Social networking sites swarm into Hitwise's Top 20 UK brands

Online intelligence firm, Hitwise, has published its list of the UK's top twenty brands most searched for on the internet.

Perhaps the most striking feature is the number of social networking sites that have made it into the list compared to 12 months ago - with the highest entry at number two coming from Bebo.

In September 2005, Faceparty, sat alone at number 14.
By September 2006 Faceparty has dropped to number 20 (itself interesting) but it has been joined by Bebo (no. 2), MySpace (no. 5) and YouTube (no 12).

Bebo is the success story in the findings. It's a site hardly anyone under a certain age has heard of, but it has gone from nowhere to being nearly the UK's most searched for brand.

If we include other web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia and perhaps Google Earth(?) then over a quarter of the current top 20 most searched for brands in the UK is social media.

Antony Mayfield has posted about similar data from Hitwise's Heather Hopkins showing just how close Bebo is knocking ebay off the top slot.

2006: the year social networking came of age?

Cross-posted to Greenblog