As year comes to an end let’s have a close look at Top U.S. web brands, online destination for video and Smartphone devices published by Nielsen. In his report Nielsen highlights that Google resulted as the most viewed web brands in U.S. throughout the year, while Facebook has secured top position in social networks and blogs segment. In smartphones segment, Apple leads leaving Samsung behind, while Google’s Android OS has emerged as the leading in OS segment.
Top 10 U.S. Web Brands in 2011:-
            Rank |          Web Brands | Avg number of Unique Visitors (in thousands) per month |
                1. |             Google |             153,441 |
                2. |             Facebook |             137,644 |
                3. |             Yahoo! |             130,121 |
                4. |             MSN/WindowsLive/ Bing |             115,890 |
                5. |            YouTube |             106,692 |
                6. |            Microsoft |               83,691 |
                7. |            AOL Media Network |               74,633 |
                8. |            Wikipedia |               62,097 |
                9. |            Apple |               61,608 |
         10. |       Ask Search Network |               60,552 |
From the above table it’s quite clear that Google has resulted as the most visited web brands in U.S. throughout the year. Also, with days passing by, popularity and brand value is increasing steadily. But the most interesting part of the list is Yahoo ranking, which is above than MSN and YouTube.
Top 10 U.S. Online Destinations for Video:-
            Rank |          Web Brands | Avg number of Unique Visitors (in thousands) per month |
              1. |            YouTube |              111,152 |
              2. |            VEVO |                34,580 |
              3. |            Facebook |                29,802 |
              4. |            Yahoo! |                25,324 |
              5. |            MSN/WindowsLive/Bing |                16,563 |
              6. |       AOL Media Network |                13,327 |
              7. |       Hulu |                13,159 |
              8. |       The CollegeHumorNetwork |                12,496 |
              9. |       CNN Digital Network |                  8,262 |
             10. |       Netflix |                  7,418 |
Above list enlightens that YouTube is the most visited site for videos and has registered the most unique visitors per months followed by much hyped VEVO. An emerging competitor of YouTube, VEVO has gained significant number of unique visitors mainly due to tie up with Facebook which has helped it to strengthen its users base. Facebook managed to secure the 3rd spot in video list as a result of the introduction of video platform, introduced few months back. Due to such launch, we might see improvement in Facebook rank and unique visitor list in next few years for video segment.
Top 5 Smartphone Device Manufacturers:-
            Rank |         Web Brands | Avg number of Unique Visitors (in thousands) per month |
             1. |             Apple |                 29% |
             2. |             HTC |                 21% |
             3. |             RIM BlackBerry |                 17% |
             4. |             Samsung |                 11% |
             5. |             Motorola |                 11% |
Table directly indicates that Apple has maintained it brand reputation in market and has been resulted as the most visited online brand in Smartphone manufacturers category. This is mainly due to the much awaited iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and MacBook Air launched. HTC surprised us with 21 percent unique visitors beating Samsung and RIM. HTC is in news because of its deal with Microsoft and much hyped handsets, while the reason behind RIM in news is its outage as well as playbook.