Yahoo still on top, but web users flocking to MySpace

NEW YORK - Online hangout MySpace.com has overtaken Yahoo Inc.'s email gateway as the single most-visited US website, although Yahoo's network of sites retains a broader audience, according to a report issued on Tuesday.

According to internet traffic measurement firm Hitwise, News Corp.'s MySpace.com accounted for 4.46 per cent of all US internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.

However, Yahoo's top three destinations -- Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo.com home page and Yahoo search -- collectively attracted more than 10 per cent of the total US audience, according to Hitwise data.

MySpace's home page and email site amounted to 7.3 per cent of US web visits, according to Hitwise's list of top 10 US internet properties for the first full week of July.

Yahoo issued a statement saying that: "The Yahoo network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo's (email site)."

In the United States, Yahoo said it attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74 per cent of the online population in the world's biggest internet market. By contrast, MySpace reaches only 30 per cent of the online audience, with 52 million unique visitors, according to Yahoo.

Hitwise does not provide figures for the number of unique visitors to a site.

Yahoo also said it has a larger share of online time spent than any other property -- a key measure for advertisers. It said it accounts for 13 per cent of users' online time, while MySpace has only 3.2 per cent share in users' online time.

US only statistics also understate the far greater international audience Yahoo has than MySpace, which only recently has been seeking to expand beyond the United States.

ComScore Networks, a rival to Hitwise in the internet measurement field, projects that Yahoo attracts more than 500 million unique monthly visitors to its network of sites on a global basis, making Yahoo the most visited internet network.

With its own category, MySpace, which dominates social networking on the web, gained US market share in June from other sites that aim to create virtual communities online for sharing music, photos or other interests, Hitwise said.

MySpace captured nearly 80 per cent of visits to online social networking sites, up from 76 per cent in April. A distant second was FaceBook at 7.6 per cent, or one-tenth the traffic.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought MySpace for US$580 million one year ago as part of a strategy to rapidly build the media conglomerate's internet presence.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco)

- REUTERS