Thursday, July 12, 2007 Toral: Yahoo!, Google dominate Web By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
LAST week, I mentioned that Friendster rules as it is the number one website accessed by young Filipino Internet users as of this year.
The second most popular service is Yahoo Messenger. With its interactive features — such as being able to play games with the person you are chatting to, exchange files, view each other’s webcam, send a text message, and even do voice calls – the services is very user-friendly indeed.
Yahoo Mail is on the third spot. The reason behind this, I believe, is the use of Friendster by youngsters as their e-mail service to their peers and relatives. It removed the urgent need to have an e-mail account except for validation and when sending file attachments.
Google is on the fourth spot as the primary service being used to search for information online. The spot for Google should be higher. However, most respondents for this segment answered Friendster as their primary research site since the social networking service has partnered with Google and its search function is integrated. In this case, it seems Google has diluted its brand and losing brand recall.
YouTube, a recent acquisition by Google, is the newest entrant in the top websites list. Thanks to faster and more affordable bandwidth, watching video has become popular too. This, in turn, has affected music or audio-only downloads in the process as it didn’t appear as a popular activity in this segment.
Yahoo is still considered as a useful tool for research among young Filipino Internet users. What concerns me, though, is its decline in the ranks in the top websites list. From being the number one site in 2001 to 2003, its rank has declined. Will it be able to re-engineer and make itself cool to the young users segment?
The above sites are the ones heavily visited by the 375 respondents I surveyed last March to June. Other sites are worthy of mention are Hotmail, Wikipedia and MSN Messenger.
The bottomline is that the Internet is used more as social network.
Businesses and entrepreneurs that would like to tap young users in this segment must find out how to integrate the youth’s favorite Internet features into their business.
For instance, it is a must for all website owners to have an instant messaging account where they can be reached by customers through chat them.
The same goes to integrating video features in the website to make it more interactive. This is helpful in explaining product features and its uses to support what text description may have been posted online.
Lastly, website owners must use social networks to build their profile and keep in touch with customers. Customers must be encouraged to post testimonials and use the facility to disseminate new products and promotion updates.
The same advice can also be told to parents in dealing with their kids’ usage of the Internet. Be aware of what your kids are doing without necessarily interfering. Be creative!
