Jim Karpen Tips

June 2001

The Internet continues to grow and change. Google claims to index some 1.3 billion web pages. Media Metrix recently reported that even as the Internet grows, there's a marked consolidation.

Two years ago Internet users spent about 60% of their time online using sites from 110 different companies. Today that figure is down to just 14 companies. Research by Media Metrix also shows that 50% of all usage is spent on sites owned by just four companies: AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Napster. Experts say that this trend toward consolidation results from acquisitions and from companies going out of business. One also would suspect that some sites simply prove to be more popular over time.

What are some of the other 14 sites? They include Juno Online (free e-mail and Internet access), eBay (auction site), iWon (portal that offers prizes), and the portals Excite and Lycos.

Some 12 million people access Yahoo and Microsoft sites each day--the two most popular. The most popular category of sites is portals, like Yahoo and Excite, followed by services, entertainment, retail, and corporate sites.

Media Metrix is a good site if you want to know facts about the Internet. They offer a list of top 50 U.S. sites, top 50 global sites, and top 500 sites. It can be fun to poke around in these lists to find popular sites that you may not have known about. Unfortunately the list doesn't have links, and sometimes the name given is a corporate umbrella for a wide range of offerings. Still, you can get a sense for what's hot.

I was pleased to see that About is 6th in the list of top 50 U.S. list (following AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Lycos, and Excite). I've always thought that About does a great job of organizing the Internet. All of these first six are portals. Next comes NBC's news sites. And in 8th place is the Disney group of sites. InfoSpace, which offers excellent information services, comes in 9th. And the only retailer making the top 10 is Amazon.

There were only two sites in the top 20 that I wasn't familiar with: X10.com and eUniverse. The former is a retailer and the latter offers entertainment. The global top 50 list is largely the same as the U.S. top 50 in the top 10 slots, except that it includes Napster and CNet, the excellent technology-related news service.

Looking at this list of sites is a good test of your Internet literacy. If the majority are familiar to you, then you've likely been online a while and know the territory. If they're mostly new, then this may be a good place to start to familiarize yourself with the most-used sites.

© 2001 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#271)