There has been a lot of talk about the “long tail” of the internet. In December we decided to investigate various attributes of the size of the internet and walked away with two primary conclusions:

• The internet is constantly expanding. In 2006 Compete’s panel visited over 5M unique websites, representing an increase of 77% since 2001.
• The expansion of the internet is not compromising the growth of larger sites – in fact, the larger sites are getting bigger, attracting more visitors and interaction than ever before.

But what about the middle? What we refer to as “The Torso” or sites attracting over a million visitors a month. How many sites are breaking this threshold and how fast is The Torso growing?

In Q1 of 2007, there were 1,718 sites attracting over 1M visitors (U.S.). This represents a 458% increase since 2001. This sets the five year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of “The Torso” at 18.6%. By this time next year The Torso will be comprised of ~2,050 sites!

So who broke the million visitor threshold between Q1 ’06 – Q1 ’07?

Noteworthy additions to The Torso:

• Digg.com: broke the million visitor barrier in April ’06. Digg’s growth continues to impress and as of April ’07 is attracting over 15M visitors each month.
• eMusic.com: EMusic is the I-Tunes of the indie-music labels. I have been a member for years. The songs are considerably cheaper than I-Tunes, no DRM and the community is great at finding talented, but undiscovered artists.
• Foreclosure.com: A natural side effect of the recent real estate boom. Lets hope the growing popularity of the site is not indicative of a real estate crash.
• Gather.com: The social network with a brain is beginning catch on among the adult populous.
• “My” sites: There were “17” sites that broke the million visitor threshold whose domain name began with “my”. Example: mybloglog.com, mygirlyspace.com, myspacestop.com, myview.com, myhotquiz.com… (I’ll stop now).

I am a die-hard Pandora enthusiast. I love being exposed to new music that I don’t hear on mainstream radio, and I enjoy being able to fine-tune my channels to play music that would interest me the most. However, my listening days may be coming to an end, due to a ruling that could put Pandora out of business.

Web radio is fighting back against possible fee increases of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) that may cripple the industry. The ruling, announced earlier this month, imposes a yearly royalty rate increase set “per performance” from 2006 to 2010. This could be severely detrimental to small web broadcasters, who claim that it could exceed their total revenues. In a WSJ article, the co-founder of Pandora states that if the ruling stands, his company may cease to exist.

Pandora has had some success this year in growing its site visitation by an average of 10% each month. With over 150% growth in unique visitors last year, Pandora’s popularity may come with a steep price. The CRB ruling also indicates that there is a $500 minimum fee “per channel” per year. The ambiguous definition of a “channel” puts websites which offer limitless customized “channels”, like Pandora, in a precarious position.

Continue reading “The Biggest Threat to Web Radio” »

February was a great month for advertising and marketing experts. They got to sit and watch the Super Bowl, like the rest of us, then publicly rail against their colleagues and potential clients for creating such horrible commercials. Some of the most damaging criticism was reserved for CareerBuilder.com, which ran a series of ads featuring a world where “Lord of the Flies” meets “The Office”. The reaction of the experts was so lackluster that, according to a recent CNN.com article , the agency responsible for creating the ads lost the account:

The company’s new ad campaign for this year’s Super Bowl, which substituted its lovable monkeys with an office as the jungle motif, flopped. The ads were rated poorly in several post-Super Bowl commercial reviews.

CareerBuilder subsequently decided to put its ad account up for review, a decision that enraged Chicago ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, the firm that not only created the new ads but was also responsible for the highly popular CareerBuilder chimp ads. Cramer-Krasselt wound up resigning the CareerBuilder account rather than go through a review.

But did the CareerBuilder ads really flop? As the final seconds of Super Bowl XLI ticked away, Compete invited thousands of our members to participate in an online survey to gauge the effectiveness of the real reason the game was played — the ads. Within 24 hours we had collected responses from over 1000 viewers. We tested their level of recall for several of the ads. Here’s what we found regarding CareerBuilder:

Continue reading “CareerBuilder’s Super Bowl Ads: Flop or Not?” »

Well, I have to admit I don’t send packages very often and when I do I usually use the US postal service. So on September 12 I had to send out a package to New Jersey and like I normally do I walked to the post office, waited in line and then handed the teller my package. I paid the cheapest amount necessary and I walked out. My job was done. Except this package was my wife’s bride’s maid dress for her twin sisters wedding in 2 weeks. As I was walking out of the Post Office, I began to wonder if I should have paid the extra couple of bucks to get it there sooner, if it will get there at all and if I should have gotten insurance. Nah. Don’t packages always get to their destination?

It’s now Friday 9/29 and after 2 weeks of calling, yelling and apologies (to my wife), the package that I thought would absolutely get to its destination, is back at my Boston apartment safe and sound. It somehow became lost in route from Boston to Jersey. I appreciate the efforts of the US Postal Service, but from now on I’m using either UPS or FedEx…maybe even DHL. With my amateur status in package sending, I wanted to look at how many people are much savvier than me and are using UPS.com and FedEx.com. Below is a chart showing people visiting UPS.com and FedEx.com for the past six months. Why couldn’t I be like the 14 million people per month who use Federal Express or UPS?

To most parents, this is the best time of the year. Unfortunately, to many scholarly children, this can be the worst time of year.

Moms and Dads everywhere begin to make sure their kids are prepared for the upcoming school year by taking them for a little “back-to-school” shopping. Most kids dread that back to school trip to the mall and would rather be doing anything else…even cleaning their room. So what have retailers done to make back to school shopping easier? First, with online shopping, parents no longer have to pack up their Honda Odyssey and spend a fortune on gas to get to the mall anymore. Second, the large retailers have made back-to-school supplies front and center on their sites throughout the summer so parents and kids can find exactly what they need come this fall. Target has a great section on their website dedicated to college aged kids going off to College. While Walmart has a great section dedicated to younger, grammar school shoppers. In July, Target was welcoming over 20 million people to their site and Walmart was rolling back the prices for over 21 million people!

As the large retailers battle it out, a newly redesigned Toysrus.com has launched and really created some noise in July. Site traffic is up over 341% (June to July) and over 4.9 million people are visiting to find a great new back-pack and Kiss lunch box. Actually, I’m dating myself, it’s probably some American Idol on all the lunch boxes these days…

Once upon a time there was a cable channel that only showed music videos, and some say they were responsible for saving the music industry in the 80’s. That channel was called MTV, MUSIC Television. But sometime in the early 90’s they abandoned videos in favor of their own programming (Real World, Road Rules, etc.) and the “M” in MTV became less and less significant.

Into the void stepped Fuse, a cable station that is “dedicated to music all the time with videos, concerts and programming that is influenced by the viewers for the viewers”.

The channel’s website, fuse.tv, had nearly 900,000 visitors in July, an increase of 55% over June. Most of that lift can be attributed to interest in one of Fuse’s most popular shows, the Pants Off Dance Off. Hosted by Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie on Full House, the show features viewers of all body types, genders, and persuasions, doing strip teases while their favorite videos play in the background.

The performances on the show are edited for broadcast, so you never quite see the dancers au-natural (a blessing, in many cases). And while the website blurs out the truly naughty bits, it does show more skin than the television show. It might not be work-safe, but it’s worth a visit – where else can you see hotties, dwarves, and old people cutting loose and letting it all hang out?