US album sales have fallen 55% since 2001

"Since peak year 2000, US-based album sales have dropped an unbelievable 514.6 million units, or 54.6 percent. In 2000, the climax of a dreamlike 90s, album sales surpassed 943 million units, according to figures published by Nielsen Soundscan."
Source: Nielsen Soundscan, quoted by DigitalMusicNews 27th January 2009

Mobile internet page views increased by 312% from Dec 2007 - Dec 2008

Internet page views from mobile users of the Opera Mini browser increased by 312% from December 2007 to December 2008. (1,558,566,188 in 2007 vs 6,418,665,392 in 2008). Opera Mini is the most widely used mobile web browser.
Source: Opera Mini Mobile Web Report December 2008

93 of the world's top 100 brands have their twitter name taken by someone else

"Of the top 100 global brands, 93% have had their Twitter usernames taken by somebody else (i.e. Twittersquatted).
Twittersquatting, like cybersquatting, is when somebody registers a company's trademark (or a famous person's name) as a Twitter username with the intent of profiting or causing confusion. Other possible names for this practice include username squatting, usernamesquatting, squitting, usersquatting, and brandsquatting."
Source: Erik J Heels, 9th January 2009. Includes a list of the 100 top brands and whether or not their own their twitter name. The only 7 that own their own names are Accenture, Blackberry, Harley Davidson, Oracle, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters & Yahoo

35% of all games revenues are generated online

Industry - Share of Revenues
Games - 35%
Recorded Music - 20%
Newspapers - 4%
Films - 4%
Magazines - 1%
Source: PWC Global Entertainment and Media Report (2008), cited in IFPI Digital Music Report 2009

In Japan 140m mobile singles were sold in 2008

"In Japan, a predominantly mobile music market, digital sales helped overall trade
revenues to growth in the first half of 2008. 140 million mobile singles were sold in
2008, an increase of 26 per cent on the prior year"
Source: RIAJ, quoted in the IFPI Digital Nusic Report 2009

Google had 1m advertiser clients in 2007

"According to an SEC filing, Google had 1 million advertisers in 2007 at an average spend of $16,000/each equaling $16.6 billion in revenue. Estimates put the number of advertisers now around 1.3 to 1.5 million."
Source: Google SEC Filing, cited by LostRemote, 9th January 2009

Guitar Hero III is the first video game to generate over $1bn in sales

"Speaking during a CES keynote in Las Vegas on Friday, Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith said that over the holidays, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock became the first single game ever to surpass $1 billion in sales. The game launched in the fall of 2007."
Source: Activision statement, January 2009, quoted by Edge Online, 9th January 2009

Worldwide iPod Touch mobile internet traffic increased 2.4 times in the 7 days after Christmas 2008

"[Mobile internet] Requests from the iPod Touch increased 3.4 times from November to December. iPod Touch requests increased from 18 million in July to 292 million in December.
Worldwide iPod Touch traffic increased 2.4 times in the 7 days after Christmas
compared to the 7 days before. In the US and UK, requests were 2.7 and 3.2 times
higher after Christmas."
Source: AdMob Mobile Metrics Report December 2008, page 3.
AdMob is a mobile ad server, which means that they put ads onto a selection of mobile web sites. When they talk about 'requests' they mean in effect page views, or traffic. So what they are saying is that mobile internet traffic from iPod Touches grew by a multiple of 3.4 between November and December 2008, and 2.4 times in the 7 days after Christmas.

There were 298m internet users in China in December 2008

"China's Internet population swelled to nearly 300 million by the end of last year, with the penetration surpassing the global average for the first time, according to a quasi-government organization.
The number of Internet users in the country reached 298 million by the end of 2008, representing a 41.9 percent growth compared to the previous year, said a report by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
More than 90 percent of the Internet users surf the Web via broadband access, CNNIC said. The penetration stood at 22.6 percent by Dec 31, compared to a global average of 21.9 percent.
That represented a major leap forward for China since the country overtook the United States as the world’s largest Internet population in June, 2008, CNNIC said."
Source: CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Centre), January 2009, quoted by China Daily, 13th January 2009

Facebook has 21m regular users via mobile phones

"Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that 20.8 million people now use Facebook on mobile devices, and that mobile users are far more active than those who don’t use it on their mobile phone. In November, Facebook reported 15 milllion mobile users. The social-networking site has about 150 million users overall."
Source: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, talking at the Palm Keynote at CES 2009, as reported by mocoNews, 8th January 2009.
This is an increase of nearly 6m in 2 months

YouTube users are 1.5 times more engaged in advertising than TV viewers

"YouTube users are 1.5 times more attentive and engaged in advertising than TV viewers, according to research conducted in partnership with General Motors Europe, Motorola, media agency MindShare and the Online Testing Exchange (OTX)
The research used eye tracking and biometric data to reveal the brand impact of advertising on YouTube. It found recall and attribution for an ad viewed was up to 14% higher than watching the same ad on TV. Viewing a silent ad on YouTube in addition to a normal TV ad also improved ad recall and attribution.
Ads on YouTube can impact the perceptions of elusive audiences like young men and infrequent TV viewers. They also have a halo effect and increase brand perceptions such as innovative, cool, dynamic and unconventional."
Source: NewMediaAge, 18th December 2008, citing research commissioned by YouTube (yes, ok), conducted by OTX.
See also the comment underneath the article from Tess Alps at Thinkbox, questioning the research.

More people accessed the internet just from phones in 2008 than just from PCs

Source: Tomi Ahonen Consulting '7th Mass Media in 2008', 2008, extract here. Full details at www.7thmassmedia.com
The report is a total snip at £499

6 billion songs have been downloaded from iTunes

"The iTunes Store has now sold 6 billion songs, according to data shared Tuesday at the Macworld Expo. The accomplishment comes nearly six years after the "iTunes Music Store" first opened in early May of 2003.
Apple was not specific on the exact date of the milestone, though the threshold comes nearly 7 months after the announcement of 5 billion in mid-June. It also comes roughly one year after the 4 billion threshold, announced in January of 2008.
The 6 billion mark reaffirms fears of an iTunes Store plateau, one leveling at roughly 2 billion annually."
Source: Digital Music News, 6th January 2009, quoting Apple

Facebook now has 150m active users

"Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.
When we first started Facebook almost five years ago, most of the people using it were college students in the United States. Today, people of all ages—grandparents, parents and children—use Facebook in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories."
Source: Mark Zuckerberg, writing in the Facebook blog, 7th January 2008

The BBC iPlayer now gets more traffic than ITV.com

From the latest comScore figures for the UK in November 2008:
BBC iPlayer - 5,026,423 unique visitors (13.7% reach)
ITV.com - 4,872,570 unique visitors (13.3% reach)
The BBC iPlayer is blocked for users outside the UK.
Source: comScore MediaMetrix, November 2008 data, measured on all adults aged 15+

Sales of physical albums fell by 18% in the US in 2008

"Album sales dropped a gaping 14 percent in 2008, according to figures shared by Nielsen Soundscan. Specifically, physical and digital albums collectively moved to 428.4 million units in the United States, from 500.5 million in 2007. The downward driver was the physical album, down 18.2 percent on the year. Digital albums jumped 32 percent to a record 65.8 million, though the gains failed to compensate for the broader physical declines."
Source: Digital Music News, 4th January 2009, citing data from Nielsen Soundscan

70% of Twitter users joined in 2008

"70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day
35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
9% of Twitter users follow no one at all
There is a strong correlation between the number of followers you have and the number of
people you follow"
Source: State of the Twittersphere Q4 2008 (page 2), produced by Hubspot.com

Internet users in China spend 44% of their leisure time online

Internet users in China spend 44% of their leisure time online.
Other countries:
Korea - 40%
Japan - 38%
Italy - 31%
US - 30%
Other countries also listed.
Source: Chart on page 3 of TNS Global 'Digital World, Digital Life' report, December 2008, based on adults aged 18-55. Full pdf here

18% of American homes have a mobile phone but no landline

"The portion of homes with cell phones but no landlines has grown to 18 percent, led by adults living with unrelated roommates, renters and young people, according to federal figures released Wednesday.
An additional 13 percent of households have landlines but get all or nearly all calls on their cells, the survey showed. Taken together, that means about three in 10 households are essentially reachable only on their wireless phones.
The figures, covering the first half of 2008, underscore how consumers have been steadily abandoning traditional landline phones in favor of cells. The 18 percent in cell-only households compares with 16 percent in the second half of 2007, and just 7 percent in the first half of 2005."
Source: US federal figures from the National Health Interview Survey, Jan-Jun 2008, cited by Associated Press, 17th December 2008