Bit.ly received 2.1 billion clicks on its links in November 2009

"“People shorten the URL, send it to their wife and say, ‘Hey honey, look at this product’,” said John Borthwick, chief executive of Betaworks Studio, which runs bit.ly, the world’s most popular address shortening website.
“Somewhere in the region of 10 per cent of the bit.ly links get an extraordinary number of clicks. Links to big stories, such as Tiger Woods stories get millions of clicks.”
Bit.ly received 2.1 billion clicks on to links created by its shortening service last month."
Source: The Times, 7th December 2009

Over 60 million Americans listen to some form of internet radio in a typical week

"Just over 60 million Americans listen to some form of Internet radio in a typical week. This includes both AM/FM simulcast streams and Internet-only radio (e.g. Pandora, AccuRadio).
84% of this group regularly listens for at least five minutes to AM/FM simulcast streams in a typical week.
62% of the total streaming group regularly listens for at least five minutes listening to Internet-only streams."
Source: Press release from Bridge Ratings, 2nd February 2010

The UK, Germany and France collectively account for 70% of all eCommerce spending in Europe

"UK consumers also topped the online retail spending tables in 2009 with an average annual spend of £1,102, compared to a European average of £774 on 20 items with an average cost per item of £39. The UK was followed by Denmark (£1,079) and Norway (£979). On average UK consumers purchased the greatest number of items in 2009 (37), whereas the Polish bought the least (10).
At £44, the average cost per item in France was 48% higher than in the UK, which at £30 was the lowest in Europe. Norway had the highest spend per item at £75.
The research also found that:
25% of UK shoppers are now prepared to spend £1,000 or more online in a single transaction
57% of UK consumers made online purchases — almost 20% higher than the European average of 38%
Poland, with a forecast growth rate of 36%, France (31%) and Spain (25%) will experience the fastest growth this year. As the most mature ecommerce market, the UK will grow the least (12.4%) to £42.7bn.
European online sales will grow by 20% to reach £153bn overall in 2010, accounting for 5.5% of overall European retail sales.
The UK, Germany (£29.7bn of sales in 2009) and France (£22bn) account for 70% of total online sales in Europe. The countries with the lowest overall online spend in 2009 were Poland (£2.2bn), Finland (£2.3bn) and Norway (£2.9bn).
The rankings of the ‘big online three’ (UK, Germany and France) have not changed since 2003, although during this period online sales in France have grown by 244%, compared to 171% in the UK and 183% in Germany"
Source: Research from the Centre for Retail Research, commissioned by Kelkoo, and reported by Internet Retailing, 2nd February 2010

Online sales now account for nearly 10% of total UK retail sales

"UK shoppers spent more online than anywhere else in Europe last year, accounting for almost a third of all European sales, research suggests.
UK consumers spent £38bn online in 2009, or an average of £1,102 per shopper, according to the Centre for Retail Research (CRR).
Online sales now account for almost 10% of total retail sales in the UK, the centre calculates."
Source: Research from the Centre for Retail Research, commissioned by Kelkoo, and reported by BBC News, 1st February 2010

The Guardian's national newspaper division lost £36.8m in 2008-9

"Guardian Media Group today reported major losses of almost £90m as it complained that its national newspapers and websites were operating in the "toughest trading conditions seen for many years". The group's regional newspapers suffered plunging profits while the radio business made a significant loss.
In its annual report for 2008-2009, GMG, which publishes The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, reported a pre-tax loss of £89.8m, compared with a profit last year of £306.4m, on turnover which was down to £405.4m compared with £502.1m.
Guardian News & Media, the group's national newspaper division, reported an increase in operating losses to £36.8m, compared to £26.4m in 2008, on a reduced turnover of £253.6m compared with £261.9m."
Source: Official Guardian accounts, reported by The Independent, 31st July 2009
The figure of £36.8m loss equates to £100,800 per day.

News Corporation made a profit of $259m on it's newspaper business in Q4 2009

"News Corp's newspapers delivered a 29% increase in profits to $259m, aided by cost cuts at British titles and by a robust performance from the Wall Street Journal. Despite ongoing financial woes on much of Fleet Street, Murdoch singled out the Sun for praise, saying it had achieved record weeks of advertising revenue recently and that it had "left other papers far, far behind in the contest for readers"."
Source: Official News Corp figures, reported by The Guardian, 3rd February 2010

American kids spend an average of 49 minutes per day listening to music, playing games, or watching TV on their phones

Click to enlarge

Source: Page 19 of Generation M2 - Media in the Lives of 8 to 18 Year Olds, The Kaiser Foundation, Janaury 1010
It's a free 85 page report - highly recommended!

Mobile phone ownership among American kids, by age

Click to enlarge

Source: Page 18 of Generation M2 - Media in the Lives of 8 to 18 Year Olds, The Kaiser Foundation, Janaury 1010
It's a free 85 page report - highly recommended!

A census of files available via BitTorrent

"File types
46% movies and shows (non-pornographic)
14% games and software
14% pornography
10% music
1% books and guides
1% images
14% could not classify"

99% of material infringed copyright:
"Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded. Still, the result suggests strongly that copyright infringement is widespread among BitTorrent users."
Source: Assessment of 1021 files avaiable on BitTorrent by Sauhard Sahi, a Princeton senior, reported by the Freedom to Tinker blog, 29th January 2010

1/3 of the search queries submitted to Google in 2009 had never been asked before

"Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than one query per day: 7 out of 10
Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than 10 queries per day: 1 out of 7
Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3
Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5
Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia*
Approximate percentage of Internet users in Indonesia: 11.1%*
Average amount of time it takes a user to finish entering a query: 9 seconds
Average amount of time it takes Google to answer a query: Less than 1/4 second
Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day
Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in 13
Average increase in driving distance on weekends vs. weekdays on Google Maps: 11km
Median distance from a user's location to ice skating rinks found on Google Maps: 30km
Median distance from a user's location to ski resorts found on Google Maps: 300km"
Source: Google search blog, 8th January 2010, based on weekday US traffic unless stated

The global search market grew by 46% in 2009

"The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 2.9 million per minute. The U.S. represented the largest individual search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or approximately 17 percent of searches conducted globally. China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia posted the highest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to 3.3 billion, followed by France (up 61 percent to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53 percent to 3.8 billion)."
Source: Press release from comScore, 22nd January 2010

6.5 million homes in the UK have Sky+

"The satellite broadcaster is within touching distance of reaching its long-held target of 10m households after adding 172,000 net new customers in the three months to the end of December, to hit 9.7m.
BSkyB managed to sign up 482,000 households to its Sky+ HD service in the same period, a 156% year-on-year increase, to take the total number of households to 2.08m.
The company's share price rose by 13.5p, or 2.44%, to 567.5p by 8.45am on the back of the strong results.
"It has been another good quarter in what remains a tough environment, with more customers joining Sky and strong demand across our entire product range," said the BSkyB chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, who today announced a further increase in the company's dividend on the back of a solid financial performance.
"The standout performance came in high definition TV with almost half a million [more] customers choosing Sky+HD."
The company admitted it had spent an extra £70m in the six months to the end of December on marketing its HD service.
BSkyB increased the number of customers using its Sky+ personal video recorder set-top boxes by 553,000 in the three months to the end of December. The total Sky+ customer base now stands at 6.5 million."
Source: Sky financial results, reported by The Guardian, 28th January 2010