Page 306 - Electronic Commerce

Social Networking, Mobile Commerce, and Online Auctions

Millions of Average Time per Unique
Owner Unique Visitors Visitor per Month (H:MM)
Google 375 3:19
Microsoft 312 2:59
Facebook 277 7:44
Yahoo! 204 2:36
281
Wikimedia Foundation 142 0:19
Amazon.com 141 1:34
InteractiveCorp 132 0:12
eBay 132 1:28
Apple Computer 100 1:42
AOL, Inc. 86 2:51
Adapted from reports for August 2013 published by The Nielsen Company at http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/
insights/top10s/internet.html

FIGURE 6-4 Popularity and stickiness of leading Web sites
Leading sites often have more than 200 million unique visitors per month. The figure
also shows the average amount of time each visitor spends on the site each month (an
estimate of stickiness). The information in the figure is adapted from Nielsen reports and
shows sites grouped by owner (for example, the Apple Computer listing includes its
iTunes store; the Google listing includes YouTube; the Microsoft listing includes Microsoft
software support sites and the Bing search engine; and InteractiveCorp includes Ask.com,
Citysearch, Match.com, and Newsweek). Web sites that are social networking sites (such
as AOL and Facebook) or that include social networking elements (such as eBay, Google,
Microsoft, and Yahoo!) appear regularly on these lists.

Mixed-Revenue and Fee-for-Service Social Networking Sites
Although most social networking sites use advertising to support their operations, some
do charge a fee for some services. For example, the Yahoo! Web portal offers most of its
services free (supported by advertising), but it does sell some of its social networking
features, such as its Games All-Star Central package. Yahoo! also sells other features,
such as more space to store messages and attached files, as part of its premium e-mail
service.
Some advertising-supported social networking sites have followed the lead of Yahoo!
in a strategy called monetizing eyeballs or monetizing visitors. Monetizing refers to the
conversion of existing regular site visitors seeking free information or services into fee-
paying subscribers or purchasers of services. Sites that monetize visitors by charging them
always worry about visitor backlash. They can never be sure how many existing visitors
will pay for services that have been offered in some form at no cost. Most sites do not

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