(19 June 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: comScore Media Metrix, which provides insight into American consumer behaviour and attitudes has released its monthly analysis of consumer activity at top online properties and categories.

The social networking phenomenon continued its stratospheric ascent, as MySpace.com reached new heights with 50 million visitors in May and YouTube.com nearly doubled its traffic from April, reaching 12.6 million visitors.

comScore Media Metrix president and CEO Peter Daboll says, "The popularity of social networking is not expected to wane in the near future. This is a phenomenon we're seeing not only in the U.S., but also around the world. The challenge for social networking sites will now be monetisation and how advertisers will respond to the global marketing potential of these sites."

Americans demonstrated their interest in the World Cup soccer tournament and NBA Playoffs in the weeks preceeding the June tournaments. The NBA Internet Network attracted 6.3 million visitors in May which represents a 24 per cent increase versus April. fifaworldcup.yahoo.com -- the official World Cup site -- doubled its traffic, reaching more than 788,000 visitors.

Even more impressive was the worldwide traffic to the official World Cup site during the opening days of the tournament, with more than five million unique visitors from around the globe visiting the site on 9 June. Traffic to the site remained strong throughout the opening weekend, with average daily visitors through 11 June surpassing 4.4 million visitors.

Television fans headed to TV web sites in numbers to check out details for the season finales of their favourite shows. ABC, which aggressively promoted streamed versions of Lost and Desperate Housewives was rewarded with a 39 per cent increase in visitors to ABC.com, surging to 6.9 million visitors.

Traffic to the Lost site increased 71 per cent to 1.2 million visitors in May. Meanwhile, the Desperate Housewives site attracted 528,000 visitors, up 36 per cent from the prior month, and the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
site saw a 41 per cent uptick in traffic to 286,000 visitors. The season finale of NBC's long running ER drove traffic to the show's site, with 236,000 visitors in May, up 49 per cent compared to April.