2009: The Winners and Losers

Image credit: Creative Common Attribution: webtreats

Twitter bigger then Amazon

2009 was most certainly the year of Twitter and in the UK it is now bigger then internet superstar Amazon. Twitter quickly gained popularity at the beginning of the year when celebrities such as Stephen Fry started using and talking about the service. The service has become so popular that now even some beds have a twitter account and will tweet out a “Frenzy Index” when their owners are doing you know what.

LinkedIn bigger then Myspace

2009 has been a good year for LinkedIn, so much so that it is now more popular then Myspace (at least in the UK). Myspace the former social networking king has seen its visitor numbers continue to tumble, while business networking site Linkedin has gone from strength to strength. Myspace has seen its daily visitor numbers fall from 300,000 at the beginning of the year down to 80,000 at the start of December, whilst LinkedIn has seen strong growth signing its 50 millionth member in October.

Facebook bigger the Yahoo!

Yahoo had a difficult year in 2009 and has seen its search traffic drop from 19.3% (in the US) at the start of the year to 14.4% in October, during the same period Google grew its US share from 70.3% to 73.6%. Meanwhile Facebook has gone from strength to strength and in September hit the 300 million user mark, up from 250 million in July and 200 million in April. In the UK Facebook now accounts for 1 in every 7 pageviews (14.5%).