73% of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer apps; 72% of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more apps

"73 percent of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer applications; in contrast, 72 percent of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more applications
Facebook is hot among iPhone owners: 71 percent of iPhone users report accessing Facebook from their mobile device, 37 percent listed Facebook as one of their top three most utilized apps and 18 percent claim it’s their favorite app.
30 percent of all smartphone owners are either comfortable or very comfortable receiving targeted marketing on their device."
Source: Quarterly Smartphone Intelligence Survey, reported in a press release from Conpete Inc, 10th September 2009

UK online ad spend breakdown: Search 63%, Classified 19%, Display 18%

"Paid-for search continued to grow, proving itself a mainstay of marketing budgets with an 11.8% increase from H1 2008 to H1 2009. As the purest form of direct response advertising, search is proving recession-friendly with marketers investing £1.1bn during H1 2009, which equates to 62.6% of all online advertising expenditure.
Total online classified spend was £335.8m in H1 2009 – or 19.2% of all online ad spend – and saw a slight decline of 3.6% in this period. However within this ‘further classifieds’, increased by 29% despite the property market crash and stalled automotive sector to £215.2m, promising news for the industry
Online display was down 5.2% year on year to £316.5m, with an 18.1% share of all online advertising revenues. Online display buoyed a tough year as all other mainstream media saw a double digit decline. "
Source: Figures from the IAB / PwC for January - June 2009, reported in their press release on 30th September 2009

The internet now accounts for 23.5% of UK ad spend, compared to 21.9% for TV

"The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of the year.
The milestone marks a watershed for the embattled TV industry, the leading ad medium in the UK for almost half a century. It has taken the internet little more than a decade to become the biggest advertising sector in the UK.
UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. To put this in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online.
The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets."
Source: Figures from the IAB / PwC for January - June 2009, reported by The Guardian, 30th September 2009

Americans who use social networks are more affluent than the national average

"If you’re in the U.S. and are using a social network like Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, chances are you’re more affluent and more urban than the average American according to Nielsen Claritas, which provides in-depth segmentation analysis of consumer behavior.
“Nielsen’s online data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter,” said Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development, Nielsen Claritas. “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”
Through Claritas, Nielsen defines U.S. households in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct segments like “Young Digerati” or “Beltway Boomers.” When those segments are overlaid with the activity of Nielsen’s online panel of more than 200K, we see a marked difference in the demographic makeup of the two largest social networks, Facebook and MySpace.
Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the those in the lower third.
The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace."
Source: NielsenWire blog, 25th September 2009

Two billion iPhone apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store

""Apple today announced that more than two billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone™ and iPod touch® customers worldwide and over 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program.
“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”"
Source: Apple press release, 28-9-09
Note - the first one billion downloads took nine months; the second took only five (24th April - 28th September)

Teens would rather save money by cutting back on clothes and accessories than console & PC games

"Shopping for clothes and accessories is the first thing that teens cut back on with 23%, followed by console and PC games (19%), food, sweets and beverages (16%), going to the movies (15%), online entertainment (13%) and music (9%). However, staying in is clearly not an appealing option to teens as only 33% say that they are in more in the evenings."
Source: Research by Habbo on 61,000 12-17 year olds across 30 counties, reported in a press release, 16th September 2009

24% of twitter users review or rate products

"Interpret surveyed over 9,200 internet users in August, finding that roughly 24 percent of the respondents that used Twitter, reviewed or rated products online; just 12 percent of people that used other social nets—but not Twitter—said the same. Twitter users were also more likely to visit company profiles (20 percent) than non-Twitter users (11 percent), and twice as likely to click on ads or sponsored links (20 percent vs. 9 percent).
The higher rates of engagement with brands could stem from a number of factors. First, people aren’t spending as much time doing activities (commenting on photos, chatting, playing games) on Twitter, so they could be more apt to click on an ad that would take them away from the site. In contrast, it’s been proven that most ads on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks, fail to garner high click-throughs or other interactions, simply because users don’t want to have their experience interrupted."
Source: Interpret research, as reported by PaidContent, 24th September 2009

There are an estimated 400,000 'gold farmers', mainly based in China

"In basic terms, gold-farming [the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games] is a sizeable phenomenon. The rather wobbly-legged best guesses for 2008 are that 400,000 gold farmers earning an average US$145 per month produced a global market worth US$500m; but we could easily more than double the latter to over US$1bn. There are probably 5-10m consumers of gold farming services. The main uncertainty of estimation relates to the gold-farming market in East Asia, which appears much larger than that in the US/EU. That uncertainty in part arises because gold farming operates at four levels – local, national, regional and global. We should encompass all four but, to date, the focus has been almost entirely on the global trade."
Source: Page 66 of Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold Farming":
Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games, by Richard Heeks, Development Informatics Group, IDPM, SED, University of Manchester, UK
2008, citing Wang, R. (2008) The Truth Behind Gold Farmers, WoWMine, Wilmington, DE
This excellent paper will tell you all you need to know about gold farming!

Habbo has 144 million registered users

Some stats about Habbo (August 2009):
"# 31 local communities
# Registered users: 144,000,000
# Unique visitors: 13,000,000 / month
# Page impressions: 990,000,000 / month
# Age distribution: 90 % between 13-18 years old
# Average visit: 43 minutes / session"
Source: Sulake.com, retrieved 26th September 2009

65% of online shoppers wait a day or more to complete their purchase

"Retailers should re-examine abandoned shopping cart rates. McAfee’s study found that 65% of all shoppers wait a day or more to complete a purchase, and the average delay is 33 hours and 54 minutes. Instead of panicking, e-tailers should understand the reasons for abandoned shopping carts and implement strategies to combat consumer fears.
“Retailers shouldn’t misinterpret abandoned shopping carts – many of these potential sales return later to finalize the sale,” said Keats. “Understanding this delay is critical for merchant analytics.”"
Source: McAfee, 17th September 2009

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

"The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam. According to our projections, a typical 1,000-user organization can spend upwards of $1.8 million a year to manage spam."
Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009

EMI sold 2.25 million Beatles Remasters CDs in one week

"Underlining their timeless appeal and unique status in music, The Beatles have broken multiple chart records around the world following the 9 September 2009 (9-9-09) CD release of their digitally re-mastered catalogue. In the major music markets of North America, Japan and the UK, consumers purchased more than 2.25m copies of The Beatles' re-mastered albums, both individually and in two multiple-CD boxed sets, one in stereo and one in mono, during the first five days of release (excluding non-traditional retail outlets whose sales are not tracked by the chart compilers).
[...]
US: During the first five days of release, consumers purchased more than one million copies of re-mastered Beatles titles, and the individual albums and boxed sets debuted strongly across multiple Billboard charts. "
Source: EMI press release, 22nd September 2009