Yahoo Calls Hitwise Report Claiming MySpace #1 Internet Site Misleading

I just got an email from Tim Smith at Outcast Communications, Yahoo's PR firm. He was writing me with regards to the big news that MySpace had surpassed Yahoo to become the number #1 as the most visited domain on the Internet for US Internet users. The email included Yahoo's statement on the matter which I'm publishing below:

"The report that Hitwise released today with the headline “MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites” is misleading. The Yahoo! network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo!’s mail.yahoo.com domain. When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month.

In the U.S. alone, Yahoo! attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74 percent of the online population; in comparison, MySpace reaches only 30 percent of the online population with an audience of 52 million unique visitors. In addition, Yahoo! has the largest share of online time spent than any other property: Yahoo! accounts for 13 percent of users’ online time, while MySpace has only 3.2 percent share in users’ online time.

Yahoo! maintains its leadership position as the world’s most trafficked Internet destination online, with a community of more than 500 million unique monthly visitors from around the globe.

(These statistics are according to comScore Media Metrix, June 2006)"

Ok, this is interesting. Certainly it shows that there is more than one way to look at who's the biggest and it may not be as clear cut as claimed by Hitwise.

But what is even more interesting to me in all of this is the saavy on Yahoo's part in shooting me an email on this. Yahoo (or their PR firm at least) is obviously listening to what the blogosphere is saying about them and the fact that I published a tid bit on this earlier today they picked up on. It wasn't even a main article but a small part in an article on GigaOm about social networking sites in general. Most likely OutCast Communications though is monitoring Technorati as to the Hitwise report today or saw something on Memeorandum, or is using Talkdigger or Blogpulse or some other tool. By the way PR Pros, what are the other tools you use to monitor the conversations about your company?

The point is though that they are listening to the blogosphere and think it an important enough medium to give their PR attention to in addition to the mainstream press.

Although I get PR stuff all the time, it's usually just generic unpersonalized product pitches. By including the blogosphere in breaking stories and tracking the conversations out there, this is smart PR on Yahoo's part.