The demographics of American Instagram users

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Source:  Photos & Videos as Social Currency Online, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 13th September 2012
Note 1 - The 3 stars next to the figure for 18-29s means 'treat with caution' - that's why I haven't used it as the headline for the story.
Note 2 - The report also has similar figures for Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr & more

There are 193m 3G subscribers in China

"China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has released its August 2012 telecom industry statistics. The figures for the month were as follows:
[...]
Total telephone subscribers saw a net increase of 9.21 mln in August to reach 1.354 bln. Mobile subscribers grew by 10.21 mln to 1.072 bln, and fixed-line subscribers dropped by 1.01 mln to 282.18 mln. Broken down by traditional fixed-line and PHS, the traditional (i.e. non-PHS) fixed-line subscriber base decreased by 678,000 to 268.39 mln, while the PHS subscriber base declined by 328,000 subs to 13.79 mln. 8.80 mln new 3G subscribers were added in August to reach a total 3G user base of 192.56 mln.
A total of 73.07 bln SMS messages were sent during the month of August, bringing the total for the first 8 months of 2012 to 597.58 bln, a 3.9% increase over the figure during the same period of 2011.
Broadband added 1.86 mln new registered users in August to reach a total of 168.29 mln. Dial-up decreased by 1.02 mln users, reducing the total dial-up user base to 4.70 mln."
Source:  MIIT via Marbridge Daily, 21st September 2012

45% of pictures posted to Instagram use no filter

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Source:  Webstagram, retrieved 21st September 2012, based on analysis of over 2 million photos
Note - This also includes Hipstamatic pictures (some are their filters) but the vast majority will be from Instagram

US Newspaper advertising revenue 1950 - 2012

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Source:  Newspaper Association of America / Business Insider, 15th September 2012

More than 3 million UK smartphone owners scanned a QR code in Q2 2012

"More than 3m UK consumers used their smartphone to scan QR codes in Q2, according to new data from a comScore survey of 15,000 consumers.
This equates to 11.4% of the total smartphone audience and represents a year-on-year growth of 43%.
But the data suggests that other European nations have actually been quicker on the uptake than the UK. For example, 18.6% of German smartphone owners scanned a QR code in Q2, a YoY growth of 128%.
While in Spain 16% of users have used the technology, up a massive 218% from the same period last year.
The study claims that across the EU5 more than 17m smartphone owners have scanned a QR code."

Source:  eConsultancy, 20th September 2012

Revenues from digital books rose 89% Y-o-Y in the first half of 2012

"The Publishers Association’s Sales Monitor shows that the total invoiced value of digital fiction books sales reported by participating companies saw a huge increase of 188% by value in January-June 2012 in comparison to the same period in 2011. Other strongly performing categories include children’s digital books and digital non-fiction books, which increased by 171% and 128% respectively during the same period. Overall digital sales of general consumer titles (including fiction, non-fiction and children’s) increased from £30m to £84m between January-June 2011 and 2012.
These increases reflect overall growth of 89.1% in digital sales (from £77m to £145m), while physical book sales fell 0.4% by value (from £985m to £982m) and 3.8% by volume (from 260m to 251m) over the period.
The total value of sales (digital and non-digital) increased by 6.1% in January-June 2012 in comparison to the same period in 2011, leading to £1.1bn revenue in the first six months of the year.  Digital sales accounted for 12.9% of the total value of sales in January-June 2012, up from 7.2% in the equivalent period in 2011"

Source:  Press release from the Publishers Association, 18th September 2012

Average time spent per session for TV, Online, Tablet & Mobile

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Source:  Data from Google, reported by TechCrunch, 29th August 2012
Note - Lots more data in the full article
Methodology:  "polling 1,611 people across 15,738 media interactions and nearly 8,000 hours of activity during Q2" US data only
Full report here

Nearly 20% of online women in the US use Pinterest

"In a recent study released by business intelligence firm RJ Metrics, more than 17% of all pinboards are categorized under Home.  More than 12% of pinboards are categorized under Arts and Crafts, followed by Style/Fashion (11.7%), Food (10.5%), and Inspiration/Education (9%).  Food is the fastest growing category on Pinterest and generates the most repins.
The survey found that Pinterest is most popular among women between the ages of 18 and 29, those with some college education, and those with an annual household income of $50,000—$75,000.  While 19% of women are using the site, just 5% of online men are on Pinterest.
The survey also found that women are more likely than men to post images that they’ve created themselves or found online.  Some 47% of women and 43% of men said they’ve shared photos they’ve created themselves online, while 40% of women and 31% of men said they’ve shared images they’ve found online."

Source:  VatorNews, 23th September 2012

There were over 600,000 check ins at London 2012 Olympic venues on Facebook

This just in. 623,957 check ins to Olympic venues during the Olympic Games on Facebook. About 10% of that number on Foursquare.
— Alex Balfour (@AlexBalfour2012) September 2, 2012

Note - Alex Balfour is Head of New Media, London Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

26% of affluent Americans own a tablet; 47% live in a household with a tablet

"Affluent interest in mobile devices and digital media continues to grow. The 2012 Mendelsohn Affluent survey from Ipsos MediaCT finds that 26% of Affluents personally own a tablet, and 47% live in a household with a tablet – figures that essentially tripled from 2011. More than half (55%) now own a smartphone, up from 45% in 2011. Growth was evident in the downloading of the three most widely-used categories of apps – games (68%), weather (62%) and music (62%) – as well as apps related to social networking (45%) and books/e-readers (40%). In 2012, 4.7 million Affluents downloaded a magazine app, more than doubling from 2.0 million in 2011; 5.9 million downloaded a newspaper app, up from 3.6 million in 2011. Affluents reported using the Internet an average of 37.4 hours weekly, up 14% from 2011, with the largest growth seen in sites related to social media, entertainment and shopping."

Source:  2012 Mendelsohn Affluent survey from Ipsos MediaCT, reported in a press release, 19th September 2012

Methodology:  "Now in its 36th year, the Mendelsohn Affluent Survey is the definitive single source research tool for consumer insights and media planning regarding Affluent Americans. Among other uses, it serves as a currency study for Affluent print advertising – the agreed-upon source of audience measurement data used by agencies, advertisers and media companies in negotiating the cost and placement of advertising. The 2012 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey was conducted from March through July, and has a sample size of 13,794 adults living in households with at least $100,000 in annual household income. The survey uses a random probability sample drawn from address-based sample frame as well as other rigorous methodologies to ensure the results are projectable to the population of America’s 59 million Affluents."

Google+ has 100 million monthly active users

"This week we also hit an important milestone--over 400,000,000 people have upgraded to Google+. It was only a year ago that we opened public sign-up, and we couldn’t have imagined that so many people would join in just 12 months. While Google+ is all about creating a better experience across Google, it’s also a destination. And here too, I’m happy to report that we have just crossed 100,000,000 monthly active users on Google+ (plus.google.com and mobile app)."

Source:  Post on Google+ by Vic Gundotra, 17th September 2012

Nearly 11% of 4 digit passwords are '1234'

"I was able to find almost 3.4 million four digit passwords. Every single one of the of the 10,000 combinations of digits from 0000 through to 9999 were represented in the dataset.
The most popular password is  1234  …
… it’s staggering how popular this password appears to be. Utterly staggering at the lack of imagination …
… nearly 11% of the 3.4 million passwords are  1234  !!!"

Source:  DataGenetics, September 2012

Data:  "By combining the exposed password databases I’ve encountered [from leaks], and filtering the results to just those rows that are exactly four digits long [0-9] the output is a database of all the four digit character combinations that people have used as their account passwords.

Given that users have a free choice for their password, if users select a four digit password to their online account, it’s not a stretch to use this as a proxy for four digit PIN codes."