Matthew Hindman

This graphic (also a draft figure from the book) presents a more comprehensive picture of Internet traffic, at least at the very top. Instead of looking at categories of content, this figure is a network map of traffic among the 50 most visited Websites (with adult sites omitted). As above, the traffic to a site is proportional to the Website's area; the width of lines between sites is proportional to the number of users visiting site A immediately after site B. Because Hitwise has access to ISP data, this does not necessarily mean that users followed a direct link between the two sites; they could also have used a browser bookmark, or typed in a URL. Arrows indicate the direction of traffic flow. To provide a sense of scale, MySpace, the most popular site in the figure, accounts for 6.3 percent of all non-adult Web traffic; Google attracts an additional 4.8 percent. The traffic between MySpace and MySpace Mail, the widest edge on the graph, represents 2.5 percent of all non-adult traffic.

Click on the map for a full-size version; click the link below to read more about the figure.

This figure (also a draft illustration from the book) performs a similar analysis to the graphics above, this time looking at traffic among the top 50 sites in Hitwise's "News and Media" category. Hitwise describes the category as including "Websites of magazines and newspapers, and news relating to the computer and IT industry"; Websites for broadcasting corporations are also prominent members, including sites for the Weather Channel, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC. Here again, the size of a site is proportional to the traffic it receives, and edge width is proportional to traffic flow.

Click on the map for a full-size version; click the link below to read more about the figure.

Given the magnitude of traffic flowing to other categories of online content, traffic to political sites is small enough to be a rounding error. As we have seen, some have hoped that this might be a blessing---that within sites focused on politics traffic would be concentrated enough to filter out the best content, but diffuse enough to empower ordinary citizens.

Such hopes find little support in this data; unlike some have predicted, the small volume of political traffic does not mean that traffic is equitably distributed. This figure (again, a draft illustration from the book) maps traffic among political Websites. Hitwise defines political Websites as those "which belong to particular political parties or organizations, plus sites that are devoted to expressing views on local or international political issues." Here the graph includes the top 50 political Websites, a group that collectively receives 60 percent of the category's traffic. For political sites, we are concerned not just with the divide between the popular sites and the also-rans, but also with the relative audience share among the most popular outlets. The most popular political sites listed include all of the expected names: online forums such as FreeRepublic.com, prominent advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org, and of course popular political blogs such as DailyKos or Instapundit. Chapter 6 looks at blogs and blog rankings more closely; the ranking of top political blogs by traffic in Hitwise's account is nearly identical to rankings of blogs based on either the number of inbound links they receive, or other metrics of traffic.

Click on the map for a full-size version; click the link below to read more about the figure.