Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Google keeps gaining search market share in the U.S., but its global dominance is not as great as previously indicated.  Last night, comScore released its search market share and query growth numbers for July and Lehman Brothers reported the numbers in a note this morning. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/21/google-takes-us-search-market-share-from-yahoo-in-july-baidu-now-third-largest-search-engine-in-the-world-comscore 8/21)

Company—–July search share—Change from June, 2008

Google:                    61.9                           +0.4

Yahoo:                     20.5                            -0.4

AOL:                          4.5                           +0.2

Microsoft:                  8.9                             -0.3

Ask:                           4.2                           +0.1

(Below) Sure, Comcast wants to provide you with a portal for finding online video (cough Fancast cough cough).  They just don’t want you WATCHING too much online video.  Riiiiiiiight.

Comcast has come up with a new remedy for keeping bandwidth hogs from slowing down the network for everyone. The MSO plans to penalize them by slowing down their connections to a crawl for a period of 10 to 15 minutes, according to Bloomberg, after which their connections would return to normal. Only this time the company promises not to discriminate against users based on the application they’re using. (Comcast formerly blocked users from accessing BitTorrent, which got it into trouble with the FCC.) The only problem with this approach is that users watching video from legitimate sites will also be affected, whether they’re streaming free TV episodes from ABC.com or watching a movie from Netflix. (Cynopsis 8/21)

Hulu, the online-video joint venture launched in March by NBC and News Corp., is rising to the top in Web video rankings. Available only in the United States, Hulu is now interviewing people for product managers and director-level positions to make its first international move. (Iwantmedia 8/21, http://gigaom.com/2008/08/20/hulu-getting-ready-to-go-international 8/20)

Facebook plans to roll out more social advertising schemes that employ users’ friends as pitchmen. For example, if a Facebook user receives a newsfeed from a distant friend who “totally loved ‘Dark Knight,’ it’s probably because Warner Bros. paid to have it broadcast.” (Iwantmedia 8/21, http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/08/your-facebook-n.html 8/20)

Disney launching a social network doesn’t sound like anything new, but this time it’s catering to parents.  Yesterday, Disney’s Internet unit introduced DisneyFamily.com, a social network for parents to create a profile, swap advice, get cooking tips, and clip coupons. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10021218-93.html 8/20)

Yahoo Buzz, the new social news site from Yahoo, may pose a threat to social news pioneer Digg, observers say. Yahoo, which is opening Buzz to all publishers, says that that site is attracting 5 million users. Buzz could impact Digg’s potential acquisition value. (Iwantmedia 8/21, http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9113044 8/20)

Ebay lowered its up front listing fees for fixed price items by as much as 70% to compete with other online auction sites. Beginning Sept. 16 sellers pay 35 cents to list fixed price items and just 5 cents for “Buy It Now” fixed priced listings in the media category (books, DVDs, video games, music.) (Cynopsis 8/21)

The Olympic marathon being run over web traffic is being won down the stretch by Yahoo not NBC, according to the latest Nielsen online data. More than halfway through the games Yahoo has steadily picked up steam to average 4.7 million unique visitors vs. NBC’s 4.2 million, through Monday. Data shows that traffic to NBCOlympics.com peaks at noon (during workers lunch break, when folks are normally watching episodes of The Office.) (Cynopsis 8/21)

Table 1: Unique Audience (000) to Olympics-related Sites, ranked by average daily UA Name
Aug. 8       Aug. 13          Aug. 18      Daily Average
1.Yahoo Olympics 1,477         7,087             5,264           4,726
2.NBC Olympics    2,664         4,908             4,869           4,269
3.AOL Olympics       395         1,615                898           1,321
4.SI Olympics          293         1,014                502             704
5.ESPN Olympics      273            765               678             676
6.Beijing2008.cn      429            552                345            515
7.NY Times Olympics341            801                314            461
8.USA Today Olym.  280            299                167            239
Source: Nielsen Online, NetView Custom Analysis
*Daily data may fluctuate because of smaller sample sizes used to project daily audience sizes

Panel-based research firm Hitwise created a new category to measure top visits to the top 30 U.S. cable network TV show websites. As with broadcast show sites, the list is broken down by market share and excludes sports and pay sites. And because young users dominate much of the traffic on the web (5 of the top 10 sites were Cartoon Network shows), Hitwise created a separate list eliminating children’s programming from the equation.  (Cynopsis 8/21)

Top Visited US Cable Network TV Show Sites (Week ending Aug. 16, 2008)
Rank   Network                   Website                        Market Share of Visits
1     Cartoon Network      Drama Island                                17.67%
2     Cartoon Network      Ben 10: Alien Force                         4.49%
3     Nickelodeon            Spongebob                                     4.02%
4     ABC Family             Secret Life of the Am. Teen               3.97%
5     Comedy Central       South Park                                     3.35%
6     Cartoon Network      Chowder                                        2.70%
7     MTV                      America’s Best Dance Crew                2.46%
8     Cartoon Network      Foster’s Home for Im. Friends             2.36%
9     BET                       106 & Park                                      2.14%
10    Cartoon Network      Flapjack                                          2.10%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise

Top Visited US Cable Network TV Show Sites - Excluding Children’s Programming (Week ending Aug. 16, 2008)
Rank   Network                Website                             Market Share of Visits
1     ABC Family              Secret Life of the Am. Teen             7.84%
2     Comedy Central        South Park                                   6.62%
3     MTV                       America’s Best Dance Crew             4.87%
4     BET                        106 & Park                                   4.22%
5     CNN                        Lou Dobbs Tonight                        2.28%
6     Fox News                O’Reilly Factor                               2.16%
7     USA Network            Monk                                           2.12%
8     Fox News                On the Record with Greta                 2.07%
9     A&E                       Intervention                                   2.06%
10    BET                        Baldwin Hills                                   2.05%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise