Thursday 29 April 2010

Baidu's Q1 2010 profits rose 167% Y-o-Y

"Total revenues in the first quarter of 2010 were RMB1.294 billion ($189.6 million), a 59.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2009.
Operating profit in the first quarter of 2010 was RMB530.8 million ($77.8 million), a 167.4% increase from the corresponding period in 2009.
Net income in the first quarter of 2010 was RMB480.5 million ($70.4 million), a 165.3% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Diluted earnings per share ("EPS") for the first quarter of 2010 was RMB13.77 ($2.02); diluted EPS excluding share-based compensation expenses (non-GAAP) for the first quarter of 2010 was RMB14.33 ($2.10)."
Source: Baidu press release, 28th April 2010

Music streaming site we7 pays between £2,000 and £4,000 to the music industry per 1m song plays

"In comments to Digital Music News, we7 chief executive Steve Purdham clarified that ads are now covering royalties (both recording and publishing) and bandwidth costs, but not broader operational costs. The rest of the P&L is on its own.
Purdham also colored an earlier figure. Specifically, the company calculated that one million song plays now translate into "payments to the music industry" of between "2,000 to 4,000" pounds, or roughly $3,000 to $6,000. That is based on per-play rates, not "miniscule or non-existent revenue share" arrangements, and the payouts run the gamut of "unsigned" to "major label"."
Source: Digital Music News, 28th April 2010

50,000 websites implemented Facebook social plugins in the first week

"At f8, we also launched new tools called social plugins — including the Like button, Activity Feed, and Recommendations — on more than 75 websites. Already, just one week since launch, more than 50,000 sites across the Web have implemented the new plugins. We are thrilled by the strong adoption so far as developers realize how easy social plugins are to use and how powerful they are in engaging users in a frictionless experience without requiring them to share any personal information."
Source: Facebook blog, 28th April 2010

Wednesday 28 April 2010

240m Chinese internet users watch videos online

"According to its annual 2009 research report on online video applications in China, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) announced today that as of the end of 2009, online video users in China reached 240 mln.
According to the report, 66.8% of respondents reported time spent watching television had decreased, with 23.7% of those users stating they basically no longer watch television programs on TV. 56.7% of respondents said they are more dependent on the Internet than TV.
Films and television programs were the most commonly named content when respondents were asked what their favorite type of content was, garnering 77% and 70.5% of users respectively.
71.6% of respondents said they used regular search engines to find video content; 53.9% of respondents found content through word of mouth or SNS websites, while 43.8% used on-deck search on specific online video websites.
Over 98% of respondents said they used broadband connections to watch online videos, while only 0.9% said they used narrowband connections.
47.9% of respondents watched online video content every day.
62.9% of respondents reported that advertising on online video services is acceptable."
Source: Online video report from the CNNIC, reported by Marbridge Consulting, 7th April 2010

More young Chinese go online through mobile phones than desktop computers

"The report found that China's Internet penetration rate has reached 54.5 percent among young people, much higher than the national average of 28.9 percent among the country’s total population. In addition, the number of young Chinese netizens increased by 28 million in 2009.
Mobile netizens constitute the majority of the newly-added young Internet users. The number of young mobile Internet users rose 73.5 percent to 144 million from the end of 2008 to 2009, accounting for 74 percent of the total young netizen population, above the national average of around 61 percent. The proportion of young people who surf the Internet via their desktops dropped to about 70 percent, indicating that mobile phones have overtaken desktops for the first time as the first choice for young Chinese Internet users to access the Internet."
Source: CNNIC "2009 Report on the Behavior of China's Young Internet Users", reported by People's Daily, 27th April 2010
Note - Young Chinese are defined as age 6 to 25.

There are 195m internet users under the age of 25 in China

"The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) issued its "2009 Report on the Behavior of China's Young Internet Users" in Beijing today, showing that as of the end of 2009, China had reached a total of 195 mln young internet users, up 16.8% from the previous year, accounting for 50.7% of all internet users in China. Internet penetration among youth reached 54.5%, and 74% of all young internet users accessed the internet via mobile phone, up 24.3% from the previous year.
Young internet users spent a weekly average of 16.5 hours online, 1.9 hours longer than in 2008.
Most marked was young internet users' use of entertainment services, with usage of online music (88.1%), online video (67%), online literature (47.1%) and online gaming (77.2%) all higher than that of overall internet users. Young internet users also used online communication tools at higher rates than overall internet users, including blogs (68.8%), instant messaging (77%), social networking sites (50.9%) and BBS (31.7%). 73.9% of young Chinese internet users used search engines. In general, young Chinese internet users were less active on commerce-related internet applications, with online shopping and payment used by 26.5% and 22.9% of users, respectively.
85.7% of university students and 69.3% of middle- and high-school students who went online did so via mobile phone. Overall, young internet users were relatively active in usage of most mobile internet applications: 87.3% of young mobile internet users used online chat services, 60.8% used mobile search, and 54.5% used mobile music.
CNNIC defines internet users as Chinese nationals over the age of 6 who have used the internet within the past half year. Young internet users refers to those under the age of 25."
Source - CNNIC "2009 Report on the Behavior of China's Young Internet Users", reported by Marbridge Consulting, 26th April 2010

Amazon makes less than half its revenues from books, music and DVDs

"In its first quarter earnings report on Thursday, in which it announced an expectations-busting 46 percent increase in revenues over the year before and a 68 percent increase in profit, Amazon said its worldwide media sales grew 26 percent to $3.43 billion. For the first time, that total is less than its worldwide sales of electronics and other general merchandise, which grew 72 percent to $3.51 billion.
This long-expected inversion point is significant for Amazon. It also gives the company some insulation from the unpredictable shifts in the media business, in which it faces tech heavyweights like Apple and Google in growing markets like digital music and e-books."
Source: Amazon Q1 Earnings, reported by The New York Times, 22nd April 2010

Android's mobile web traffic overtook Apple's mobile web traffic in the US in March 2010


Click to enlarge

"According to the report, Android traffic in the U.S. increased to 46 percent of operating system share compared to 39 percent for the iPhone operating system. Worldwide, the iPhone OS still took the top spot, taking 46 percent of the OS share, with Android phones seeing 25 percent of impressions. AdMob measures mobile ad impressions, which is a proxy for overall traffic."
Source: AdMob's March 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, reported by Techcrunch, 27th April 2010

11 mobile devices make up 96% of Android mobile ad requests, up from 2 devices 7 months ago

Click to enlarge

"Only seven months ago, the HTC Dream and HTC Magic collectively represented 96% of Android traffic. In March 2010, 11 devices represented 96% of Android traffic in the AdMob network. The chart above illustrates the impact of new handsets."
Source: March 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, AdMob, 27th April 2010
More data from the pdf of the report -
"The Motorola Droid was the leading Android handset in March 2010 and generated 32% of worldwide Android traffic. The Google Nexus One only generated 2% of Android traffic in March 2010.
The top Android devices vary by country. The top three devices in the US were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream and Motorola CLIQ. In comparison, the top three Android devices in the UK were the HTC Hero, HTC Dream and HTC Magic"
See the pdf here

Monday 26 April 2010

Craigslist makes revenues of $3.3m per employee

Click to enlarge

Data from 37Signals, 21st April 2010

Social networking activity comprises more than half the time spent on the mobile internet in the US

"Social networking activity comprises more than half of the time spent on the Mobile Internet, reports survey from Ground Truth. The report also noted that users of mobile-specific social networks are more engaged than users of PC-based social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, on mobile.
"While the popularity of mobile social networking is widely believed, this is the first time we have been able to truly quantify just how much the category is driving adoption of the Mobile Internet with actual usage metrics," said Evan Neufeld, vice president of marketing, Ground Truth. "The disparity of time spent between social networking and the next category, portals, which account for 59.83 and 13.65 percent of time spent respectively, is a vivid illustration of the impact social networking has on Mobile Internet traffic in a given week."
Beyond sheer usage trends in social networking, data for the week ending April 4 indicates that mobile-centric social networking sites such as MocoSpace and AirG are better at engaging consumer than are with PC heavyweights like Facebook and MySpace."
Source: Ground Truth, reported in Cellular News, April 2010

Foursquare has one million users

"Foursquare Labs Inc., the location- based Web service that reached 1 million users this week, will decide whether to sell itself or raise more venture capital within weeks, Chief Executive Officer Dennis Crowley said.
[...]
The 20-employee company offers free advertising, for now, to small shops and restaurants, while generating revenue from selling ads to chain businesses, Crowley said. Ultimately, it plans to offer targeted advertising for local businesses, by crunching data about where users check in to guess what kinds of offers they want to see, he said.
The company is rolling out new features, including a self- service platform to let small businesses create Foursquare ads, and may begin services to introduce users to each other, Crowley said. The number of users is growing 50 percent a month and is on pace to reach 3 million by the end of the summer, he said."
Source: Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, interviewed in Bloomberg, 23rd April 2010
Earlier - 500,000 reported on 11th March

Digital income accounts for 20% of overall music revenues in the UK

"A strong fourth quarter and increased digital income streams offset the reduced sales of physical formats as the UK recorded music market reported a modest 1.4% annual increase in total trade income for 2009 of £928.8m, BPI’s annual survey of industry income revealed today.
Digital income now represents a fifth (20.3%) of overall recorded music revenues, taking into account earnings from online downloads alongside mobile, subscriptions and ad-supported services. 2009’s digital revenues total of £188.9m is 47.8% up on the £127.8m earned in 2008.
In the online sector alone, total income from downloads of digital tracks (£83.7m), albums (£67.3m) and video sales (£3m) increased by 51.7% to £154m overall in 2009."
Source: Press Release from the BPI, 26th April 2010

Sony sold 12m floppy discs in 2009, down from 47m in 2002

"The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format.
However, as the size of files and programs grew, the floppy disk was pushed aside by inexpensive and larger-format storage medium. Thanks to the creation of storage methods such as CDs, DVDs, Zip, and USB drives, Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009."
Source: Mainichi Daily Newspaper, reported in CNET, 25th April 2010

The iPhone has 72% of Japan's smartphone market

"Apple Inc.’s iPhone shipments to Japan more than doubled in the past year, capturing 72 percent of the country’s smartphone market, a research firm said.
Shipments of the iPhone, which began selling in Japan in July 2008, climbed to 1.69 million units in the year ended March 31, Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd. said in a report yesterday. That raised the total to 2.3 million, Hideaki Yokota, an analyst at the research firm, said by telephone today.
The iPhone helped smartphone sales more than double last fiscal year in Japan as shipments of regular mobile phones shrank, according to the report. Smartphone shipments will probably exceed 3 million units in the 12 months started April 1, even as the overall market is forecast to contract for a third year, it said.
“Last year was just the beginning of the smartphone competition, which is why Apple did so well,” said Calvin Huang, who rates iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. “buy” at Daiwa Securities Group Inc. in Taipei. “This year will be much more competitive.”"
Source: MM Research Institure Ltd, reported by Business Week, 23rd April 2010

Friday 23 April 2010

Some stats on The Sims

"The Sims franchise celebrates its ten year anniversary this year and an impressive more than 125 million units sold since its launch in February 2000. Now translated into 22 different languages and available in 60 different countries, The Sims has quickly become a universal gaming and cultural phenomenon. Since its June 2009 launch, The Sims 3 has sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide to date and holds the #1 best-selling PC title for 2009 in North America and Europe. Fan intensity is evidenced through the 130 million downloads of player created content including: Sims, houses, stories and more. The Sims 3 community site, www.thesims3.com, welcomes up to four million unique visitors monthly, handles 300 content downloads every minute and nearly 2 million uploads have been made to date, including 20 movies each hour. The Sims 3 YouTube Channel is in the top ten most viewed sponsored channels of all time with more than 28 million video views. Visit The Sims 3 official website to see what the players are creating at www.TheSims3.com or the official YouTube Channel for The Sims at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSims."
Source: Press release from Electronic Arts, 19th April 2010

Nokia shipped 108m phones in Q1 2010, including 21m 'converged devices', inc Smartphones

"Nokia's total mobile device volumes for the quarter were of 107.8 million units, growing 16 percent when compared to the first quarter of 2009, and going down 15 percent sequentially. The company's converged mobile device (smartphone and mobile computer) volumes went up 57 percent on a yearly basis, reaching 21.5 million units, and increased 3 percent from the previous quarter. The average selling price (ASP) of Nokia mobile devices (including services revenue) was of EUR 62, down from EUR 64 in Q4 2009. According to Nokia, it registered services net sales of EUR 148 million for the first quarter of the year, down 12 on quarter."
Source: Nokia Q1 2010 Financial Results, reported by Softpedia, 22nd April 2010

Thursday 22 April 2010

A small minority of online Americans create the overwhelming majority of influential posts, recommendations and comments in social media

Click to enlarge

"A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. Take a look at the graphic. About 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. Around 13.8% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts. We call these two groups Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens (if you've read "The Tipping Point" you know where we got the names.). If you're a marketer, you probably want to know who these people are (demographics, where they share, that kind of thing) -- once we've identified them, we can find that all out through the survey."
Source: Josh Bernoff, of Forrester, in AdAge, 20th April 2010
Note - influence impressions and influence posts are defined earlier in the article:
"First, there is influence from people posting within social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on. We call these instances influence impressions.
Second, there is influence created by posts: blog posts, blog comments, discussion forum posts, and ratings and reviews. We call these influence posts."

Online impressions from word of mouth recommendations are about a quarter of the level or paid advertising impressions

"People's influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. So people's online impressions on each other about products and services are about one-fourth of the online advertising impression. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends. Take those numbers into your next budget meeting!"
Source: Josh Bernoff of Forrester, writing in AdAge, 20th April 2010

Wednesday 21 April 2010

There are 26m 3G handsets in India - but no 3G network

"As per the figures of the Indian Cellular Association, 26 million of India's 563 million mobile phone subscribers have handsets that are 3G enabled.
Indians who use 3G handsets outnumber the entire population of Australia by about five million, Belgium by 16 million, Denmark by 21 million, the Netherlands by 10 million and Switzerland by 19 million.
The government promises that 3G services will be up and running in six months. The country is only now going through the motions of selecting telecom companies that will eventually run the 3G services. Now the 26 million users use 3G handsets to get only 2G services."
Source: The Indian Cellular Association, reported by Silicon India, 19th April 2010

Apple sold 8.75m iPhones in Q1 2010

"Apple sold 2.94 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 10.89 million iPods during the quarter, representing a one percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter."
Source: Apple press release, 20th April 2010

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Advertising on Facebook works best with a social context

Click to enlarge

"Looking at 14 campaigns that included Facebook’s “become a fan” ad unit, ad recall was consistently higher for those who ads with social context compared with those who saw none. An example would be someone who already had a friend become a fan compared with someone who didn’t.
Those who saw a paid ad but also were exposed to the newsfeed mention of the product by a friend were three times more likely to remember the ad. Paid ads on the homepage upped awareness by 4 percent; matched with social mentions, that went up to 13 percent. Purchase intent also rose"
Source: The findings of Nielsen's Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression research, as reported in Paid Content, 20th April 2010

3.6% of people exposed to an online advertising campaign visit the brand website during the course of the campaign


"By visualising all campaign exposures on the metered panel, we are also able to determine the true role of online display in driving people to the advertiser site post-exposure, and not just directly after they clicked on the ad. We were able to report back that online display is, on average, 20 times more powerful than the current CTR metric would have us believe (ie on average, 3.6% went on to visit the advertiser site post-exposure, compared with an average CTR of 0.18%)."
Source: Connecting The Dots, by Matthew Dodd of Nielsen, in Admap magazine, March 2010
(Accessable through WARC.com, but password protected)
Methodology - the results are based on "the results of 100 studies, based on a sample of more than 380,000 panel observations"

A third of American teens send more than 100 texts a day

"Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008, to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And its not just frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire cohort. The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages per day. "
Source: Teens and Mobile Phones, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 20th April 2010

Non-phones (inc gaming devices) accounted for 21% of US mobile ad impressions in March 2010

"Connected devices like the iPad, iPod touch, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS accounted for 21% of U.S. impressions in March, according to new data from mobile ad network Millennial Media. Smartphones generated 45%, and feature phones, 34%. Impressions on the iPad increased 713% in the first week following the Apple tablet's April 3 release, although it still only generates a tiny fraction of Millennial's traffic.
Apple devices overall generated the largest share of impressions across Millennial's network, at 40%. While the iPad has gotten off to a solid start with 450,000 units sold in its first few days, the much-hyped tablet still has a long way to go to catch up with the 85 million iPhones and iPod touches sold to date.
Among smartphones, the iPhone was easily tops in impressions, with nearly a 27% share, with the BlackBerry Curve a distant second at 6%."
Source: Millennial Media, reported by MediaPost, 16th April 2010

23% of Americans under the age of 25 do most of their TV viewing online


Click to enlarge

Source: The Retrevo Pulse Report, 9th April 2010

Monday 19 April 2010

Twitter users by Country & City, January 2010

The US is the most active country, and London is the most active city:



Source: Exploring the Use of Twitter Around the World, Sysomos, January 2010

Blu-ray sales rose 70% Y-o-Y in the UK in Q1 2010

"New sales figures released today by the British Video Association using data from the Official Charts Company reveal healthy year on year growth for the home entertainment market based on data for the first quarter of 2010.
New release titles performed especially well in the first quarter of the year, with volumes up 10.3% on the same period last year, with a 31% increase in March. This is especially significant given the achievement of Quantum of Solace (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) last March, which sold 1.2 million units. The healthy increase was also due in part to Easter falling a week earlier than in 2009.
Growth in Q1 was particularly seen in the music genre (up 42% against last year), driven by Michael Jackson’s This Is It (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), and in children’s titles (up 38%) due to strong sales of Up (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment).
The figures also reflect the increasingly popularity of the Blu-ray format, which is currently driving growth across the home entertainment market. Sales of Blu-ray are up 69.5% (up 50% in value) on the same period in 2009, reaching 2.7m units in the first three months of the year, taking the total number of Blu-ray Discs sold to 15.6m units since launch."
Source: Press Release from the British Video Association, 16th April 2010

Friday 16 April 2010

There were 29 tweets per second discussing the first UK election leadership debate

"Final stats: total tweets: 184,396; average frequency 29.06 tweets per second; total tweeters: 36,483"
Source: Tweet from Tweetminster, 15th April 2010

Search accounts for 47% of US online ad spend

"Online advertising had a record fourth quarter in 2009 following a bleak first nine months of the year.
In the fourth quarter, internet advertising grew 2.6% to a record $6.3 billion, compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Meanwhile, total media ad revenue slipped by 2% in the fourth quarter, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
For the year, internet advertising fell 3.4%, to $22.66 billion, from $23.4 billion in 2008, the first year of decline since 2002, when online ad spend fell 16%.
By Format
Search made up 47% of 2009 internet ad revenue - up from 45% in 2008 - and ad spending increased 1% to $10.7 billion for the year. Display ad spending grew 4% for the year, to $8 billion. Digital video ad spending soared 38%, to $1 billion.
Classified ad spending plunged 29% to $2.3 billion in 2009, while ad spending on lead generation fell 14% to $1.5 billion.
Email ad revenue slipped 28%, to $292 million.
Though internet ad spending was down 3.4% for the year, that compares favorably with the 12.3% decline of ad spending across all media in 2009 (per Kantar Media)."
Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), reported by MarketingVox, 8th April 2010

The 'David After Dentist' YouTube video has generated more than $100,000 for the makers

"On DavidAfterDentist.com, visitors can buy T-shirts ($20) and stickers ($5). They can watch the parodies, which include Darth Vader imitating David, and a Super Bowl commercial starring Beyoncé and David, promoting consumer electronics company Vizio.
All in all, with the licensing deals, the T-shirts and a YouTube ad partnership, the DeVores have amassed "in the low six figures," DeVore says. "More than $100,000." (This works out, by the way, to approximately $840 per second for the less-than-two-minute video). Around $6,000 of that has gone to the children's charity Operation Smile."
Source: The Washington Post, 7th April 2010
Earlier - 'More than $30,000' from embedded ads on YouTube reported in November 2009

Thursday 15 April 2010

Twitter has 106m registered users

"[Twitter] has 106 million registered users who write 55 million posts a day.
Seventy-five percent of that traffic comes from outside Twitter, using third-party applications, like TweetDeck.
The site gets 180 million visits a month."
Source: Figures revealed by Biz Stone at the Chirp confernce, reported by New York Times, 14th April 2010

Next Generation Media Quarterly - April 2010

Here is this quarter's presentation on Next Generation Media, part of a series that I started to produce in 2009.



The lastest presentation looks at some key stats that regular readers will recognise, like the fact that a typical social gamer is a 43 year old woman, twitter is over 30 times as popular now as in 2008, and that teens in the US text ten time an hour.

There are also creative and site examples, for example twitter's new Promoted Tweets, plus the sites Fiverr and Please Rob Me, and some case studies on effectiveness.

The presentation is available for download - just use the link in Slideshare at the top of the presentation to get the pdf.

The previous two presentations can be found here

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Songwriter payments from digital sources

To earn the US minimum wage of $1,160 per month, artists would need to sell:
143 self-pressed CDs at $9.99 each
1,161 album downloads from Napster or iTunes at $9.99 each
12,399 track downloads from Amazon or iTunes at $0.99 each
849,817 track plays on Rhapsody
1,546,667 track plays on last.fm
4,549,020 track plays per month on Spotify
Source: Data from InformationisBeautiful.net (presented on a brilliant visualisation) - full data in spreadsheet here

89% of Chatroulette users are male

"For more than two weeks earlier this spring, RJMetrics compiled detailed data on 2,883 Chatroulette sessions that tied users to things like geography, gender and appearance. The data showed 89 percent of users were male and 11 percent were female. (Users are more likely to come across a Webcam featuring no one than to find a female alone.) Some 8 percent of spins showed multiple people; one in three females used Chatroulette as part of a group versus one in 12 for males. As for the perv factor, one in eight spins came up with something R-rated."
Source: RJMetrics, reported in Adweek, 12th April 2010

Monday 12 April 2010

27% of Google's revenue is profit

"[H]ow much of the revenue becomes profit. Here are the numbers for 2009:
Microsoft: 27.7%
Apple: 17.8%
Google: 27.6%
Google and Microsoft are really close here, at just under 28%. Apple with its 17.8% lags behind, but it’s getting better. Go back just five years (to 2004) and Apple’s profit was just 5.2% of its revenue.
Microsoft is quite impressive in that through all the years it’s never gone below 20%. Ok, one exception: in 1985, Microsoft’s profit was “only” 18.8% of the revenue. On the other hand, it’s also gone as high as 40.4% (in 2000)."
Source: Officially reported financial data, collated by Royal Pingdom, 9th April 2010

Friday 9 April 2010

4.5 Billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple App store - 1.5 billion in 3 months

"To date, there have been 4.5 billion application downloads from the App Store."
Source: Apple press event, reported by The Examiner, 8th April 2010
Previously - 3 billion downloaded (5th Jan 2010) 2 billion downloaded (28th September), 1 billion downloaded (24th April 2009)

More than 4 billion apps have been downloaded from the Apple App store

"Today, more than four billion apps have been downloaded from the revolutionary App Store and more than 185,000 apps are available to consumers in 90 countries. Over 85 million iPhone and iPod touch users around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. "
Source: Apple press release, 8th April 2010
Previously - 3 billion downloaded (5th Jan 2010) 2 billion downloaded (28th September), 1 billion downloaded (24th April 2009)
UPDATE - Apple now say that 4.5 billion have been downloaded

Over 60% of twitter users are from outside the US

Click to enlarge

"Twitter's first users were the early employees and their friends, largely based around our offices in San Francisco. Today we are a global information network, with a robust developer ecosystem and a website available in six languages. Our users on Twitter are even more geographically diverse — we're proud to report that over 60% of registered Twitter accounts come from outside the US. There are Twitter users in the large countries you'd expect, some smaller countries you might not expect (like the Vatican City) and even one in outer space."
Source: Twitter blog, 8th April 2010

The average social gamer is a 43 year old woman

"PopCap Games, maker of some of the world's most popular video games, today unveiled the results of a survey targeting "social gamers": Consumers in the U.S. and UK who play games on social networking platforms such as Facebook® and MySpace®. More than 24% of respondents said they play social games regularly, indicating a total social gamer population of approximately 100 million in America and the United Kingdom alone. And contrary to prevailing stereotypes, the average social gamer is a 43-year old woman.
[...]
Among the nearly 5,000 consumers who responded to the survey, more than 1,200 play games on social networking sites and platforms at least once a week, qualifying them as "social gamers" for the purposes of the survey. Two-thirds of all qualified survey respondents are U.S.-based. 55% of all social gamers are female and 45% are male — with the disparity being even larger among UK consumers (58% vs. 42%). The average age of social gamers is 43, with U.S.-based social gamers averaging 48 years of age compared to 38 for those based in the UK. Further, 46% of American social gamers are 50 or older, compared to just 23% in the UK. Only 6% of all social gamers are age 21 or younger.
Gender Differences
As with most forms of video games, men and women differ in their consumption of, and attitudes towards, social games:
Among the most avid social gamers, women make up the majority; 38% of female social gamers say they play social games several times a day, vs. 29% of males.
Women are more apt to play social games with real-world friends than men are (68% vs. 56%).
Men are more inclined than women to play with strangers (41% vs. 33%); nearly twice as many women as men say they play social games with relatives (46% vs. 29%).
Frequent Play
The vast majority (95%) of social gamers play multiple times per week; nearly two-thirds (64%) play at least once a day.
U.S. players tend to play more frequently, with 68% saying they play daily compared to 55% of U.K.-based social gamers.
61% of social gamers say their average social gaming session lasts more than half an hour; one in ten say their average session lasts 3 hours or more!
More than half (56%) of social gamers have been playing social games for more than a year.
About one quarter (26%) are new to social gaming, having started playing in the last six months.
About a third (35%) of social gamers say their consumption of social games has increased over the past three months, compared to 10% who said it has decreased."
Source: Research by Information Solutions Group (ISG), for PopCap, cited in a press release, 17th February 2010
(Lots of other stats in the press release)

Wednesday 7 April 2010

More than 60m Americans listen to radio over the internet each week

"More than 60 million people each week listen to radio over the Internet.
84% (50 million) of this group regularly listens for at least five minutes to AM/FM simulcast streams in a typical week.
62% (38 million) of the total streaming group regularly listens for at least five minutes listening to Internet-only streams."
Source: Device Usage Upadate from Bridge Ratings, 1st April 2010

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Over 1m badges have been awarded on Foursquare

Data shared by Foursquare on their first birthday:
"Over 500,000 users
Over 1,000,000 badges have been awarded
Over 1.4 million venues with 1200 offering specials
Over 15.5 million checkins"
Source: Foursquare blog, 11th March 2010

Apple sold over 300,000 iPads on the day they went on sale

"Apple® today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple’s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day."
Source: Apple press release, 5th April 2010

Thursday 1 April 2010

UK online advertising spend rose by 4.2% in 2009

"The Internet Advertising Bureau's annual report, compiled with PricewaterhouseCoopers and published today, revealed that UK online display advertising rose by about 11% year on year to £709m last year.
Overall the IAB's report showed that total UK internet advertising spend – including classified and search – rose by 4.2% year on year in 2009 to £3.5bn. As forecast, this comfortably outstripped the recession-battered TV advertising sector, which was down by about 10% to £2.89bn, according to the media buying operation Group M.
However, the IAB has said that on a like-for-like basis – meaning that when the income is stripped out for online companies that have not submitted figures in both 2008 and 2009 because it skews comparisons – the online display market shrank by 4.4%.
Based on the IAB's own figures from 2008, when it valued the online display ad market at £637m, the 4.4% drop should mean that in 2009 the sector was worth some £609m."
Source: Data compiled by the IAB / PwC, reported by The Guardian, 31st March 2010

24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute

"A day’s worth of content uploaded to YouTube every minute is a big achievement for our community and speaks to the role video plays in connecting and changing the world one upload at a time. "
Source: YouTube blog, 17th March 2010