Community websites top list of fastest-growing websites of 2005

Julia Day
Monday January 23, 2006

The fastest-growing internet brands in the UK are not traditional online giants such as Google and Yahoo, but small community sites featuring content put together by users, according to research.

Websites providing advice on how to use the internet - from setting up websites and tips on blogging to shopping guides - coupled with community chat networks and music download services were the fastest growing websites of 2005.

Photo website builder tool and community site Piczo was the fastest-growing internet brand in the UK in 2005, seeing its unique audience increase by 97 times - a 9,669% growth - from just 12,500 visitors in December 2004 to 1.2 million in the last month of 2005.

Piczo offers technology allowing users to build their own website the easy way - without html code - and by November 2005 women under the age of 18 accounted for almost half of its audience - 45% - making it the most likely UK website to be visited by that group.

Alex Burmaster, the European internet analyst at Nielsen, said he believed Piczo's success gave an indication of where the internet was headed.

"The future, it seems, is user-generated content centred around community sites that ride the rise of the internet as a tool to communicate, exchange ideas and pictures," he said.

Greetings card website AmericanGreetings, which increased its audience by 2,151%, was the second fastest-growing internet brand in the UK last year, according to Nielsen.

Shopzilla's shopping directory, Starware toolbar and search software and music distributor OD2 follow in the list of last year's top 10.

Music filesharing site Limewire's audience has increased by 666% to 2.3 million, making it the most popular online destination of the top 10 of fastest growing internet sites last year.

The communal encyclopaedia Wikipedia is in seventh place, with a 326% increase in audience year on year, followed by the Skype internet telephony service, broadcaster Nikelodeon's games and chat site for children, with blogging guide Blogger, now owned by Google, in tenth place.

"The inclusion of other brands such as AmericanGreetings, whose staple is e-greetings cards, Shopzilla, the shopping directory, and OD2, the digital music distributor co-founded by musician Peter Gabriel, are further proof of how online continues to provide a more effective means for meeting the needs and interests of our daily personal or business lives," said Mr Burmaster.

Among the top 10 most popular brands in the UK - as opposed to the fastest-growing - there were two significant changes.

Google overtook Microsoft and MSN to take the top spot, while Apple entered the top 10 at the expense of internet service provider Wannadoo.

Thanks to the success of its iPod music players and iTunes service, Apple saw the biggest growth in the UK top 10 in 2005, up 56% to an unique audience of 6.2 million.

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