In previous article [1] the concept of Internet Social Network Efficiency (ISNE) metric and a special dedicated unit (1 Zuck) were introduced. This article is extending the conceptual base of [1] and adding some sample practical computation of ISNE to be used in web comparative analysis.

The meaning of ISNE

ISNE has a profound physical meaning: its value represents the amount of time relative to the total lifetime that all existing Internet users spent on particular website.

ISNE is calculated on a daily basis and normalized on the scale of 0…1. The unit of ISNE (1 Zuck as proposed in [1]) represent the maximum possible value of ISNE, which corresponds to a hypothetical case of all Internet users spending all their lifetime on one particular site. It is a theoretical limit, much like a speed of light, which sets the speed limit in material world. The actual values of ISNE for the top Internet sites are in the range of 1 mZuck (1 mZuck represents the 1/1000 part of 1 Zuck).

It was stated in [1] that though ISNE is primarily intended for the online social networks efficiency estimates, it could also be applied to any other types of web sites or web services (running in web browsers), and also web applications (running in off browser mode, but still connected to the Internet).

Actual values of ISNE

Just as a reminder, ISNE computational model is based on two values: Reach (percent of global Internet users who visit the site on particular day) and DT (average daily time on site in minutes):

ISNE = (Reach/100) * (DT/1440)

ISNE values (in milliZuck) calculated for the Top10 web sites as of Dec 15 2010 are listed below in Table1:

Table 1:
    Domain name     ISNE, mZuck     Reach, %   DT, min

1. Facebook.com        8.4            39             31
2. Google.com            4.5            46             14
3. YouTube.com         3.0            24             18
4. Yahoo.com             1.8            26             10
5. Baidu.com              0.8            10             12
6. QQ.com                  0.7            7               15
7. Blogger.com           0.6            13              7
8. Live.com                 0.5            14              5
9. Twitter.com             0.4            9                7
10. Wikipedia.org         0.4            12              5

Note: for the purpose of simplicity/readability the values for Reach and DT (both taken from [2]) are rounded to the whole numbers.

ISNE Top10 list clearly indicates the leadership position of the Facebook.com domain. Google.com came the second: Table 1 shows that it is heavy on traffic (Reach) but smaller on “users’ attention span” (DT metric). YouTube came 3rd, very close to Google.com. Yahoo.com came next: it was the last one in the list with ISNE value of more than 1 mZuck.

Afterword

In the near future I plan to modify the Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000 [3] by adding the special functions enabling users to calculate ISNE and Extended ISNE (xISNE). The Calculator will be placed in public domain, available free of charge. Stay tuned and watch the news on [4].

One more time: Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg on the “Person of the Year” 2010 by Time magazine [5].

References

1. Introducing the unit of internet social network efficiency: 1 Zuck
2. Alexa.com
3. Scientific Calculator ZENO-5000
4. Educational Web Portal (beta)
5. Time magazine

Copyright© 2010 Alexander Bell