Web monopoly is in your face
The Age
Friday November 20, 2009
Facebook's dominance is forcing out rivals, writes Paul McIntyre. THE Facebook juggernaut has claimed the scalp of AOL Time Warner's $US850 million ($A914 million) acquisition of Bebo, with the social media site tipped to shut down its Australian operation before Christmas as part of a global retreat and rethink.Bebo's woes follow the troubles Facebook has inflicted on News Corp's one-time darling MySpace, which has essentially been forced to reposition itself as a leader in the online music area and allow Facebook to dominate the service of broader social networking.Australians, unlike many other markets, have rapidly allowed Google and Facebook a near-monopoly position in online search and social networking.The extent of Facebook's reach in Australia €” it now accounts for 29 per cent of all time spent online by Australians €” has seen research group Nielsen define the trend as Facebook Time and Non Facebook Time."It's just phenomenal," said Nielsen Online's director of analytics, Mark Higginson. "Every time I run those numbers I have to double check. Australians are spending nearly a third of all their time browsing the internet on Facebook alone."In October, Australian users spent 27.2 hours browsing online and 7.55 hours of the total was sucked up by Facebook. MySpace managed just 39 minutes and Twitter 17 minutes.In local figures released for the first time yesterday, Facebook said its Australian users in October had uploaded 80 million pictures and written 32 million wall posts and 45 million status updates."Traditionally Australia looks to the rest of the world in terms of who leads the internet and how stuff develops, but in social media we are leading everyone else in the amount of time we are spending there," Mr Higginson said.According to Nielsen NetView for October, Facebook's unique audience was 8.1 million, followed by YouTube on 5.8 million, Wikipedia (5.2 million), Blogger (3.1 million) and Yahoo!7 Answers with 2.5 million. MySpace was steady on 2.3 million users while Bebo lagged well behind on 358,000.Bebo's local boss, Francisco Cordero, refused to confirm or deny the closure of the Australian operation, saying he was under instructions to refer media queries to a global communications spokesperson in London, who did not respond to queries.However, Bebo has already started telling Australian partners of its exit, which is due in part to Facebook. Bebo has appealed mainly to teen users but its bigger rival appears to be muscling in on the younger crowd too."I just really can't say much about that," Mr Cordero said. "Bebo didn't compete with Facebook, it was really only MySpace but now Facebook is reaching across all demographics."Facebook's Australian boss, Paul Borrud, said the site's fastest growing user base was people aged over 35 although he would give no details. "The growth is very strong there," he said.
© 2009 The Age
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