Last week, Widgets that embed content into profiles in social networks are causing a stir in the UK rankings of Photography websites. Our Site Seeing column in this week's Technology Guardian (sorry still not available online so I can't provide a link) is about Slide.com, the photo sharing website which two weeks ago overtook Flickr to take the #2 position among Photography websites. (Last week, it dropped back down to #3). Rock You ranked #4.

Photobucket has been the #1 ranked Photography website based on UK visits since February, when it overtook Flickr. Photobucket has held that #1 ranking largely due to traffic from Bebo and MySpace, with 33% of the site's traffic coming from Bebo last week and 22% from MySpace. By contrast, Google was the #1 source of visits to Flickr last week, accounting for 19% of the site's visits, 5% came from Google Images, 4% from Blogger and only 2.4% from MySpace.

The following chart illustrates how different Flickr is from the others and just how important the traffic from social networks is to Rock You and Slide.com.

Last week, 83% of RockYou's traffic came directly from a social network, with 42% coming from Bebo and 37% from Facebook. Similarly, 77% of Slide.com's traffic came directly from a social network, with 43% coming from Facebook, 23% from Bebo and 8% from MySpace. I tried it myself, loading my wedding photos to Slide.com and sharing them both on my Facebook profile and on my personal Wordpress blog. It's incredibly easy to share lots of photos with lots of people!

What this will mean for Flickr remains to be seen. What it does show is that widgets on social networks can drive a pile of traffic and bring a site from relative obscurity to the fore. MySpace has recently clamped down on some such activities potentially putting the future of these photo sharing in jeopardy.

Next week I'll do a follow up post on where social networks send their traffic - in particular what does clickstream traffic tell us about the interests of users of Bebo, MySpace and Facebook and how do they differ.

Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins is VP of Research for Hitwise UK. This piece was first posted on Hitwise Analyst blog here.