Aust, NZ Visits to Faceboook Increase

Australian and New Zealand Online Visits to Facebook Dramatically Increase Brand Awareness; Email Services Drive Traffic

Melbourne and Auckland, 9 July, 2007 - Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service today announced that Internet users in Australia and New Zealand are increasingly taking interest in the social networking website, Facebook (www.facebook.com).

While MySpace in Australia and Bebo in New Zealand are the clear leaders in the space, within the Net Communities and Chat industry as visited by Australians, Facebook grew by 273% between the weeks ending April 14 and June 30, 2007. Amongst New Zealand Internet users, Facebook grew by 246% in the Net Communities and Chat industry within the same time period.

Market Share of Visits to Myspace and Facebook among Net Communities and Chat Websites in New Zealand, week ending June 30, 2007.

Market Share of Visits to Myspace and Facebook among Net Communities and Chat Websites in Australia, week ending June 30, 2007.

Amongst Australian Internet users, MySpace, Facebook and Bebo all appeared in the top 5 within the Net Communities and Chat industry during the month of June 2007, yet Myspace dominated with a market share of visits 29.9%, followed by Bebo with 6.03% share, and Facebook with 2.96%. Similarly, during the same time period amongst New Zealand Internet users these websites appeared among the top 5 in the Net Communities and Chat industry, with Bebo holding 19.72% of the market share of visits, followed by MySpace 7.11% and then Facebook with 3.35%.

Searches Increase for the Facebook Brand – Brand Awareness and Product Demand Revealed

Amongst Australian Internet users, traffic to the ‘Net Communities and Chat’ industry from searches for the term ‘facebook’ increased by 93% in June, 2007. In New Zealand, searches for the facebook brand sending traffic to the industry increased by 100% for the same period.

According to Tessa Court, Chief Marketing Officer of Hitwise, “an increase of searches for a brand is a great indicator of an increase of overall brand awareness amongst consumers. Based on Hitwise search term data, it is clear that the facebook brand is gaining momentum amongst Australian and New Zealand Internet users.”

Facebook’s newly added applications, such as the ability for users to add songs and video to their profile, have also played a part in the increasing interest in Facebook. Hitwise data shows that among the top 30 search term variations for Facebook were terms including ‘facebook applications’, ‘facebook layouts’, ‘facebook quizzes’, and ‘facebook apps’, during the 4 week period ending 30 June 2007.

Weekly Search Term Share of Traffic for search term ‘Facebook’.

Australian Audience Engagement – MySpace Leads and Facebook Gains Momentum

Analysing the average time spent on a website provides an indication of audience engagement. Hitwise Australia data reports that for the week ending 30 June 2007, visitors spent the greatest amount of time on Myspace, with an average of 28.5 minutes, followed by Bebo (28.2 minutes) and Facebook (16.5 minutes). Yet between weeks ending 14 April 2007 – 30 June 2007, Facebook experienced the greatest increase in average visit time, with an increase of 2.38 minutes.

Key Traffic Drivers to Facebook –More Referrals from Email and Competitors vs. Search

Amongst Australian Internet users, the most popular upstream websites visited prior to Facebook were Hotmail (18.8%), MySpace (9.8%) and Google Australia (9.1%), for week ending 30 June 2007. Comparatively, during the same period MySpace received most of its traffic from Google Australia (23.45%) and Hotmail (11.82%), with Facebook directing only 0.81% of traffic to MySpace. This indicates that a larger proportion of Facebook’s traffic is generated from peer networking and offering interest, versus direct traffic generation tactics such as search marketing.

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About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise’s patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

ENDS

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