AOL Dominates Web Traffic,

February 27, 2001 3:39 AM

AOL Dominates Web Traffic, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, who found that AOL Time Warner’s combined share of the time Americans spent online last month was 33(!) percent.
posted by frednorman (8 comments total)

All of this, in addition to the growing annoyance over ICQ ads, might be the excuse people need for giving smaller IM service providers, such as Odigo and Imici, a chance. At least I know I will.
posted by frednorman at 3:44 AM on February 27, 2001

Hogwash. I have ICQ and AIM open 24/7, does that mean that 100% of my time online is spent on AOL/TW properties? Even if I'm browsing MSNBC at the time?
posted by pnevares at 6:40 AM on February 27, 2001

If they're using panel-based software, which I suspect they are, then the software tracks which is the active window at any one time, to the nearest second. So your time chatting on AIM is attributed to AOL and your time on MSNBC to MSN.
posted by freakytrigger at 8:09 AM on February 27, 2001

I'd have to imagine that AIM is responsible for some of that time. Otherwise, wouldn't we all be seeing a much larger representation of that blasphemous AOL browser in our logs?
posted by Dreama at 8:55 AM on February 27, 2001

I don't know. If they're just examining packets (sender and recipient) then having AIM and/or ICQ open is going to generate a fair bit of traffic for AOL as keep-alive messages get sent back and forth.
posted by cCranium at 8:55 AM on February 27, 2001

Camworld notes that this is probably an indication that 1/3 of all users use AOL accounts and are stumbling around the AOL-Time-Warner walled garden as opposed to an indication of the true popularity of their properties.
posted by dithered at 9:34 AM on February 27, 2001

It certainly looks that way. When Media Metrix calculates their top 50 properties, they include "AOL Network - Proprietary & WWW." I wonder what the split between those internal and external pages is...
posted by Aaaugh! at 10:45 AM on February 27, 2001

AOL has been building their walled garden for a while now...
posted by owillis at 10:54 AM on February 27, 2001