Day. Search Engines highest market share day of 2009 was Saturday 10 January at 14.5%.
That the additional traffic spike takes social networking traffic above search engine, shows that ordinarily traffic levels are not hugely far apart and, as social networking continues to grow in numbers and evolve in usage, one can social networking to become even more of a rival to search in the future – as shown by other Hitwise research.
A daily pattern that has emerged over the past three months is Social Networking and Forums attracting increase share during the weekends, predominantly on Sunday. The first daily lead by Social Networking and Forums compared to Search Engines was on Sunday 15 November 2009, and the first full weekend was Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd November 2009.
Businesses take note, social networking is not a trend, won’t go away and will be important to you – maybe it is time to engage with the millions using social networking and social media sites?
