THOUGHTBEANS

Facebook, the darling of the social networking, is now the 2nd most popular Web site in the USA. It has surpassed Yahoo in Jan. Yahoo, once the gateway to the web, lost the No. 1spot to Google in February 2008 & is at 3rd place. At the rate facebook is growing, it may claim no 1 spot by the end of 2010.

Google – 147 million visitors,
Facebook – 133 million visitors
yahoo – 132 million visitors

Users spend a lot of time in Facebook with games like farmville, mafia war. Though twitter grabbed headlines with Iran election & other news, it has not been able to have an astronomical growth. Facebook recently introduced changes to its pages.

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook & AOl are the top Mobile internet brands in a report by Neilsen. Mobile internet is taking off in a big way with the smart phones. US is one of the biggest mobile internet markets. Also in the list are weather channel & CNN. This shows people are looking for news & weather related info. Surprisingly, AOL is a top Mobile brand. Mobile advertising is also taking off in a big way. Google’s nexus one phone is its entry into smart phone market. Google’s interest in Admob, mobile ad serving company, shows the importance of mobile internet market. Facebook’s Mobile top brand position comes from its strong 350 million members.

Some interesting links:
Jagermeister’s cool 3D website
Vodafone Turkey’s new campaign
Whitehouse iphone app

Bing, Microsoft’s Search engine, has been making a steady progress ever since it went online. Its search market share has increased & at the same time yahoo’s has been going down. Bing has made many improvements like Twitter deal, improving the maps & others. In the US market google has around 67% followed by Yahoo & MSN around 14.5% & 9.9%. Also in the global market google has a great market share. Also AOL & Ask.com are also in the top 5 spots in US. Microsoft has been on a tie up spree by providing for the Bing tool bar with several companies. Google is also moving into the mobile market now releasing its own phone & thereby tapping the huge mobile search market as well.

Internet has fuled a new generation of branding. Many online companies which were non existant 15 years back have developed a branding image more than the companies which have been existing for several decades. Some of the top US brands are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, & youtube. These brands have been able to develop the brand image due to factors like fan base (Apple), great products (Google & Apple), social networking (Facebook), Early entrants (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL), youtube (first mover advantage for video sharing). They have become a billion dollar brands. Wikipedia ranks in Google in top spot for many keywords making it a top site for anyone wanting the information. Some of these have also become world’s leading websites. One website which has built the brand quickly in recent days is Twitter. With its real time search & updates features, twitter has become a cool new brand discussed across the Mainstream media.

In October, Google & Bing have both gained search market share while yahoo lost the market share. Google’s search share climbed to 65.4% in Oct, up from 64.9% in September. Microsoft increased to 9.9% from 9.4%, while Yahoo down to 18% from 18.8%. Bing has been making great inroads into the search market with new features. Bing was the first to announce results from Twitter will be included in search & also the info fom Wolfram Alpha as well. Google has announced several features as well like twitter results in google, Search wiki. There has not been any major announcements from Yahoo recently about the improvements to its search. It is hightime yahoo takes a major surgery for its search business. It seems the marketing promotions taken out by Bing seems to have paid off. It would help if Bing launches some more products bearing the Bing brand name like customized pages, search wiki & others.

Yahoo has undergone a brand transformation over the last few months with redesigned home page & it’s you campaign . It’s Y!ou campaign has been aired over the TV several times. Microsoft had bid for yahoo last year & Yahoo’s CEO at that time had turned down the bid. Since then yahoo stock has been on a roller coaster & Carl Ichaan also came on board yahoo. Yahoo also replaced its CEO & the new CEO has gone for a brand transformation. It’s Y!ou campaign with the theme Internet is under new management, yours & its you has been featured several times. A $100 million marketing campaign to lift the brand value of Yahoo. However, the ad has not done much to increase the brand value.

In the beginning, time was spent on sites like Yahoo, MSN & Google. Then with the rise of Social networking sites like Facebook, youtube, there was a shift in the online visitors behaviour. With 3rd party applications on social networking sites, people are spending more time on Social sites. Google’s social site Orkut which has taken off well in Brazil & India has failed to take off in US. Twitter, facebook & youtube are the top sites in social arena now. Now google & bing have joined with Twitter to display the real time date from Twitter. Social media is a kind of Industrial revolution making the world into a global village. The balloon boy hoax which was a trending topic last week has become an internet sensation making more people spend time on social media sites & resulting in billions of dollars of lost productivity.

Ever wondered what are the top websites in India. Indian web traffic has been growing at a rapid pace due to increased broadband penetration & global websites are getting a huge chunk of Indian traffic. This shows a great opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs to harness the power of web & create websites. However, in the top 10 list only 2 are Indian sites: Rediff & Indiatimes. Remaining are global sites. India is also now the 3rd highest traffic driver for Twitter. It is surprising to see Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation website at the 20th spot. Top 10 sites are Google India, Google, Yahoo, Orkut, Facebook, youtube, Blogger, rediff India, Wikipedia & Indiatimes. With a high English speaking population, India is emerging as a top market for Internet firms.

Microsoft & yahoo have entered into a 10 year search deal. This will give MS the much needed tool for the competition against Google. Microsoft tried to acquire yahoo but was  unsuccessfull. Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has already making inroads in to the search market gaining market share. Yahoo after turning down the MS offer has been finding the going tough & was looking for best market opportunity. Though the deal will not give immediate windfall for yahoo. Yahoo’s new CEO did the deal in six months what her predecerrs could not. This will give the duo the much needed support to make dents in the lucrative online ad market. Bing is already making waves in the search engine market. Google has been releasing new tools to keep up to date with the competition.