QR codes were first used in Japan in August 2002

"We are often asked: when did qr-codes for mobile phones start in Japan?
Here is the answer: the first mobile phone with qr-code reader was the J-SH09 produced by SHARP for Japan's J-Phone mobile operator (today's Softbank) and came on sale in August 2002 - seven years ago."
Source: EuroTechnology Japan blog, 29th July 2009

37% of American adults claim to own a smartphone

"Driven by demand for the Palm Pre and new Apple iPhone devices, smartphone ownership is continuing to rise, with 37% of US consumers now reporting they own some type of smartphone, according to a June survey by ChangeWave Research.
The survey also found that 14.4% of respondents say they plan to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days - up one-third from a year ago (10.5% in June 2008) and the highest percentage ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey."
Source: ChangeWave Research, June 2009, reported by MarketingVox 24th July 2009
Note: I'd treat this with a little bit of caution - I'm mnor sure how tight the definition of Smartphone was in the survey - could people have interpreted it as any phone with internet access?

The number of Americans watching video online on sites like YouTube has nearly doubled in 3 years

"As the audience for online video continues to grow, a leading edge of internet users are migrating their viewing from their computer screens to their TV screens. At the same time, more cell phone users are opting for the convenience of watching video on smaller screens via their handheld devices.
According to an April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, the share of online adults who watch videos on video-sharing sites has nearly doubled since 2006. Fully 62% of adult internet users have watched video on these sites, up from just 33% who reported this in December 2006.
Over time, online video has also become a bigger fixture in everyday life, garnering 19% of all internet users who use video-sharing sites to watch on a typical day. In comparison, just 8% of internet users reported use of the sites on a typical day in 2006."
Source: 'The Audience for Online Video-Sharing Sites Shoots Up', Pew Internet & American Life Project, 29th July 2009
Full report here

Vodafone has 315m mobile customers, more than the size of the US population

"Proportionate mobile customer base of 315.3 million; 8.0 million net additions during the quarter"
Source: Vodafone Interim Management Statement for the Quarter Ended 30 June 2009, 24th July 2009
Vs.
US population of 307,014,052
Source: US Census Bureau Population Clock, retrieved 27th July 2009

8 billion songs have been sold through iTunes

"During its most recent quarterly review, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer revealed cumulative song downloads of 8 billion, since a mid-2003 start. "The iPhone OS 3.0 software allows customers to wirelessly download movies, TV, and audio programs directly to an iPhone or iPod touch and I am pleased to report that as of last week, customers had purchased and downloaded over 8 billion songs from the iTunes Store, yet another remarkable milestone," Oppenheimer stated. [...]
Starting in early 2007, the iTunes Store established a yearly sales pace of about two billion annually. In January of this year, Apple revealed a cumulative total of 6 billion, pegging a year-end estimate of at least 10 billion - more than double the previous pace."
Source: Official Apple statistics, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 23rd July 2009

The 'Causes' app on Facebook has raised $10m in two years

"Today, Causes broke $10,000,000 raised through the application in just over two years. Half of this, $5,000,000, was donated in just the past 6 months. It is through the hard work of activists and nonprofits on Causes that we have been able to reach this milestone. We are constantly awestruck by the drive, commitment and passion poured into a cause, petition or birthday wish. In an effort to share what $10,000,000 raised means, we thought we’d show how that breaks down and how you have all contributed to this success.
Here’s how it all breaks down:
$10,000,000 donated
$5,000,000 donated so far in 2009
$25 median donation
192,000 unique donors
26,000 causes have received donations
$1.4 million raised through Birthday Wish feature"
Source: Joe Green on the CausesExchange blog, 10th July 2009

80% of US internet users find overlay ads 'very frustrating'

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"At the same time as many internet advertisers are ramping up their web advertising efforts, the majority of US consumers say they are very frustrated by many common types of internet ads, according to (pdf) a recent study by Harris Interactive, which cites pop-ups, ads that are “moused over,” difficult-to-close ads, and musical ads as some of the worst offenders.
Ads that spread across the page and cover the content beneath them are the most vexing for consumers, with 80% of respondents in the study deeming these types to be very frustrating. Ads on which consumers can’t find the skip or close button are a close second, with 79% of respondents similarly annoyed, the survey found."
Source: Harris Interactive study, reported by MarketingVox, 23rd July 2009

An estimated 74% of Facebook's US advertising revenue for 2009 will come from local advertisers

"Facebook may “only” make $310 million this year, but a full $229 million of that will be from local advertisers, or 74% of total revenue. That’s quite striking at first, but when you really think about it, a lot of the ads on Facebook are indeed for local venues, and Facebook makes it easy to target geographically."
Source: Identified US Social Network Ad Spending 2009 Projections, Borrell Associates, cited by Mashable, 20th July 2009
Caution - these are projections made mid-year, and also, bizarrely they project that twitter will make $288m in ad revenue, despite it carrying no ads.

The Pirate Bay gets more than 1 billion searches a month

"The Pirate Bay is one of the 100 most visited Internet sites in the world and one of the leading search engines for file sharing. The site has more than 20 million visitors and over one billion searches per month"
Source: Press release from Global Gaming Factory X, cited by Business Wire, 30th June 2009

iPod sales fell by 7% Y-o-Y in the quarter to 27th June 2009

"iPod sales reached 10.2 million during the recent fiscal quarter, down 7.3 percent from the comparable quarter last year. "We expect the MP3 player business to decline over time," said Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer"
Source: Apple Financial Statement cited by DigitalMusicNews, 22nd July 2009

Apple sold 5.2m iPhones in the 3 months to 27th June 2009

"Apple sold more than 5.2 million iPhones in the quarter, seven times greater than the same period a year, before, boosted by a new iPhone model."
Source: BBC News, 21st July 2009

Over 70% of AdAge Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008

"Over 70% of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008. They're buying our home page, Promoted Videos, overlays, and in-stream ads. Many are organizing contests that encourage the uploading of user videos to their brand channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content (see Carl's Jr.). Advertisers just want control, so we're continuing to develop tools and targeting products that give advertisers more control over where their ads appear on the site."
Source: Google blog post 20th July 2009
Note - Google are very vague in the post about what sort of advertising it was, but I'd assume it was a combination of banner ads, video ads, and paid for pages, for example for competitions

19% of tweets, and 57% of ReTweets contain a link

"Over the past few weeks I’ve begun delving into much deeper analysis than I have in the past with more advanced tools and a much larger dataset. At present I have a database of over 10 million ReTweets and I’ve gained access to Twitter’s new streaming API which allows me to build a very large (10 million and growing) random sample of all tweets (not just ReTweets).
In re-visiting a data point that I looked at 6 months ago (this time with a larger data set), I found that in a random sample of normal (non-ReTweet) Tweets, 18.96% contained a link, whereas 3 times that many ReTweets (56.69%) included a link"
Source: Dan Zarrella in his blog, 1st July 2009
Earlier - 22% of tweets include a URL (using a different data set, and probably including retweets)

Accessing music is the most popular online activity in China

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Source: CNNIC 24th Statistical Survey on Internet Development, cited by Digital East Asia, 17th July 2009 (Original CNNIC report is not translated into English yet)

155m people in China access the internet from mobile phones

"Cell phones used to access the Internet reached 155 million, up by 32.1% since December 2008"
NB - many access through both a computer and a mobile phone.
Source: CNNIC 24th Statistical Survey on Internet Development, cited by Digital East Asia, 17th July 2009 (Original CNNIC report is not translated into English yet)

Facebook now has more than 250m active users

"General Growth
More than 250 million active users
More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
Average user has 120 friends on the site
More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day
Applications
More than 1 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
More than 2.5 million events created each month
More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site"
Source: Facebook press statistics, retrieved 16th July 2009.
For growth levels, compare to this set, retrived on 9th April 2009

BBC iPlayer now gets more traffic than MySpace in the UK

"BBC iPlayer has overtaken MySpace to become the 20th most visited website in the UK. The online video service has been ahead of the social network for three consecutive weeks now, and last week (w/e 11/07/09) it received 26% more UK Internet visits. iPlayer was joined in the top 20 last week by three other BBC properties: the BBC Homepage (8th), BBC News (11th) and BBC Sport (16th). iPlayer was also the second most popular video website in the UK last week, picking up 13.3% of visits to our online video category (which remains dominated by YouTube, with a 65.1% share)."
Source: Hitwise Intelligence blog, 16th July 2009

Net annual income of Japan's top 9 game companies is now higher than that of the top 19 electrical companies

"Japan's games sector is booming - and net annual income of Japan's top 9 game companies combined has now overtaken the combined net income of all Japan's top 19 electrical giants (including Hitachi, Panasonic, SONY, Fujitsu, Toshiba, SHARP... at the top, and ROHM, Omron... further down the ranking list)."
Source: Eurotechnology Japan blog, 13th July 2009

91% of American twitter users also use Facebook

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How to read the chart: Start at the top, and read down. So, for users of linked in, 82% also use Facebook, 31% also use twitter, and 36% also use MySpace

Source: ReadWriteWeb, 9th July 2009 citing data from Anderson Analytics based on an online survey of 11,000 respondents

China now has 338m internet users - an internet penetration of 25.5%

"China has more internet users that the entire population of the United States, according to new research by the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center.
The study says that at the end of June there were 338m internet users in China, a 13.4% jump since the end of 2008, and well ahead of the official US population, put at 307m by the US Census Bureau.
Rapid economic growth, and allied expansion in internet access in more areas, has fuelled the rapid rise in use of the web around China, which has a total population of 1.3bn.
That shows that internet penetration in China remains comparatively low - just 25.5% - compared to the US, where a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project put the figure at over 70%."
Source: CNNIC, cited by The Guardian, 16th July 2009 (Original CNNIC report is not translated into English yet)

Kids aged 2-11 comprise 9.5% of the actrive US online population

"In May 2009, children aged 2-11 comprised nearly 16 million, or 9.5 percent, of the active online universe· Since 2004, the number of kids online has increased 18 percent, as compared to 10 percent for the total active universe, with a fairly even split between boys and girls. The growth of children online outpaces the overall growth of children in the U.S., where kids under 14 are projected decrease by 1 percent from 2004 to 2010 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 7/04 – 7/10 projection)"
Source: Press release from Nielsen, July 2009

Last year 105,000 albums were released in the US. Only 6,000 of them sold more than 1,000 copies

"At the recent A2IM (American Association of Independent Music) annual gathering in New York, some scary numbers were floating around. According to Nielsen Soundscan, a total of 105,000, new full-length albums were released in 2008, a fourfold gain from the earlier 2000s. And of that pot, just 6,000 releases sold 1,000 units or more in the first year.
Across the pond, similar information emerged. During a DIY discussion at Musexpo Europe in London last week, industry consultant Keith Jopling noted that over 30,000 albums are released every year in the United Kingdom, a 30 percent gain since 2000. Other markets are undoubtedly experiencing similar booms, based on the ability of any artist to create cheaply, upload instantly, and build fanbases directly."
Source: DigitalMusicNews, 9th July 2009

60% of British mobile phone users have never switched mobile network

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"60% have never switched
12% switched more than 4 years ago
16% switched 1-4 years ago
12% switched in the last 12 months"
Source: Ofcom decision making survey July 2008, cited on page 55 of Ofcom's Mostly Mobile document, 8th July 2009

46% of British mobile phone users also use their phone as a camera

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Source: Ofcom Communications Tracking Survey, Q4 2008, cited on page 27 of Ofcom's Mostly Mobile document, 8th July 2009

44% of American Moms use social media to get recommendations on brands and products

""Mommies are flocking to social networks, according to new research from BabyCenter LLC, which runs several parenting Web and community sites.
The number of moms using social media regularly has grown from 11% in 2006 to 63% today, an increase of 462% in three years, the company said.
The study, built from a series of in-depth surveys on the U.S. BabyCenter site, found that 44% of respondents used social media for recommendations on brands and products.
Social media are not equal in online mommies’ eyes, however. Most say they use mass-reach networks such as Facebook for socializing and entertainment, but turn to specialized content sites for information and counsel from fellow parents.""
Source: 21st Century Moms report, cited by Promo magazine, 7th July 2009

As many people trust consumer opinions posted online as trust brand websites

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"Recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising, according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries.
Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online."
Source: Nielsen Online Global Consumer Survey, cited in their blog, 7th July 2009

Google Chrome has 30m regular users

"It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly"
Source: Google Blog, 7th July 2009

The Thriller video was viewed nearly 28m times in the 7 days after Michael Jackson's death

"Yesterday, we reported that Michael Jackson's Thriller had been viewed over 8.5 million times online since his death last Thursday. These results appear to have resonated with the online video viewing audience and were later reported in the Associated Press. We've been continuing to track Thriller's online video trends and can now confirm that the initial surge in viewership has accelerated significantly.

Over the weekend, we recorded Thriller's sudden spike in views (8.5 million total). Monday and Tuesday's figures totaled over 19 million new views, bringing Thriller's total views to nearly 28 million since the King of Pop's untimely passing. This remarkable growth is occurring across the entire flight of Thriller's nearly 300 placements; no single asset appears to be driving these new levels of viewing activity."

Source: Visible Measures [video tracking company] blog, Wednesday 1st July 2009

52% of British kids aged 5-9 have a mobile phone

"Figures from MobileYouth, a research consultancy which tracks technology use by youngsters, found that 52 per cent of UK children aged five to nine have a mobile. Among ten to 14-year-olds, usage is running at almost 85 per cent."
Source: MobileYouth report, cited by the Daily Mail, 254th June 2009

Online ad spend in Europe rose by 20% in 2008

Online ad spend for the 19 largest markets in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK) rose by 20% in 2008 to hit €12.9bn.
Source: IAB Europe/PWC, June 2009. See the full presentaiton here

Nearly 1/3 of American 25-35s with a game console use it to watch video

"29% of U.S. 25-to-34-year-olds with game consoles use the devices to watch streaming video off the Internet"
Source: In-Stat report Web-to-TV Video Changes Everything, June 2009