Think you can pick the next big thing on the Internet? Online traffic analysis site Hitwise thinks so and it has just predicted which up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies you'll be using next.
Based on an extensive filter of 25 million Internet users and some 860,000 Web sites, Bill Tancer, the general manager of Hitwise, said Yelp, StumbleUpon, Veoh, WeeWorld, Imeem, and Piczo have the potential to be the next YouTube, Wikipedia, or Flickr.
"These sites are ones that attract a certain kind of user and have the best chance of crossing the chasm between early adopters and the mainstream media," Tancer said during a keynote presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week.
Tancer said the six companies are ones that have yet to "pop" or break out into the Web's popular consciousness -- similar to sites like MySpace, Twitter, and Digg, which were relatively unknown a few years ago and now have massive amounts of users.
Hitwise's prediction is the result of an extensive filtering of traffic patterns that show Web 2.0 usage compared with overall Internet traffic has expanded from 2% in its first year to 12.28% as of Monday.