As theories circulate about the actual dollar value of sites like Facebook and Myspace-analysts recently placed Facebook’s worth at $10 billion-there is no question that people continue to gravitate in droves towards social networking and blog sites. In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site when ranked …

As news came out about Time Warner’s decision to split with AOL, blogs were buzzing, with most in consensus that this could be a great move for both AOL and Time Warner. Many blogs discussed how AOL, under the new leadership of Tim Armstrong, could definitely make headway as an independent company. With all of the buzz surrounding the subject, conversations have already more than tripled today compared to yesterday, increasing from less than .01 percent on Wednesday the 27th to .05 percent by the end of the work day …

Surging online activity on Election Day accompanied record voter turn-out at the polls, as voters flocked to current events and news sites to follow election results.
Web traffic to sites within the “Current Events and Global News” category was up 27% on Election Day, versus the previous Tuesday (Oct. 28), Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.
The candidates’ websites also drew healthy traffic on Election Day.  Obama’s site had 1.2 million unique visitors on Nov. 4, while McCain’s site had 479,000 unique visitors.

Rank
(by
Nov. 4 UA)
Website
Unique Audience:
Oct. 28, 2008
(in 000s)
Unique Audience:
Nov. 4, 2008
(in 000s)
% Change

1
CNN Digital Network
8,496
12,847
51%

2
MSNBC …

Where did Web-savvy political junkies head to keep up with Election Day news back in 2004?
According to Nielsen Online, CNN’s website drew more than 3.3 million unique visitors surfing the Web from home on November 4, 2004.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s and Yahoo! News’ websites attracted unique audiences of more than 2.7 million and 2.6 million at home, respectively.

According to Nielsen Online, in September NYTimes.com was the top U.S.-based online newspaper site, while MSNBC Digital Network (MSNBC) was the top U.S. online news outlet, Editor & Publisher reported this week.
The NY Times’ website drew just over 20 million unique visitors in September — a 37% increase over unique traffic to the site last September.

Sept. 2008 Rank
Top 10 
Newspaper Sites
(ranked by unique users)
Sept. 2008 Unique Traffic
(in 000’s)
% Growth
Vs. Sept. 2007 Unique Traffic

1
NYTimes.com
20,068
37%

2
washingtonpost.com
12,956
43%

3
USATODAY.com
11,439
33%

4
LA Times
10,022
102%

5
Wall Street Journal Online
9,047
94%

6
Boston.com
8,610
122%

7
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle
5,129
18%

8
New York Post
4,815
98%

9
Politico
4,605
219%

10
Chicago Tribune
4,558
46%

Source: The Nielsen Company (September 2008).

Meanwhile, MSNBC saw 44% year over year growth, …

More than half-way through the 2008 Beijing Olympics, U.S. fans are continuing to follow the Games online in strong numbers, Nielsen Online reported Wednesday.
The top two U.S.-based Olympics online destinations, Yahoo Olympics and NBC Olympics, drew an average of 4.7 million and 4.3 million unique visitors each day between August 8 and August 18.
According to Nielsen, Olympics-related websites in the U.S. are drawing slightly larger audiences on work days than weekends. 
Nielsen also reported that daily traffic to NBC’s Olympics site typically peaked at noon during the first work week of the …