The always interesting Hitwise web traffic analysts have released statistics this morning indicating that Slide.com has overtaken Flickr in at least one country, New Zealand (the birthplace of Read/WriteWeb), and has doubled its market share in the Entertainment – Photography sector over the summer.
The most recent public numbers from Hitwise on Slide’s US market share were from April, when the now shuttered Yahoo! Photos, Flickr and Slide all lagged far behind Photobucket.
Back in New Zealand, though, Slide.com now trails only Fox’s Photobucket in NZ, thanks largely to the company’s wild success on the new Facebook platform. Hitwise says Facebook drives more than 59% of the traffic to Slide.com. Slide was one of the first companies to take the strategy of releasing lots of little mini-apps in Facebook, many of which have been incredibly successful.
Slide has raised tens of millions of dollars in VC backing. The company saw big early growth on MySpace when it hired a legion of young people to push its widgets in that social network. It’s also been accused of violating the MySpace terms of service in its early days by using user credentials to autopublish to user profiles.
Unsurprisingly, Hitwise also reports that Slide.com visitors spend less time on site than visitors to either Flickr or Photobucket.
You can claim all the high-brow love of photography you want and be critical of Slide’s shallow applications and base appeal – but fact is it’s significant that in at least one major country online, it’s beating Yahoo’s photosharing service and is experiencing the kind of growth that could make it king.
