Tale of the Tape: It’s All Relative

This is part two of my ‘Tale of the Tape’ series, a periodic look at Alexa stats that catch my eye.

I mentioned in my Tale of the Tape intro that it’s a bad idea to take Alexa stats out of context. Here’s a great reminder. I’m going to show you five sites’ Alexa reach plotted over a two year period. Three have a classic hockey-stick growth curve, one just in the last few months. Two don’t look so hot, nearly flat over this time period.

Your challenge: name these five sites.

To make things interesting, I’ve blanked out the Y-axis scale. But just so that we’re not too mean, here are a few clues:

1. If you’ve heard of one of these sites, you’ve almost certainly heard of all five. Household “Web 2.0″ names.
2. Sites one and two are among the top 20 sites on the web.
3. It’s all relative.