According to a report released by comScore World Metrix, user-generated content (UGC) sites have seen rapid growth in the past year in the U.K.
The most popular online properties featuring UGC in the U.K. were Wikipedia sites, which ranked 16th overall in July 2006. This is a big jump from the 78th spot it had last July. Wikipedia sites saw a 253% growth in unique visitors, jumping from 1.85 million last July to 6.55 million this July.
MySpace.com was the second most popular UGC property in the U.K., which ranked 27th overall, a large increase from last year’s ranking of 89th. In terms of unique visitors MySpace.com realized a 467% increase from 913,000 last July to 5.17 million this July.
Piczo.com, an online community based on photo sharing and Web site building, ranked 43rd overall this year in the U.K., compared to its 91st ranking last year. Its unique visitors increased 393% from 820,000 last July to 4.05 million this July.
YouTube.com ranked 47th overall in the U.K. and was unranked last year. It had a unique audience of 3.92 million in July of 2006.
Bebo.com rounded out the top five most popular UGC properties in the U.K. with an overall ranking of 48th, an improvement from last year’s 90th spot. Its unique visitors jumped from 912,000 last July to 3.90 million this July.
Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said that “Many of the sites experiencing the fastest growth today are the ones that understand their audience’s need for expression and have made it easy for them to share pictures, upload music and video, and provide their own commentary, thus stimulating others to do the same. It is the classic network effect at work.”
The report also indicated that the leading UGC sites in the U.K. were more engaging than non-UGC sites. On average, the top five UGC sites garnered 4.2 average usage days per month compared to the 3.5 than non-UGC sites received. The top UGC sites also experienced longer periods of engagement with 79.9 average minutes per visitor compared to 33.2 for non-UGC sites. The top UGC properties also got more page views with visitors seeing an average of 217 pages, compared to the 52 average page views per visitor for non-UGC sites.
Source:
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