An estimated 30m people have tried Facebook Places

"About 30 million people have tried Facebook places, a single source who works with Facebook tells us.
Reached for a response to this number, Facebook rep Larry Yu told us, "[I] don't have any guidance to offer right now, I'm afraid."
Not a denial.
Anyway, our source's number sounds reasonable to us."
Source:  Business Insider, 29th October 2010

Spotify paid out €30m in revenues to music rights holders in the first 8 months of 2010

"How much money is streaming music service Spotify generating for the music industry?
According to figures shared with Music Ally by the company, its payouts to rightsholders have topped €40 million since it launched in October 2008. That’s based on streams of songs across its seven European territories.
However, €30 million of those were paid in the first eight months of 2010, as usage of Spotify has grown sharply. That could be boiled down to €3.75 million a month, but Music Ally understands that the figure was much lower at the start of 2010, and much higher now."
Source:  Figures from Spotify, revealed to Music Ally, 28th October 2010

VidZone, Sony Playstation's music video service, has delevered more than 500 million video views

"VidZone, the free music video service for users of PlayStation, has delivered more than half a billion videos to 3.7 million fans in eighteen countries from its catalogue of 30,000 videos and recently launch 120 pre-programmed channels, serving up three billion ad impressions in the process."
Source:  Figures from VidZone, reported by CMU, 29th October 2010

iPad demographics vs. Kindle demographics (US data)

"Apple iPad users are younger and more of them are male than those of other connected devices
- 65% are male, 63% are under the age of 35
- Kindle users: 52% male, 47% under the age of 35
- Amazon Kindle users are slightly wealthier, better educated
- 28% have incomes of $100k or more, 57% have a bachelors degree or higher
- Pad users: 25% have incomes of $100k or more, 51% have a bachelors degree or higher"
Source:  The Increasingly Connected Consumer: Connected Devices, The Nielsen Company, October 2010 (pdf)

A comparison of the content accessed over the iPhone and the iPad

Click to enlarge

Source:  The Nielsen Company, 21st October 2010

The internet is worth £100 billion a year to the British economy

"The internet is worth £100bn a year to the UK economy, a study has concluded.

The research, which was commissioned by Google, found that the internet accounts for 7.2% of the UK's gross domestic product (GDP).

If the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest, said the report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

Some 60% of the £100bn a year figure is made up from internet consumption - the amount that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web.

The rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports."

Source: Research commissioned by Google, and reported by BBC News, 28th October 2010
Full report here
Report website here

UK mobile network 3 carries more than 100 terabytes of data each day

"Three’s network now carries more than 100 terabytes of data a day across it – or roughly 20-times the amount of information held in Wikipedia. Of this more than 40% is made up of people streaming media from sites like BBC iPlayer and Youtube, 38% is from web browsing, including web downloads, and close to 6% is from people updating Microsoft software. In addition about 2.5% is now made up of people messaging each other, such as via Skype or MSN."

Source: Press release from Three Mobile, 14th October 2010

The Xbox 360 outsold every other gaming console in the US in Q3 2010

"Microsoft Corp. today announced record first-quarter revenue of $16.20 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2010, a 25% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.12 billion, $5.41 billion and $0.62 per share, which represented increases of 59%, 51% and 55%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
[...]
During the quarter, Microsoft saw year-over-year growth across all business segments. Among the highlights are these:
- Office 2010 is off to a fast start with revenue growing over 15% in its first full quarter in market.
- Microsoft continues to see a healthy and sustaining business PC refresh cycle.
- Xbox 360 consoles grew 38%, outselling every competing console in the U.S. for each of the past four months.
- For yet another quarter, Bing continued to grow market share, while achieving major milestones in implementing Microsoft’s partnership with Yahoo."
Source:  Press Release from Microsoft, 28th October 2010

Kindle versions of books are outselling print editions (hardback and paperback) for the top 1000 best sellers on Amazon in the US

"Kindle book unit sales continue to overtake print on Amazon.com, even while print book sales continue to grow. During the past 30 days, Amazon.com customers purchased more Kindle books than print books--hardcover and paperback combined--for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com.
"For the top 10 bestselling books on Amazon.com, customers are choosing Kindle books over hardcover and paperback books combined at a rate of greater than 2 to 1. Kindle books are also outselling print books for the top 25, 100, and 1,000 bestsellers--it's across the board," said Kessel. "This is remarkable when you consider that we've been selling hardcover and paperback books for 15 years, and Kindle books for just 36 months."
Other recent milestones for Kindle include:
- In the 12 weeks following the introduction of the new generation Kindles, Kindle devices or Kindle-related items such as Kindle books and covers represented 15 of the top 15 bestselling items on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined.
- Amazon sold more than 3 times as many Kindle books in the first nine months of 2010 as in the first nine months of 2009.
- The Association of American Publishers' latest data reports that e-book sales grew 193 percent between January and August 2010. Kindle book sales growth during the same period exceeded this rate."

Source:  Press release from Amazon, 25th October 2010

Posts made on Facebook at 3pm on a Wednesday are the most likely to generate reactions

"A new report from Vitrue has analyzed data on Facebook to determine when is the best time of day to make a post. After studying more than 1.6 million posts, 7.56 million comments and 1,500 brand streams, it boils down to this: Wednesday at 3PM ET.
It is, Vitrue, said the consistently busiest period. In general, it found that  the best usage period were 11 AM, 3 PM and 8 PM ET."
Source:  Research from Vitrue, reported by MarketingVox, 28th October 2010

Google represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic around the world

"Google now represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic around the world. This number grows even larger (to as much as 8-12%) if I include estimates of traffic offloaded by the increasingly common Google Global Cache (GGC) deployments and error in our data due to the extremely high degree of Google edge peering with consumer networks. Keep in mind that these numbers represent increased market share — Google is growing considerably faster than overall Internet volumes which are already increasing 40-45% each year. More data on general Internet growth trends is available in some of our earlier papers and blog posts.
While its not news that Google is Big, what is amazing is how much bigger Google continues to get.
A quick analysis of the data also shows Google now has direct peering (i.e. not transit) with more than 70% of all providers around the world (an increase of 5-10% from last year). In fact, the only remaining major group of ISPs without direct Google peering are several of the tier1s and national PTTs — many of whom will not settlement-free peer with Google due to regulatory prohibitions or commercial strategy."
Source:  Arbor Networks, 25th October 2010

The Top 25 brand sites on Facebook, by the number of 'Likes'

"1. Starbucks (16,032,409)
2. Coca Cola (15,095,389)
3. Oreo (12,085,126)
4. Skittles (11,508,441)
5. Red Bull (10,198,875)
6. Victoria’s Secret (8,429,334)
7. Disney (8,394,141)
8. Converse All Star (7,366,892)
9. iTunes (7,071,721)
10. MTV (7,043,056)
11. Zara (6,063,583)
12. Pringles (5,762,518)
13. NBA (5,616,388)
14. Starburst (5,380,056)
15. Nutella (5,208,281)
16. Dr Pepper (5,164,646)
17. Monster Energy (4,916,536)
18. Adidas Originals (4,804,224)
19. H&M (4,520,070)
20. Ferrero Rocher (4,424,751)
21. McDonalds (3,795,486)
22. Playstation (3,683,751)
23. Xbox (3,447,690)
24. Taco Bell (3,399,860)
25. Puma (2,712,075)"
Source:  Compiled by TNW Social Media, 25th October 2010