Is Photobucket the new MySpace?
How many of you have ever heard of Photobucket never mind actually visited their web site? In the photo sharing space, Photobucket is like MySpace is in social networking. According to Hitwise, in September 2006 Photobucket received 8 times the amount of traffic than it nearest competitor.
What is Photo Sharing?
Photo sharing sites like Photobucket, Imageshack and Slide are filling a need created by the explosion of sites like MySpace (another example of the MySpace halo effect). As the amount of user generated content on blogs and social networking sites increased, there became a need for a service that would allow users to simply paste a line of HTML code onto their social network profiles, personal websites or blogs that will display the image on the website.
Photo Sharing Numbers
The Hitwise data provides some great insight into the state of the photo sharing market.
- Photobucket is the clear leader in image hosting, with its market share of Internet visits in September 2006 more than eight times greater than its nearest photo hosting competitor, Imageshack. The market share of visits to Photobucket has increased by 43% from March to September 2006, sending it to a rank of number 34 among all Internet domains in September 2006.
- Slide has emerged in the past six months to become one of the most visited photography websites, with its market share of visits increasing by over 1300% from March to September 2006. The website enables users to create slideshows of their photographs and easily post them to pages on websites like MySpace, Xanga, Live Journal, and Piczo.
- Photobucket, Slide, and Imageshack receive the majority of their traffic from MySpace, as users post images and links on their profile pages. In September 2006, 57% of upstream traffic to Photobucket came directly from MySpace. MySpace accounted for 51% of upstream traffic to Imageshack and 77% of upstream traffic to Slide in September 2006.
With the cross-pollination between the photo sharing sites and the social networking sites there exists tremendous marketing opportunities for marketers in the photo sharing market who are interested in reaching the MySpace crowd.
What about Flickr?
The question you probably have been asking, is what about Flickr? Unlike with Photobucket and Slide, users need to go to Flickr to view pictures that members have uploaded. While a subtle difference, it is an important one and one that separates Flickr from Photobucket.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Nov 14th, 2006
