Fastest Growing News & Media Websites: Digg.com & Print - News & Media Post 1 of 3
In a series of three three posts, I will present some of the key findings from our forthcoming Hitwise UK Online News and Media report (request copy of report here). This first post will discuss the growth in visits to the category and list the fastest growing websites. The next two posts will be about Competition 2.0 and Blogs from Mainstream Media.
The News and Media parent category experienced 28% year on year growth in market share of UK internet visits in January. IT media was the fastest growing sub-category, up 57% year on year in January.
A list of the ten fastest growing News and Media websites (among the top 100 in January) is included below. Digg.com was the fastest growing website year on year in January among the top 100 News and Media websites, with its market share of UK internet visits up more than 5-fold. Digg.com was the #1 IT Media website in January 2007 and the #32 ranked News and Media website. Digg's growth is being fuelled by interest in video sharing and games, with 23% of downstream visits from Digg.com going to websites in the Entertainment industry.
Yesterday's announcement that the Financial Times has seen a 30% increase in online sales is good news for print media brands. I agree with the sentiments of PR blogger that online doesn't kill print media brands, and our data backs that up. Print media websites were among the fastest growing categories last year, keeping pace with the News and Media parent category with visits up 28% year on year in January. However, challenging times lie ahead as more and more consumers turn to nimble social media websites for news and analysis as we'll explore in the next post in this series on Competition 2.0.
