Although age demographics are changing on the Internet, the top five sites
overall remain the AOL Time Warner Network, the
Microsoft sites, Yahoo!, Lycos and Excite.
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The two fastest growing online age groups
during the past year are 18 to 24-year-olds
and people over 55, according
to a report released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix.
The New York City-based research firm said
that between April 2000 and April 2001,
the number of Netizens age 55 and over
grew by 33 percent, while the number
of 18 to 24-year-olds online grew by 32 percent.
Overall Web usage grew by 19 percent during the same period.
Jupiter said that although 25 to 34-year-olds comprise the
largest single age group online, collectively 18 to 24-year-olds
and the over-55 crowd outnumbered
the 25 to 34-year-olds by 5.5 million in April 2001.
"These rapidly increasing age groups, which often have more
leisure time than other demographic segments, are driving
fundamental shifts in the digital media landscape," said
Media Metrix president Doug McFarland.
According to McFarland, while the college-age
demographic has long been a sought-after segment, Web
marketers and advertisers should remember that
people over 55 have "strong buying
propensity and potential for sheer audience size."
Top Newcomers
Also during April, a pair of bargain hunting sites
Savingsfinder.com
and Bargainandhaggle.com
made their first appearances on Jupiter's traffic ratings list.
Savingsfinder.com debuted
with 1.17 million unique visitors and
Bargainandhaggle.com pulled in with 813,000 uniques.
Other top newcomers for the month include a NetIdentity
front page, TheGourmet.com,
with 2.1 million unique visitors and
EllisIslandRecords.org,
a site offering genealogy records, with 1.9 million. InfospaceHosting.net also
made its debut on the list with 1.3 million visitors.
Another newcomer, Surfsufari.com, which offers Web searching tools,
came in with 1.2 million unique visitors.
The top five sites in terms of overall traffic, however, were the usual fare:
the AOL Time Warner Network, the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) sites, Yahoo!, Lycos and Excite.
Seasonal Reasons
The approach of summer also brought out the
ice cream lovers -- Baskinrobbins.com
debuted as a Jupiter newcomer with 983,000 unique visitors.
Jupiter also said that traffic to flower, gift, and greeting card
sites grew signficantly from 16.5 million unique visitors in March to 20.1
million in April. According to Jupiter, the increase was likely due to
the Easter and Passover holidays.
Napster's Fall
The April traffic report from Jupiter included droppers as well as gainers.
The audience measurement firm said that
traffic to digital-download music site
Napster fell from a peak of 16.9 million unique visitors in
February to 12.2 million in April. The site also fell in the
rankings, dropping five places to No. 19.
A March report
by Webnoize found that Napster
use dropped by 25 percent after a federal court order prompted
the file-swapping site to begin filtering out copyrighted music.
Traffic to Bearshare.com, another file-swapping site, also fell
during April, according to Jupiter. The site's number of
unique visitors decreased from 520,000 in March to 247,000 in
April.
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