Studies Track Changing Use of Internet

US online radio audiences increased 177% in the last year, according to the first figures from the joint Arbitron and comScore measurement service. Meanwhile, Nielsen//NetRatings says that community web sites such as Friends Reunited and MySpace are now visited by more than half the UK Internet population every month.

Charter subscribers to the Arbitron/comScore Media Metrix service were Yahoo!'s LAUNCHcast Radio, AOL's Radio@AOL Network, and Microsoft's MSN Radio and Windows Media Network. Between October 2004 and October 2005, the number of people who tuned to these networks during an average quarter hour on a weekday increased by approximately 177% (from 334,000 to 926,000).

Live365 joined the ratings in January 2005, and experienced a 127% increase over the next ten months. Clear Channel's online radio station, which began monitoring in June 2005, recorded a 33% increase.

The service also measures the number of different people who listen to a network during a particular daypart. The three original subscribers saw a 63% increase (from 2.2m to 3.6m) in the number of different people listening during a weekday.

The comScore Arbitron Online Radio Ratings service is based on 200,000 US members of the comScore global consumer panel. Using proprietary technology, comScore passively and continuously captures the online radio listening behavior of these panelists.

The two companies are online at www.arbitron.com and www.comscore.com

The Nielsen//NetRatings research found that member community sites account for more than 57 million page views every day in the UK. Friends Reunited is the most popular, with over 1.8m unique visitors each month. It is followed by Blogger (1.65m visitors), bebo (1.53m) and MySpace (1.37m).

Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, says: 'Whilst most of the talk about the future of the web revolves around which of the giant media companies will win the battle to enable people to watch TV through the Internet, a revolution of more immediate substance is already underway. The future of online to the young is about what the Internet is best at - communicating and interacting - not watching TV.'

He adds that the way the sites bring people together has 'fundamentally shifted, perhaps even created, the way in which new micro-societies are being formed and relate to each other'.

Nielsen//NetRatings is online at www.netratings.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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