Asiaxpat, an expat community site in Hong Kong that I have written about previously, was featured by Hitwise one of the fastest growing online hubs among Hong Kong Internet users.

Market share of visits to Asiaxpat’s Hong Kong portal increased by 30.55% between November 2008 and January 2009, according to Hitwise. The site led the Hitwise Community category in January 2009, accounting for 30.88% market share of visits.

Asiaxpat calls itself a resource for ‘Professionals, Expats and Executives living in Asia’, and includes personals, classified advertisements, and message boards. The professional user-base was reflected in Hitwise’ Clickstream traffic; examples of websites targeted at similar users  in January 2009 included, The Leading Hotels of the World, Xe.com and Bloomberg.

Google Maps was prominent in driving traffic to Asiaxpat in January 2009, highlighting the complimentary business information focus of both websites.

Commercial industries that received significant referral traffic from Expat Hong in January 2009 included Business and Finance with 10.54% of downstream traffic, Travel with 6.89% and Shopping & Classifieds with 5.75%. Community websites, particularly those with niche audiences, potentially offer significant competition to traditional News and Media brands in attracting advertisers.