Media, reality TV sites favorites in June

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Half of the Web sites with the biggest audience gains in June were media sites, including music-copying site Napster.com, and CBS.com, which drew visitors to sites on CBS television's "Survivor" and "Big Brother" reality TV shows, according to a report released Tuesday. Each of the sites included in the top 10 increased its audience by at least 775,000 visitors from May to June, representing a total of 14 million Web users, said Nielsen//NetRatings, the Internet audience measurement service of Nielsen Media and NetRatings Inc.

The media sites among the top 10 were Napster.com, Real.com, Ugo.com, CBS.com and NetBroadcaster.com, the report said. "The consumption of rich media content in the form of audio, video and mixed media has risen considerably, accounting for significant growth in Internet activity," said T.S. Kelly, director of Internet media strategies at NetRatings. "As we've seen, people are flooding to sites such as CBS.com or BigBrother2000.com, using the Internet as a supplemental entertainment medium to television."

Kelly told Reuters that audience traffic on CBS' "Big Brother" site and America Online Inc.'s BigBrother2000.com site indicated that viewer interest in the program, which shows 24-hour streaming video of 10 men and women living in a small house, waned considerably following its July 5 initial launch.

But he said that following the vote to banish two of the occupants on Thursday, July 13, traffic surged on the two sites.

"After the first few days the uniqueness kind of wore off," said Kelly, but after the banishment vote, traffic returned.

"What I'm suggesting is that we could be seeing some kind of cyclical process in this kind of content," he added. "You'll see a big spike and then a cooling off and then a big spike again."

Among Internet gateways, Nielsen//NetRatings said Yahoo! Shopping attracted 5.8 million unique home-based visitors last month, equal to just under 7 percent of all Internet users in June. AOL's Shopping Channel drew more than 3.4 million and AltaVista's shopping area drew 2.6 million unique visitors, while Microsoft's MSN shopping section engaged 1.2 million shoppers.

"Previously, portals served as large directories that helped users find places to go on the Internet," said Lisa Ann Strand, senior Internet analyst at NetRatings. "These home bases now serve as communities offering their own content, services and tools to help enrich a user's Web experience."

The report said AOL Web sites were the most-visited properties last month for people surfing the Internet from home, with 48.1 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo! at 44.8 million and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, at 33.1 million. Those using the Internet from work favored Yahoo!, at 21.3 million, followed by AOL, at 19.5 million, and MSN, with 17.7 million.

Responding to Microsoft's claim on Monday that its MSN Internet service had become the No.1 Internet destination worldwide, with 201 million unique users, Kelly said Nielsen//NetRatings does not currently do an aggregate worldwide count of Internet traffic, so he could neither confirm nor refute the number.

"They're doing some type of methodology," he said. "Both MSN and Yahoo! are the torch leaders. They're the big worldwide brands.

"MSN numbers are coming from their server side, while Yahoo's got their own reporting numbers. Right now there's that question in everyone's mind: What's the right number? It's quite possible that they're seeing those numbers."

Nielsen//NetRatings is the audience measurement service of Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc. It collects real-time data from more than 65,000 panel members in the United States consisting of 57,000 at-home users and 8,000 at-work users.

Worldwide, Nielsen//NetRatings, in partnership with ACNielsen eRatings.com, tracks the Internet use of more than 150,000 people.

Top 10 Biggest Audience Gainers, May-June, 2000 (Home)

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Expedia Travel -- discount airfare, flights, hotels, cars, vacation packages, maps
Magazineoutlet.com
Napster
Real.com - RealPlayer and RealJukebox
UGO.com
AltaVista - Search
CBS.com
NetBroadcaster.com
B L U E S T R E A K
Freestation.com

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