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The Internet Yahoo!

Yahoo and Tumblr Lost 33% of Their Web Traffic in the Past Several Years (fastcompany.com) 50

If there were any major sites that took a web traffic pummeling in 2019 Yahoo and Tumblr would top the list. That's according to a new report from SimilarWeb. The report looks back on key web trends in 2019. Among those trends were some pretty bad news for some sites: 1. Total web traffic is on the rise, growing 8% in 2019 to 223 billion visits per month to the top 100 websites worldwide.
2. Mobile is fueling much of that growth. While desktop web traffic decreased 3.3% since 2017, mobile web traffic shot up 30.6% over the same period.
3. But with the mobile web comes shrinking attention spans. The report says that visitors are spending 49 seconds less on websites per visit than they did three years ago.
4. The top 10 sites took 167.5 billion visits per month in 2019 -- a 10.7% increase.
5. Mobile visits claim the majority of visits made to "vice" sites -- those that involve porn and gambling.
6. The U.S. leads the world when it comes to visiting the websites. In 2019, over 300 billion visits per month to sites were made from America.

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Yahoo and Tumblr Lost 33% of Their Web Traffic in the Past Several Years

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  • I mean (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @03:51PM (#59712790) Journal

    Who'da thunk that banning one of the things that drove people to your site (porn) would kill your traffic.

    • If the 33% reduction is accurate, it is far less than what I would have estimated Tumblr's porn traffic was.
      • by Strill ( 6019874 )

        There was an analysis that found that even though porn was a fraction of the site's content, the majority of the site's users visited those pages.

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        There is still porn on tumblr, a lot of content went through the ban.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        They had a problem, they were not controlling the age of those submitting content, and the age at which girls start showing an interest in expensive clothes, shows, jewellery and makeup is considerably less than the legal age of consent and so they made money via porn, the very bad porn. So all dropped in a major panic, in reality everyone involved should have been investigated and prosecuted but due to their criminal negligence that would have involved many corporate executives who allowed that content to

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @03:59PM (#59712860)

    Cut your own throat, bleed out and die.

    Frankly, the quicker Yahoo's dead and buried, the better. I've transitioned most of my critical email the hell away from them and gmail and into proton. All I left behind was the fluff I do'nt care about, the spam, etc. Yahoo's sole purpose in life is to scrape email. Their search is irrelevant, so's the rest of it. I bet email scraping is their only remaining moneymaker.

    As for Tumblr.. well, when you slit your own throat... I expect you to bleed out quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

    • After Yahoo killed Groups, there isn't anything they offer that other people offer. I've used my Yahoo address for decades, but it mainly is my dumping ground for spam when every business app and website demands an E-mail for registration.

      Tumblr disemboweled themselves. I have not even visited their site in months, and have no interest in having an account there. My pictures I have public are on other social media, or are on my own WordPress site that I pay for.

    • Any tips / HOWTO migrate accounts to ProtonMail? i.e. Custom domain email.

      Ever since Yahoo changed their alias policy I've been looking to switch.

      TIA!

  • ...with the mobile web comes shrinking attention spans...

    And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching? That's hilarious.

    ...The report says that visitors are spending 49 seconds less on websites per visit than they did three years ago.

    If humans aren't staying on your site, it's because your content sucks, not because they're unable or unwilling to sit for hours and stare at a screen.

    • And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching? That's hilarious.

      I am pretty sure marathon TV was a thing before. Same with movies. We didn't invent it. Perfected maybe.

    • "

      And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching?

      "

      Yes.

      Binge watching is just another form of short attention span. "I want it all, and I want it now, and I don't have the patience or impulse control to spread episodes out over time. I'm incapable of managing time, actually". Binge watching combines the very worst mental traits of that generation: vegging out in front of the TV worse than Boomers ever did, and a "give me everything I want, now" mindset.

      • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:37PM (#59713068)

        "

        And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching?

        "

        Yes.

        Binge watching is just another form of short attention span. "I want it all, and I want it now, and I don't have the patience or impulse control to spread episodes out over time. I'm incapable of managing time, actually". Binge watching combines the very worst mental traits of that generation: vegging out in front of the TV worse than Boomers ever did, and a "give me everything I want, now" mindset.

        Literally spending days or weeks binge-watching entire series while memorizing every character trait isn't exactly what I would define as a problem with attentiveness.

        And every generation actually showcases certain behaviors when provided the option. You could only afford to spend so long in an arcade feeding quarters into a game, but when Atari brought that game home and allowed you to play for free as many times as you want...the end result was predictable to say the least.

      • Well you might call it poor impulse control, bus isnâ(TM)t it quite normal to want to know how a story progresses esp if you are really interested in it? Compare it with books, if you have the time and energy to read multiple chapters (loosly equivalent to episodes) per day, do you limit your self to asingle chspter to nake the book last longer?
    • And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching? That's hilarious.

      I believe it. Reading the comments on other sites, people whine if they have to watch anything more than a 20 second video clip or if the text is more than four sentences long.

      People most definitely have a shorter attention span using a mobile device. It's the nature of the beast. A three inch screen only allows so much information so you have to process it more quickly.
      • ...People most definitely have a shorter attention span using a mobile device. It's the nature of the beast. A three inch screen only allows so much information so you have to process it more quickly.

        If mobile traffic has increased by 30%, and Netflix and other streaming services continue to grow, tell me again how people are somehow not watching hours on tiny screens?

        It's all about the content, not the platform. And no matter the generation, people still hate commercials.

    • Well it is a reduced attention span in one way, a season can be binged in a weekend or 2 insted of having to sty engaged with it for months, in a normal tv schedule , an with nerflix (probably a few othervstreming services as well) the next Episode autoplays when the episode you are watching finishes so 0 action is requered to consume multiple episodes
      • Well it is a reduced attention span in one way, a season can be binged in a weekend or 2 insted of having to sty engaged with it for months, in a normal tv schedule , an with nerflix (probably a few othervstreming services as well) the next Episode autoplays when the episode you are watching finishes so 0 action is requered to consume multiple episodes

        Yes, you're correct. But binge watching 17 different shows over the course of several weeks (Netflix) vs. being forced to watch one or two shows over a course of several weeks (broadcast TV) doesn't exactly showcase a difference. Trying to compare cocaine to crack doesn't dispel the addiction problem, which is rather obvious.

    • ...with the mobile web comes shrinking attention spans...

      And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit from the generation that literally invented binge watching? That's hilarious.

      ...The report says that visitors are spending 49 seconds less on websites per visit than they did three years ago.

      If humans aren't staying on your site, it's because your content sucks, not because they're unable or unwilling to sit for hours and stare at a screen.

      What generation are you even talking about? Binge watching wasn't invented until Netflix. Before that, it took years of regular watching just to see all the reruns from one season of a show.

      • TV show box-sets have been around since the days of VHS. Is it only binge watching if you don't need to get up to swap tapes or discs?

        So what's the cutoff line for user interaction?
        Finding the remote and wiping the pizza grease off your hands before hitting play every 3 episodes: binge watching
        Wiping the pizza grease off your hands before swapping discs every 4 hours: ???

        • TV show box-sets have been around since the days of VHS. Is it only binge watching if you don't need to get up to swap tapes or discs?

          LOL

          The only people who ever bought a box-set already saw all the episodes. They never got to binge-watch it.

          That was true all the way up to Game of Thrones, the first popular show that was both paywalled and successfully avoided media spoilers. But they don't have it on VHS. Prior to streaming services, the only people who got to binge-watch anything were people who pirated a whole series.

          When people talk about binge-watching a show, they mean a particular type of usage. In your examples, you're ignoring th

    • If humans aren't staying on your site, it's because your content sucks, not because they're unable or unwilling to sit for hours and stare at a screen.

      The content is OK, it's the site itself that sucks. Go to a Yahoo page and the cursor ends up in the search box, which I'll bet 99% of users don't want. Trying to get the cursor out of that box so you can, ya'know, use your arrow keys and such to navigate the site, you quickly find out that all that blank space isn't really blank. No, it leads you to another Yahoo page. So you end up moving your cursor all over hell and gone trying to find that one spot where it's an arrow, not a hand.

      I really like Y

  • Wondering how much traffic Slashdot lost....
  • They used to have some of the most popular sites on the internet like Geocities and Flickr, plus lots of games and portals. Now it is a clickbait news site and spammy webmail. I would be surprised if Yahoo still exists in a few years, or will it be merged with the Verizon brand.
    • I'm old enough to remember when Yahoo WAS web search. Before Google, that's where you went to find something. They were Google before Google existed. In addition to web search, they were also a gathering place for people. In one site you had web search, chat rooms, as well as game rooms. Yahoo was nearly as popular as AOL in that regard. When web portals were still a thing, AOL was king, but Yahoo was right behind. I miss that, and you're just not going to get that kind of interaction back. It's gone foreve

      • Man, that brought back some nostalgia.. only in my case it was Kali (gaming) and MS gaming zone. The downtime between matches was actually more of a 'hook' than the game(s) itself.

        Same thing with Everquest 1 actually; Downtime between pulls/med breaks was where you chatted, and wound up making friends. In more modern MMOs the move to instances and non-stop mob farming killed the social interaction -- and as such, the genre itself (I'd argue WoW was kind of the turning point, it's all downhill from 2004).

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Name changes and changes to what was free services dont help.
  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:15PM (#59712944)

    That Yahoo still has any web traffic, is news to me!

    You sure they didn't fake it?
    (Everyone did it, back in ye ancient beforetimes, when web portals, like Yahoo, were still a thing.)

  • Yahoo has been a zombie for years, and Tumblr decided to go goody-goody and eliminate the kind of material that would drive a large percentage of their traffic.
  • Shouldn't the real news story be that Yahoo only lost a third of its web traffic in 2019? The search has been irrelevant for years, the homepage is an ad-littered mess, and the email breach should have been the final nail in that coffin.
    • That email breach didn't even stop a single person I know from using yahoo email.

      • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

        Well I don't know you personally, but it sure as hell stopped me - and Yahoo had been my primary email for decades.

  • Just kill the rest of it and invest everything into those two useful properties.

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @06:52PM (#59713840)

    Yahoo can't offer anything interesting and tumbler won't allow adult content. Its not complicated.

  • with a name people like.
    Yahoo had Yahoo! Messenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    Chatrooms
    Web cam, file sending, email, voice chat.
    1. Dont remove products and services.
    2. Dont rename existing products and services with less support.
    How to:
    Bring back all the past services.
    Need $20~$50~$100 a year per account to make it work? Try that.
    If free is not working, try offering users a low cost amount per year that the ads would have had to support for "free".
    You had your brand and it was good. Ya
  • They still even exist?!?

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

Working...