In the online realm in 2007, household names like Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist were the biggest winners, according to Weston, Va.-based ComScore Inc.’s annual report on trends in U.S. Internet activity.

The report looks at the major trends in U.S. Internet activity, highlighting the top gaining properties and site categories, and core search market growth.

Looking at the growth in visitors among the top 100 U.S. Internet properties, 2007 was a strong year for several of the largest properties. Social networking site Facebook.com opened registration to all users and saw an 81 percent jump from December 2006’s 19.1 million unique visitors to 34.7 million in December 2007. Wikipedia sites gained 34 percent to reach nearly 52 million visitors. Classified-ad site Craigslist.org jumped 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors, while AT&T grew 27 percent to 30.2 million visitors, no doubt benefiting from its exclusive deal with Apple as carrier for the iPhone. Yellow Book Network grew 137 percent to 10.4 million visitors.

As noted in the comScore press materials, the upward spikes of several of the top-gaining properties were driven the acquisition of Web entities including, but not limited to, the following:

· Everyday Health shot up 349 percent, driven by its acquisition of several Web sites and the addition of Drugs.com to its network.

· Women’s category leader Glam Media grew 213 percent during the year, due in large part to the addition of several new entities, including Quality Health Network, MyYearbook.com and LifeScript.com, among others.

· Yellow Book Network grew 137 percent to 10.4 million visitors, as visitation to Yellowbook.com Sites tripled (up 207 percent to 4.6 million visitors) and one new entity was added to the property.

· iVillage.com: The Women’s Network gained 27 percent with the addition of Sugar Publishing, MakeoverSolutions.com, and iWin.com, among others.

· Demand Media added numerous entities under its Demand Media Knowledge and Demand Media Games media titles, which contributed to its 149 percent growth.

· OfficeMax’s 199 percent gain was driven primarily by a December 2007 surge in visitation to its popular viral holiday greetings site ElfYourself.com.

As comScore’s release notes, the list of site categories that gained the most in 2007 reflects trends in both the online and offline worlds. Politics grabbed the top position, gaining 35 percent, as the 2008 presidential election and primary season kicked into high gear. Women’s community sites rose 35 percent, as the top two properties in the category, Glam Media and iVillage.com, saw strong growth. Entertainment news sites jumped 32 percent, benefiting from our continuing hunger for celebrity news. Online classifieds had a strong 2007, growing 31 percent versus 2006 and continuing to drain traditional news media’s classified revenues.

On a trend-related side note, if the various pundits can be believed, narrowcasting is coming to the social networking realm. One wonders what the effects will be on giants like Facebook if users begin finding it more rewarding to bypass the large social networking sites and go straight to the sites that cater to their specific interests, like skateboarding, online gaming or dachshund -owning.

Over in the realm of online search, searches at the five major core search engines increased 15 percent to 9.6 billion searches, the comScore report found. Google sites led with 5.6 billion searches in December 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous year. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 2.2 billion searches, followed by Microsoft sites (940 million), Time Warner Network (442 million), and Ask Network (415 million).

More than 113 billion core searches were conducted in the U.S. during all of 2007, with Google sites accounting for nearly 64 billion, representing a 56 percent share of the market.