Facebook has 845m active users

"As part of its initial filing to go public, Facebook has just revealed some new user numbers that illustrate just how big it is.
It had 845 million monthly active users and 483 million daily active users as of December, for year over year growth of 39% and 48% respectively. Mobile is also now half the user base, with 425 million monthly actives. Some other stats, which are a bit more vague: 100 billion friend connections as of the end of last year, and 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day during the last three months of the year."

Source:  TechCrunch, 1st February 2012

Earlier - Most recent full stats (800m in Sept 2011)

Google's mobile search volumes doubled Y-o-Y in December 2011

"Google’s lead product manager for mobile search ads, Surojit Chatterjee, tells us that in December 2011 mobile search ad request volume was more than twice as high as it was in December 2010. Mobile search in general has grown five-fold worldwide in just the past two years, which is a rate comparable to the early days of desktop Google Search, he adds.
Chatterjee says that quality of search ads is increasing thanks to some of the new factors being considered in mobile search ad rankings. For example, mobile web-optimized sites are now ranked higher. Since August 2011, Google has seen more than a 50 percent increase in the number of AdWords advertisers with a mobile optimized sites."

Source:  TechCrunch, 1st February 2012

LivingSocial made a net loss of $588m in 2011

"LivingSocial’s financial results for the past year were reported by Amazon today, revealing that the company continues to trail behind Groupon by a wide margin.
Amazon, which has a 31 percent stake in the second-largest daily deals company, released the figures as part of its quarterly filing today with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
It said LivingSocial’s 2011 net loss totaled $558 million on revenues of $245 million."

Source:  AllThingsD, 1st February 2012

Facebook accounts for 28% of online ad impressions in the US

"Ahead of a rumoured IPO as early as tomorrow, Facebook’s position in the ad space has been boosted by comScore data that shows its share of US ad impressions grew to 27.9% in 2011.
This is up from 21% in 2010 and means Facebook has been ranked number one in comScore’s display ad impressions category for the past three years.
Despite its well-publicised woes Yahoo is second on the list with 11% of the market, while Microsoft, Google and AOL trail with less than 5% each.
Unlike the other companies on the list Facebook is almost totally reliant on banner ads to bring in revenue."

Source:  Data from comScore, reported by Econsultancy, 31st January 2012

"Several hundred" YouTube partners made more than $100,000 in 2011

"A Google spokeswoman says that "several hundred" of its partners made more than $100,000 in 2011, up 80% from the "couple of hundred" partners who made more than that in 2010. YouTube partners have also increased to 30,000 in 2011 from 20,000 in 2010, says Tom Pickett, YouTube's global director of content, operations and online creators."

Source:  Wall Street Journal, 2nd February 2012

Mobile phone shipments for full year 2011

Click to enlarge

Source:  Data from IDC, reported in a press release 1st February 2012
Lots of analysis and also Q4 data in the press release

The New York Times has 390,000 digital subscribers

"The New York Times ended 2011 with 390,000 digital subscribers, up about 20 percent from its third-quarter total. Some of the new subscriptions came from the publisher’s International Herald Tribune, which started digital sales last fall."

Source:  AllThingsD, 2nd February 2012

Facebook's ad revenue increased by 69% in 2011

"In its filing, Facebook reported 2011 revenue of $3.71 billion, an 88% increase from the $1.97 billion total reported for 2010, though falling short of eMarketer's 2011 projection of $4.27 billion. The increase was mostly attributed to the 69% growth of advertising revenue, which was buoyed by a 42% increase in the number of ads delivered and an 18% increase in their average price.
While advertising made up $3.15 billion of Facebook's revenues last year, the company earned $557 million from Facebook Payments -- the virtual currency it began requiring game developers on the platform to use as of July 1 -- and other fees. Payments are making up an increasingly hefty chunk of Facebook's revenue, and in the fourth quarter of 2011, advertising constituted just 83% of revenues, down from 90% the previous year. Facebook takes a cut of all money exchanged through the use of "Payments," and in the case of virtual goods purchased on Zynga, that cut is up to 30%."

Source:  AdAge, 1st February 2012

Netflix 'streaming' subscribers watch an average of one hour of streaming content a day

"Netflix subscribers watched more than 2 billion hours of movies and TV shows through its streaming service in the fourth quarter of 2011, more than in any previous quarter, the company said early last month.
This statistic suggests that Netflix subscribers are averaging an hour of streaming content daily, according to Janney Capital Market analyst Tony Wible."

Source:  AdAge, 1st February 2012

One of Justin Bieber's Tweets in January 2012 had over 92,000 ReTweets

"On the 10th of January, 2012, Justin Bieber retweeted one of Floyd Mayweather’s tweets (@FloydMayweather Manny Pacquiao I'm calling you out let's fight May 5th and give the world what they want to see). This tweet went on to receive 92,314 Retweets! Now that’s evidence of the Bieber-bump in action."

Source:  Blog post by TwitSprout, 1st February 2012

Follow the link for data on retweets for the top 10 most-followed

More than half US adult mobile phone owners used their phones to help in store in Christmas shopping

"More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions. During a 30 day period before and after Christmas:
38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making
24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store
25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else
Taken together, just over half (52%) of all adult cell owners used their phone for at least one of these three reasons over the holiday shopping season and one third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store—either product reviews or pricing information."

Source:  Data from Pew Internet & American Life Project, 30th January 2012

Pinterest drives nearly as much referral traffic as Twitter

Click to enlarge

Source:  Data from Shareaholic, reported in their blog, 1st February 2012
Methodology:  "based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month"