MEDIA-I: Girls visit entertainment sites most

HONG KONG: When it comes to spending time online, girls just want to

have fun. A recent survey by Nielsen//NetRatings found a

disproportionate number of girls under the age of 17 visiting online

magazines, entertainment and streaming media download sites. Yes.com.hk,

hkflash.com and quickflicks.com registered the strongest skew towards

young female surfers.

The researcher found of all Hong Kong web surfers visiting yes.com.hk in

April, the largest group were girls under 17, comprising 40 per cent of

total visitors to the domain, and the strongest skew towards this group

of all domains.

The second, according to Nielsen//NetRatings was hkflash.com, with 35

per cent of its web surfer girls in the same age bracket.

Quickflicks.com ranked third, with 34 per cent of its visitors from the

target group.

ACNielsen eRatings.com Hong Kong managing director, Hugh Bloch, said:

"Of the top 10 domains with the strongest skew towards this young female

group, six of them offer chat rooms and are entertainment or

entertainment related. It is clear that girls in Hong Kong use the

internet for more social and entertainment purposes thanany other group.

They are also accessing online popular young magazines. In short, Hong

Kong gals just wanna have fun."

The researcher also found net surfers in Asia-Pacific to be the most

active users of the web. It added the worldwide web population had grown

to 390 million people, an increase of 10 million over the previous

month.

Bloch said: "Surfers in South Korea, Taiwan - and to a lesser extent

Hong Kong - are still exhibiting behaviour typical of early internet

markets.

"This includes spending longer, browsing the web to learn the landscape

and navigating from site to site. Over time, we would expect surfers in

these markets to identify the sites which meet their needs."