Nearly 60% of AT&T's non-prepay customers have a smartphone

"In announcing its third-quarter earnings today, AT&T said that it activated more than 8 million smartphones over the past quarter, and a hefty 5.2 million of those devices were iPhones--"the most iPhone activations ever in a quarter," the carrier said. During the second quarter of 2010, AT&T activated 3.2 million iPhones.
The latest version of Apple's smartphone, the iPhone 4, went on sale just days before the start of the third quarter. Earlier this week, in reporting on its most recent fiscal quarter, Apple said that worldwide sales of the iPhone doubled from the same period a year earlier.
AT&T said that nearly one-quarter of all iPhone activations during the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, came from new customers.
Beyond that, 57.3 percent of the company's "postpaid subscribers" have a smartphone. A year ago, that figure stood at just 42 percent. The company also added 2.6 million net subscribers, pushing its total to 92.8 million."
Source:  AT&T Q3 earnings statement, reported by CNET News, 21st October 2010

Lady Gaga's videos have had over 1 billion views on YouTube

"Taking to her Twitter account Sunday morning to thank her fans for helping to drive up the number of views of her various music videos on YouTube, the provocative pop singer announced: "We reached 1 Billion views on youtube little monsters! If we stick together we can do anything. I dub u kings and queens of youtube! Unite!"
Although the eccentric singer-songwriter, whose birth name is Stefani Germanotta, is the first artist to reach the YouTube milestone, sources predict that she may not hold the title for much longer than a week.
Fellow pop star Justin Bieber is trailing close behind the "Bad Romance" singer with 962,726,797 total video views and is poised to reach one million hits by November 1. The Canadian singer already holds the YouTube record for most views of a single video for his hit "Baby," which on Sunday afternoon displayed a total of 365,643,608 views."
Source:  Hollywood Reporter, 24th October 2010
See Lady Gaga's Tweet here

A 'share' of an event is worth an average of $1.78 in ticket sales to Eventbright

"The study by Eventbrite found that, on average, every time an event was shared that resulted in $1.78 in ticket sales. Drilling down into this number shows how valuable different types of share are:
1 - Facebook: $2.52. Facebook resulted in the highest average ticket sales per share with every ‘Like’ on the social network resulting in $2.52 in ticket sales. That this is the most valuable type of share is not surprising – Facebook has grown with events and users are accustomed to inviting people to or accepting events on the platform. Overall this is a very important driver of traffic and sales for Eventbrite – it is the sites biggest referrer of traffic and every ‘Like’ drives 11 visits back to the site.

2 - Email: $2.34. The second most valuable sharing mechanism was not a social media tool at all, but email. This is not surprising – email is likely to be much more targeted as users need to select individual people with whom they want to share the event, rather than just publicising it to all people they connect with in a social network. That this is not the most valuable type of sharing is a surprise and shows the ever increasing power of Facebook and other social networks as a communications and sharing mechanism.
3 - LinkedIn: $0.90. LinkedIn shares are the third most valuable with an average of $0.90 in ticket sales generated every time an event is shared on the social network. This is much less than for shares on Facebook or via email but is still significant driver of sales.
4 - Twitter: $0.43. Shares on Twitter are the least valuable of all four means, with each share worth $0.43 – almost a sixth the value of a Like on Facebook. This is, perhaps, a sign that connections on Twitter are less focused than on Facebook, or perhaps that on Twitter shares and messages are less engaged with – indeed recent research from Sysomos showed that over 70% of all Tweets get no response. So Twitter messages may be less engaging than those on Facebook, leading to fewer clicks and so fewer ticket sales.
Source:  Research by Eventbright, reported by FreshNetworks, 21st October 2010

Sony has sold 400m Walkmans; 50% are cassette-based models

"The first Walkman was produced in 1979. The picture shows the TPS-L2, the world’s first portable (mass-produced) stereo, which went on sale in Japan on July 1 that year and was later exported to the US, Europe and other places. Sony says that they managed to sell over 400 million Walkmans worldwide until March 2010, and exactly 200,020,000 of those were cassette-based models."
Source:  Crunchgear, 22nd October 2010

Access to mobile networks is now available to 90% of the world population

"By the end of 2010, there will be an estimated 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, including 940 million subscriptions to 3G services.
Access to mobile networks is now available to 90% of the world population and 80% of the population living in rural areas.
People are moving rapidly from 2G to 3G platforms, in both developed and developing countries.
In 2010, 143 countries were offering 3G services commercially, compared to 95 in 2007.
Towards 4G: a number of countries have started to offer services at even higher broadband speeds, moving to next generation wireless platforms – they include Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and the United States."
Source:  The World in 2010, ITU, October 2010 (pdf)

Foursquare has 4 million users, and has quadrupled in size since March 2010

"Testimony for that comes from Foursquare, which has now passed four million users, according to co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley. In a conversation earlier today, Dennis said that it took a mere 50 days for them to grab a million additional users. The location-based service hit the 3 million mark in August 2010. It’s clear that Foursquare is starting to see a network effect — the more people sign-up, the faster it grows.
Foursquare hit the one million user mark in March 2010, a year after the service launched. The company has been making feature additions to the service that allow it to attract a more mainstream audience, and in an interview earlier this year, Dennis shared with me his grand ambitions of marrying the social web and location. Getting to 4 Million users is only part of that grand scheme."
Source:  GigaOM, 21st October 2010

Spotify has 10m subscribers, including nearly 650,000 paying subscribers

"[A]ccording to information shared this week by European sources, Spotify's premium subscriber total is now approaching 650,000.  The information comes from internal updates that Spotify issues to it content partners, which sources agreed to discuss with Digital Music News.    
One source pegged the number at "between 640,000 and 650,000," though the trajectory is obvious.  In mid-July, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek disclosed a premium total of 500,000, and topline registered users recently surpassed 10 million."
Source:  DigitalMusicNews, 21st October 2010

Health is the most talked about topic online

"The top ten most talked about topics are:
1. Health 14%
2. Games 13%
3. Auto & Moto 10%
4. IT & Tech 9%
5. Sports 8%
6. Home & Recreation 8%
7. Music 4%
8. Cinema 3%
9. Love & Family 3%
10. Women 3% "
Source:  Research from Synthesio, reported by BizReport, 19th October 2010

37% of UK mobile phone users have used their phone to purchase a product or service direct to their phone bill

"New research from the Internet Advertising Bureau – the trade association for online and mobile advertising – reveals that mobile commerce has already become widely adopted in the UK, with 51% of mobile owners (23 million people) using their device to make payments, redeem coupons or research products and services. The study shows once again the urgent need for retailers to catch up with the mobile consumer and enhance the user experience to ensure they don’t miss out on sales.
The study – based on a nationally representative sample of over 1000 mobile owners and carried out by work research - was designed to investigate genuine consumer engagement with m-commerce in the UK. It found that 43% of respondents had used mobile to conduct research for a purchase, whilst 40% have used their mobile phone to check shop details such as contact information, location and opening hours. Usability was found to be key, with those who find research easy 16% more likely to make a purchase than those who don’t.
The study shows just how significant the mobile phone now is within the path to purchase, as well as how increasingly sophisticated mobile consumer behaviour has become, showing that:
Consumers are buying already. 37% of people have used their mobile to purchase a service/product direct to their phone bill. Within this, 32% have paid for downloaded content, 21% have used a shortcode to pay for a product/service, and 13% entered a phone number to pay for a product/service."
Source:  Press release from the IAB, re-produced in full by Mobile Europe blog, 18th October 2010

Rapper Sean Combs' involvement has increased sales of Ciroc vodka from 120,000 cases p.a. to 400,000 p.a. in 2 years

"Sales were modest in its first few years on the market. Then, in late 2007, Diageo inked a marketing deal with Sean “P Diddy” Combs, the US rap star.
Mr Combs, who is also a music producer and actor with a brand of urban casual wear, has a wide following in the African-American community. He became more than a frontman for Ciroc. In exchange for a 50-50 split of the profits on Ciroc sales, he developed the branding and positioning for the vodka.
The results were remarkable, says Jim Mosely, senior vice-president for consumer planning at Diageo. “Only twice in my career have I seen an immediate response in our brand tracking,” he says of the jump in visibility Ciroc enjoyed after the announcement of the partnership with Mr Combs.
“We saw it really take off in the African-American community, and it has started to broaden its appeal. Throughout the entire economic recession, it was one of the few brands that never slowed down.”
In the first six months of 2007, before Mr Combs signed on, Diageo sold 60,000 cases of Ciroc. The following year, sales grew to approximately 169,000. In the full year ended June 2009, volume spiked to 400,000 cases. Sales rose another 48 per cent in fiscal 2010, according to Diageo’s earnings statements."
Source:  Figures from Diageo, reported by the Financial Times, 20th October 2010
[Note - I've extrapolated the 60,000 cases for the first half of 2007 to 120,000 cases p.a.]

The sex.com internet domain has been sold for $13m

"The sex.com internet domain has been sold for $13m (£8.2m)
The domain was put up for auction in July 2010 when its former owner, Escom LLC, went bankrupt.
Clover Holdings, an obscure company registered on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, put in the highest bid for the domain.
The sex.com domain has changed hands several times and at one time was under the control of a conman who stole it from its original owner.
The sale will only be final if it wins approval from the bankruptcy court overseeing Escom LLC's affairs. The court will make that decision on 27 October."
Source:  BBC News, 21st October 2010

Netflix has 16.9m subscribers in the US

"In the third quarter, Netflix saw a 52 percent gain in subscribers to 16.9 million. Revenue increased 31 percent to $553 million. But most interesting: 66 percent of subscribers watched more than 15 minutes of streaming video compared with 41 percent during the same period last year. The company predicted Wednesday that in the fourth quarter, a majority of Netflix subscribers would watch more content streamed from the Web on Netflix than on DVD."
Source:  Netflix financial results for Q3 2010, reported by The Washington Post, 21st October 2010