• Top-20 Websites: Where DO we spend our time online?

    First published on the Compete Blog on 25-Jan-2007

    Time is a limited resource.. As much as we hate to admit it, we each only have 24 hours on any given day to ‘do things’. In December 2006, we had 44,640 minutes to do whatever our hearts desired — be it sleep, eat, watch TV, jump rope, or spend time online.

    Since we each have a fixed amount of time in a given day/week/month/lifetime, we all probably (I know I do!) want to spend it wisely. As such, when we are online we tend to spend more time on sites that are worthy of our attention. After all, who wants to waste time? So, the big question is, where DO we spend all our time online? Which websites are more successful in capturing our attention compared to others?

    Take a look at the chart below:

    Key Observations:

    • Only 20 domains capture a whopping 39% of all our time spent online.
    • Only 2.1% of our time is spent on Google.com (includes all sub-domains).
      • This surprised me somewhat, given how much I *think* I use Google everyday. I still think I use Google quite a bit, but now realize I don’t spend much time on the site itself. Google is NOT a portal with loads of content. Gmail and Google News are the only services that I spend considerable time on. Search, Maps, etc are quick look-up utilities, as they should be.
      • Even if one adds time spent on YouTube.com (#12) to Google.com’s (#5) tally — it still only adds up to 2.7%, and is well below time spent on Ebay.com (#4).
    • MySpace (#1) is miles ahead of Yahoo! (#2), however Yahoo! impresses. Yahoo holds a significant lead over Google+YouTube.com, MSN+Live.com and AOL+AIM.com. Yahoo simply needs to merge with MSN to take #1 (hint hint)
    • The presence of Adultfriendfinder.com on this list is surprising, but hey, everyone needs a friend, or two!