I really like Hunch, despite the seemingly endless list of rather nosey questions it asks during sign-up! At Jiva we have quite an interest in the next generation of Q&A sites (both HTH and Specialize IN are very much in this area) and like many web types were interested in what Caterina Fake would do next after leaving Flickr and Yahoo. I particularly like the quote that seems to be following Hunch around; “Yahoo Answers is not the answer”.
2Tor is an interesting startup in that it is targeting working with universities and higher education institutions to supply a full suite of integrated features that offer the ability for the universities to offer distance learning without developing the technology themselves . Raising $10million at the moment is pretty impressive and it’ll be interesting to track the take up of this as more and more universities look diversify their income streams.
Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief at Wired and author of the Long Tail is in Bristol to pimp his new book ‘Free’. Although as it has been remarked by some it is amusing that a talk based on the ‘Free’ model costs £6 :) This should be an interesting talk and certainly a rare occasion to see someone as well regarded in web circles as Anderson in Bristol.
Yesterday (June 2nd) Hitwise released some data about the top 100 student websites in the UK – which makes for quite interesting reading. Now I’m as familiar with the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics” as the next man but Hitwise have been very open about their methodology and I reckon these numbers are as trustworthy as any and make for a fun glimpse into what students are looking at.
There are few shocks at the top of the charts, all the perennial favourites are well represented; Google, Facebook, the BBC, Wikipedia and Microsoft all appear near the top. Yahoo and Myspace just about hang on in there in the Top 20 and eBay seems high at 14 (I thought my mum was the last user!)
Bebo is down at 34 which kind of blows away some of my preconceptions about Bebo users – are they not even at uni yet? Or do the swap to Facebook at the point?
Sky Sports is a very respectable 18, the first non-Beeb mainstream media showing. Personally I would choose BBC Sport over the Sky Sports site every day but I know from experience with sports (read football) mad friends that Sky is their first port of call.
Pleased to see Google Maps as the top mapping application with students; Streetmap and Mapquest seem to continue to reign in more general lists and the sooner they die off the better in my opinion.
Twitter has a surprisingly high entry at 22 – I have recently started to see a younger demographic entering Twitter but this suggests its staring to really gain momentum; maybe it was a Stephen Fry induced blip though.
There were seven sites in the list that I had never come across before;
- Surf the Channel – appears to be a listing site for various sites that stream TV and movies
- MegaVideo – looks like YouTube with less videos but also less worries about copyright!
- ASOS – some kind of online clothes retailer
- SideReel – a TV show based community, a little like Television Without Pity but with less snark
- SuperNova Tube – same as MegaVideo I think
- Tudou – I’m guessing its a Japanese video site
- Nasza Klasa – which I guess is some kind of Polish social network?
All the banks are well represented as are many newspaper websites, with the Guardian at the top. Whether this is good news for the ‘papers or not is a different question as judging by my times on uni campuses very few newspapers are sold to anyone but the staff so the students are getting used to news for free online.
The only real blog in the top 100 is Perez Hilton but I guess at this point that is more of an entertainment brand and it has long moved past its blogger roots. Blogger.com is on the list but no sign of Wordpress or Typepad.
As for anything study focused on the list? Well obviously Wikipedia and Google itself then Google Booksearch is at 40 and Google Scholar is at 63 along with a couple of dictionary style sites. That is about it.
A fun list and perhaps something that could have fed into the ‘HE in a Web 2.0 World Report‘ a couple of weeks ago.
