New York Branded 'Sleepytown' by Study of 24-hour Cities

LONDON, August 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

• Cairo Ranks Top; NYC, 'The City That Never Sleeps', 32nd

• Has the Big Apple become the Big Sleep?

• "This will confirm fears that New York has grown sleepy."

• Ranking of world's 24-hour cities based on analysis of 120 million online interactions

The city that never sleeps has been caught napping by a global study of the world's most 24-hour cities.

The study names Cairo, the strife-torn capital of Egypt, as the globe's "most 24-hour" city. But New York, "the city that never sleeps", ranks just 32^nd, behind not just London, Paris and Rome but an embarrassingly long list of other cities.

The first global ranking of the world's "most 24-hour" - alias "most nocturnal" - metropolises, comes from an analysis of 120 million online chats and flirts made over two months on Badoo (http://www.badoo.com), the world's largest social network for meeting new people, with 122 million users across 180 countries.

"This will confirm the fears of those who say that New York has grown sterile and sleepy," says Lloyd Price, Badoo's Director of Marketing. "Some will call it a humiliation."

The city that once defined urban buzz now ranks in the global buzz stakes behind almost every European capital

London places 17^th, Paris 18^th, Rome 27^th. But Madrid is Europe's most nocturnal capital, and sixth globally.

Badoo's study finds that online chatting and flirting in Cairo peak at nearly 1am, three hours later than in New York. "It seems that New Yorkers are climbing into bed at around the time that their Cairo counterparts are preparing to go out," says Price.

Badoo's rankings are based on its own "Nocturnal Index" for each city. This combines measurement of peak times for chatting and flirting with a "Night/Day ratio", comparing online activity levels at night with those by day.

Almost all the cities in Badoo's world top 20 register more online activity at night than by day. New York does the opposite.

So, has the time come for New York to rebrand? From "the Big Apple" to "the Big Sleep"? Or, "New York, the city that barely wakes"?  No, it doesn't quite have the same ring.

WORLD'S 10 MOST 24-HOUR CITIES

    1.   Cairo (Egypt)
    2.   Montevideo (Uruguay)
    3.   Beirut (Lebanon)
    4.   Malaga (Spain)
    5.   Zaragoza (Spain)
    6.=  Madrid (Spain)
    6.=  Barcelona (Spain)
    6.=  Valencia (Spain)
    9.   Seville (Spain)
    10.  Buenos Aires (Argentina)

• Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Badoo