 Web 2.0 websites now account for over 12% of all US web activity for April this year – an increase of 2% compared with two years ago – according to a Hitwise study. Moreover, the market share of visits to those properties has grown 688% over the past two years.
Some of the findings from Hitwise's the "State of the Web 2.0: Measuring the Participatory Web":
- Some Web 2.0 properties are dominating their category; for example, Wikipedia is the No. 1 educational reference website with over 26% market share of visits in a category that consists of 3,272 sites. US visits to Wikipedia outnumbered those to Encarta 3400 to 1 for the week ended April 7.
- Of the US visits to YouTube for the week ended April 7, the 18-24 age group was the largest demographic of viewers; the 35-44 demographic accounted for the largest percentage of users who uploaded a video. Only 0.16% of those visits for the week ended April 7 involved a user's uploading a video to the website, and of those users 76% were male.
 Of the US visits to Wikipedia for the week ended April 7, the 18-24 age group was the largest demographic of readers; the 45-54 demographic accounted for the largest percentage of users who edited entries. More than 4.5% of those visits for the week ending April 7 involved a user's editing entries to the website, and of those users 60% were male. - Of the US visits to Flickr for the week ended April 7, 0.20% involved a user's uploading photos to the website.
Web 2.0 websites like YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia have achieved mainstream adoption for visits to their website. However when online participation in these sites goes mainstream, we can expect an explosion of new content on the web. Newer websites such as Yelp, Facebook, StumbleUpon, imeem, Veoh, WeeWorld and Piczo could represent the next wave of popular Web 2.0 websites.
They are already popular among early adopters, as determined by cross-referencing the Hitwise Lifestyle Segmentation data from groups such as Young and Digerati, Money and Brains, and Bohemian Mix.
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