Is FIM "Bigger" Than Yahoo? No.

Fox Interactive Media sent an email to journalists and bloggers last night boasting about having achieved biggest-site-on-the-Web status as measured in page views. The data are provided by comScore Media Metrix and cover the month of November.

Be clear: this does not indicate MySpace and FIM are “biggest” online, whatever that means. Page views are a far from reliable measurement of success for a Web publisher. They fluctuate month to month for any site, and the advent of AJAX site navigation, which Yahoo has embraced in its mail app, reduces their number by not generating a new “view” for every click.

I prefer reach figures, though it’s nice to see them accompanied by “time spent” data.

The below graph from Compete, showing U.S. unique users, tells a very different story about Yahoo and MySpace’s comparative influence.

On the other hand, MySpace performs very well in “average time spent.” A caveat with this metric is that some people keep a site or application open and in the background for hours, or even overnight.

(charts via Greg Sterling)