Commentary: Who's influencing consumption now? By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Apr 13, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- These days a couple of ways to get distribution on the Internet are to make friends with the kids on MySpace, and those prolific opinion writers in the blogosphere.
Perhaps this doesn't come as a surprise to those in Silicon Valley. Over the last six months, a number of startup founders, CEOs and venture capitalists have said to me that a good way to get their service noticed is to get someone on MySpace to start evangelizing.
Indeed, MySpace -- the explosively popular social network site owned by News Corp (NWS) -- represents the generation Y consumer -- those born between 1981 and 1995. At 57 million strong, this demographic is the largest consumer group in the history of the U.S., according to OnPoint. See OnPoint site.
In other words, MySpace, which saw 36 million unique visitors in March and 19.6 billion page views, can drive consumption habits across the Web.
The traffic numbers are starting to bear this out.
Apparently, someone at MySpace has been proselytizing about the virtues of Technorati, which is the de facto search engine for blogs. San Francisco-based Technorati claims to capture about 95% of the blogs in existence. (The other 5% of blogs not indexed are private.)
Traffic to Technorati doubled to 1.8 million unique visitors in March from 962,000 in February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Technorati CEO and co-founder David Sifry visited the MarketWatch studios earlier this week to explain why his service saw such explosive growth in traffic in a month's time.
Sifry said the traffic increases were due to the rise in blog popularity. Technorati now tracks 33.7 million blogs, about 60 times larger than the blogosphere three years ago. MarketWatch is helping to expand the blogosphere as Frank Barnako's blog was just launched this week.
The biggest drivers of traffic had always been the usual suspects, Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner's (TWX) AOL and Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN.
But according to Nielsen//NetRatings, nearly 15% of traffic from users logging on at home and going to Technorati came from MySpace blogs. In February, Technorati received no traffic references from MySpace, according to the Internet-traffic measurement company.
Given MySpace's significant audience base, any reference from MySpacers would give any service a nice boost.
YouTube has watched its traffic explode. In March, the video-hosting site saw 12.8 million unique visitors generating 486 million page views, which equated to the same number of page views to Google Video, NBC Universal, Walt Disney's (DIS) ABC.com, CBS Television combined. About 2% of YouTube traffic came from MySpace blogs. That's not a heck of a lot, but enough. Additionally, MySpace users are helping to create the videos. As of today, there are 5,378 videos tagged "MySpace." Other video and photo-sharing sites are also allowing their services to be easily integrated with MySpace in order to capture the MySpace generation. Go onto Slide.com, a photo-sharing site and you'll see a big banner that says: "Show off your pics on MySpace profile with Slide."
MySpacers could lead consumer trends, as long as News Corp keeps the technology robust enough to support their virtual lives. Here's an idea, why not start a MySpace consumer confidence index?
Now, before I'm accused of being hyperbolic, I do acknowledge that it's easier said than done.
Yahoo (YHOO) was once the place to go too.
Nonetheless, MySpace has the user today. So, there's much that can be offered to this virtual playground filled with eager experimenters and creators.
Services that specialize in areas such as health, business, or sports could create search boxes so that MySpacers can do specified searches in their space.
For instance, if someone is interested in trading stocks only, this would-be stock trader might want a little search box on his blog that only provides stock-market information.
MySpace started off as a place where would-be musicians could get noticed. It's not hard to imagine that others in that virtual world have other passions as well.
Imagine the possibilities?
Link to me please
Besides MySpace as a traffic driver, links have become the means to getting noticed as well.
Technorati's Sifry and I looked over the Technorati top 20 blogs. Boing Boing is No. 1 with 66,219 links from 20,223 sites. This site saw traffic jump to 760,000 unique visitors. Engadget is No. 2 and at No. 3 is PostSecret. Post secret has 64,307 links. It started off as a school project and a place where people could post secrets.
This blog fits the criteria of what makes a blog popular. The PostSecret blog writer is prolific and the subject matter is compelling, said Sifry. Being prolific and authoritative gets you an audience.
But there's more to it than just being a big mouth with an insatiable desire to share thoughts. It's about scratching someone's back so they can scratch yours.
"Getting even larger requires a lot of linking," he said. "If you "really want to drive distribution, you have to give it away," he said. For instance, many bloggers write mere snippets and link like crazy. Yes, I've taken note of many of them. They're considered the curators or synthesizers, said Sifry. If you link to someone, there is a higher probability that they will link back to you.
"Hyper-linking is a form of etiquette," said Sifry. "It's a way of tapping someone on the shoulder with a sign of respect."
Sign of respect, or an in-kind gesture? You decide.
'I'm the Google of... '
Last week, my column on search investments received a lot of attention. Ever since I quoted the founders of Truveo and Krugle referring to themselves as the Google of their respective specialties, I've received a number of e-mails from others who want to be Google, and maybe even better.
For instance, I received an e-mail with the slug: "Vertical search that's Smarter than Google." That came from someone at Ziff Davis Group alerting me to a new search engine focusing on the gaming space. This nameless search engine will be announced at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), to be held in Las Vegas in May.
Other search sites I was alerted to were Pixsy, a visual search site, Wandic.com, a search site for local search, and RedZee, a site that offers kid-safe Internet searches. Hmm. That could be interesting.
Meanwhile, Google finally got its voice patent granted. Bear Stearns analyst Bob Peck alerted me to the fact that Google was just granted a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. According to the patent office, "the voice patent provides search results from a voice search query."
Even though Google had tried to test this voice technology out several years ago, it has no plans on using that voice search technology any time soon, according to Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt. "Prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications," he said. Google also confirmed that it purchased the rights to a search technology developed by a 26-year-old PhD student at University of New South Wales. Read about the technology.
We're only 10 years into the commercialization of search. And, in the last five years 130 new search startups have been invested in by the venture community. I'm sure we're just getting started.
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