Android had 22% of the tablet market in Q4 2010

"The latest research published by market research company Strategy Analytics, has found that Android’s momentum is not limited to mobile devices but is also showing big gains in the tablet market.
According to the research during Q.4 2010, 22% of the 10 million tablet devices that where shipped ran on Android. Overall the market grew by 120% sequentially with Apple maintaining it’s leading position with 75% of global market share."

Source:  Data from Strategy Analytics, reported by MobiADNews, 27th February 2011 

"Mommy Blog" Dooce.com generates an estimated $30,000 - $50,000 per month in revenue

"She [Heather Armstrong] is one of the few bloggers who wield that kind of clout. Typically, there are 100,000 visitors daily to her site, Dooce.com, where she writes about her kids, her husband, her pets, her treatment for depression and her life as a liberal ex-Mormon living in Utah. As she points out, a sizable number also follow her on Twitter (in the year and a half since she threatened Maytag, she has added a half-million more). She is the only blogger on the latest Forbes list of the Most Influential Women in Media, coming in at No. 26, which is 25 slots behind Oprah, but just one slot behind Tina Brown. Her site brings in an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month or more — and that’s not even counting the revenue from her two books, healthy speaking fees and the contracts she signed to promote Verizon and appear on HGTV. She won’t confirm her income (“We’re a privately held company and don’t reveal our financials”). But the sales rep for Federated Media, the agency that sells ads for Dooce, calls Armstrong “one of our most successful bloggers,” then notes a few beats later in our conversation that “our most successful bloggers can gross $1 million.”"
Source:  New York Times, 23rd February 2011

Old Spice's 2010 marketing helped the brand become the best selling men's bodywash and deodorant in the US

"Old Spice brand manager James Moorhead agrees. "Old Spice is the number one male body wash and deodorant in both dollar and volume share," Moorhead said in an e-mail. "While we can't disclose specific sales data, we can tell you we are very happy with the positive business growth that has been a result of the campaign." "

Source:  Oregon Live, 17th July 2010

99% of internet access in Kenya is through mobile operators

"Highlights of Q4 2010:
There are 22 million mobile subscribers in Kenya
9.5% mobile subscriptions growth, which is increasing over the previous quarters
6.63 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks
740 million text messages were sent
Prepaid accounts for 99% of the total mobile subscriptions
The number of internet users was estimated at 8.69 million
The number of internet/data subscriptions is 3.2 million
Broadband subscriptions increased from 18,626 subscribers in the previous quarter to 84,726"
[...]
"A whopping 99% of the internet traffic in Kenya is done via mobile operators, meaning 3G, Edge or GPRS."

Source:  The latest Communications Commission of Kenya report, reported by White African, 18th February 2011

Hat-tip Interesting Snippets

What Google learned in 2010

Insights into search, purchase paths, and more



Source:  Google internal stats, published 1st February 2011

Apple took an estimated 83% of all app store revenues in 2010

"Though more online stores have been crowding the mobile app market, Apple remains by far the app-store leader, according to data out today from IHS, which recently acquired technology researcher iSuppli.
For 2010, Apple took in $1.78 billion in worldwide sales from its App Store, a leap of 132 percent from $769 million in 2009. And while it lost market share to some of its mobile rivals, Apple still captured 82.7 percent of the app store market last year, down from 92.8 percent the prior year."

Source:  Data from iSuppli, reported by CNET, 15th February, 2011

The three main telecoms operators in China added over 11m new mobile subscribers in January

"China's three main telecom operators have announced their subscriber totals for January 2011.
January saw the net addition of 11.03 mln new mobile subscribers. China Mobile (NYSE: CHL; 0941.HK) added 5.26 mln new mobile subscribers, pushing the operator's total mobile user base to 589.28 mln, of which a total of 22.63 mln subscribers used China Mobile's TD-SCDMA terminals during the month. China Mobile added 1.93 mln new TD-SCDMA subscribers during the month.
China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) added 0.83 new GSM subscribers, bringing its total GSM user base to 154.19 mln, and added 1.41 mln subscribers to its WCDMA 3G network, for a total of 15.47 mln WCDMA subscribers.
China Telecom (NYSE: CHA; 0728.HK) added 3.53 mln CDMA subs, taking its total to 94.05 mln, of which 13.64 mln were CDMA2000 EV-DO subscribers. China Telecom added 1.35 mln new CDMA2000 EV-DO subscribers during the month."

Source:  Marbridge Daily, 21st February 2011

Volkswagen's The Force ad is the most shared ad of all time

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It overtook Evian's Dancing Babies after less than one week.
Source:  Unruly Media, February 2011
Note - The Evian film has had far more views, but VW has a higher number of shares

Ten years ago the average American spent three times as much on recorded music as they do today

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"10 years ago the average American spent almost 3 times as much on recorded music products as they do today.
26 years ago they spent almost twice as much as they do today."

Source:  The REAL Death Of The Music Industry, Business Insider, 18th February 2011

The state of the Twittersphere

A new document on Scribd, collating data from a number of sources.
The state of the Twittersphere , February 2011

E.g.
Approx 200m accounts
14m active accounts per day
110m tweets per day
40m active accounts per month

The mainstream media play a role in most trending topics on twitter

"In a new paper, Huberman and three fellow researchers demonstrate that “user activity and number of followers do not contribute strongly to trend creation and its propagation.”
Instead, says Huberman, “we found that mainstream media play a role in most trending topics and actually act as feeders of these trends.  Twitter users then seem to be acting more as filter and amplifier of traditional media in most cases.”
How trends start
The main determinant of whether an item trends – much more than who tweets about it or how often – was the specific subject of the tweet, the team found. That can be seen in the degree to which trending topics are the result of retweets – items passed from one individual’s network of followers to another’s.  31% of tweets of trending topics are retweets, their analysis showed.
The role of “traditional” media sources
The HP team collected data from Twitter’s own search API over a period of 40 days in the fall of 2010.  From the resulting sample of 16.32 million tweets, they identified 22 users who were the source of the most retweets when a topic was “trending.”  Of those 22, 72% were Twitter streams run by mainstream media outfits such as CNN, the New York Times, El Pais and the BBC.
Although popular, most of these sites have millions of followers fewer than highly-followed tweeters such as Ashton Kutcher, Barack Obama or Lady Gaga.
Similarly, the research showed that just having an active Twitter account was not a factor in creating a trend."
Source:  White Paper from HP, 12th February 2011

Just 1,215 albums sold more than 10,000 copies in the US in 2010

"At New Music Seminar in LA on Tuesday, another stunning stat surfaced.  Last year, just 1,215 albums sold more than 10,000 units in the US.   Here's what the last three years looked like, according to the presented figures:    
- Albums selling more than 10,000 units in 2010: 1,215
- Albums selling more than 10,000 units in 2009: 1,319
- Albums selling more than 10,000 units in 2008: 1,515"

Source:  Data revealed at New Music Seminar in LA on 15th February 2010, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 15th February 2010

Oreo Cookies hold the record for 'most Likes in 24 hours' with 114,619 to a single post

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"At 9am EST, Guinness World Records awarded a new record for the ‘Most Likes on a Facebook Post in 24 Hours’ to Oreo Cookies with 114,619 ‘Likes’ to a single post.
We are, however, aware of Lil Wayne’s attempt for the same record which is currently ongoing. Guinness World Records will review any applicant’s evidence once they have completed their attempt, which in this case is at the end of the 24 hour period."
Source:  Guinness World Records, 16th February 2011

Nearly a million tweets relating to the Barclays Premiership were sent in January 2011

"According to a report by Barclays, an explosion of Twitter activity saw close to a million tweets about the Premier League and its clubs in January, as fans took advantage of being able to 'follow' their favourite players, clubs and journalists and debate top stories as they happen."
[...]
"Most tweeted about Barclays Premier League teams
Liverpool: 301,169
Arsenal: 110,901
Chelsea: 97,655
Man United: 86,249
Spurs: 61,574
Cities with the most tweets about the Barclays Premier League
London: 263,988
Liverpool: 124,415
Manchester: 68,733
Birmingham: 20,112
Leeds: 18,514
and at the bottom...
Coventry: 499
Stoke: 450
Blackburn: 393
Wigan: 253"

Source:  Data from Barclays and Sysomos, reported by the Daily Mail, 9th February 2011

Note - I am assuming that this relates only to UK-based tweeters, where location can be identified.  Also, the presence of Liverpool at the top is probably due to two large stories (buying Carroll, selling Torres) rather than their fans being the most active tweeters

The Chrome browser has 120m active users

"Chrome the browser has 120 million active users, up threefold in the past year. "Chrome will provide a programming platform for this next generation of cloud-based applications.""
Source:  Google's Eric Schmidt, speaking at the Mobile World Congress, reported by The Guardian, 16th February 2011

iPhone apps produce a higher average return per user than Android apps

"Mobile ad exchange Mobclix measured the monthly ad revenue generated by iPhone and Android apps across the utilities, entertainment and games categories. It found that iPhone apps overall produced a higher average revenue per user than Android apps.
In the utilities segment, the iPhone produced an ARPU of $9.50 compared to $7.20 for Android. In entertainment, the difference in favor of iPhone apps was $6.70 to $4.90, and $4 to $1.90 in games. In terms of the methodology, Mobclix analyzed free apps with more than 500,000 downloads and/or 75,000 daily active users.
The apps included also spent an average of two weeks in their categories "Top 10" listing. The company examined popular titles, but did not necessarily compare the same apps on both platforms. Active users were defined as those using apps three times a week for a minimum of five minutes. Subscription revenue was not included in the study."
Source:  Mobclix data, reported by MediaPost, 14th February 2011

The reasons why people 'unfollow' brands on Twitter and 'unlike' brands on Facebook

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Click to enlarge

Source:  Data from ExactTarget, reported by Mashable, 8th February 2011
Note - the report also includes data on email unsubscribes

Smartphone adoption figures in the US and Europe

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"Smartphones aggressively penetrated the mobile market in 2010, driving an escalation in mobile media consumption by subscribers worldwide. Technological innovations enabled an extraordinary number of new capabilities for mobile devices, even expanding the definition of what it means to be 'mobile' through the introduction of tablets, e-readers and other connected devices. As more subscribers access the mobile web in 2011, it will become essential for marketers to reach this rapidly-expanding segment of consumers.
comScore's report provides insight into the year's most important trends. Key findings highlighted in the report include:
Smartphone adoption accelerated in both the U.S. and Europe. U.S. smartphone adoption reached 27 percent of mobile subscribers in December 2010, an increase of 10 percentage points from the previous year, while European adoption reached 31 percent, also up nearly 10 points versus year ago.
Network quality and cost of monthly plan were the top 2 purchase consideration factors for mobile subscribers in the U.S. and UK.
Nokia was the top OEM in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. Samsung took the top spot in the U.S. and France, and also ranked in the top three in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain.
36 percent of mobile Americans and 29 percent of Europeans browsed the mobile web in December 2010, with access through an application reaching 34 percent of Americans and 28 percent of Europeans. Across regions, mobile browsing and application usage is growing in the range of 7-9 percentage points per year.
More than 75 percent of mobile subscribers in Japan are connected media users (used their browser, accessed applications or downloaded content) far surpassing the U.S. and European countries in this regard. Japan also saw nearly 10 percent of its mobile audience make a purchase with their mobile wallet in December 2010.
Over the past year the number of mobile users that accessed a social networking site at least once a month via their mobile device increased by 56 percent to nearly 58 million users in the U.S. Even stronger growth occurred in Europe, with a 75-percent increase in the number of users over the last year to 42 million in December 2010."
Source:  Press release from comScore (with link to download the full report), 14th February 2011

Pandora has 80m users

"Here are some other stats from the filing.  Pandora now has (as of January, 2011)...
80 million users (up 73.9 percent year-over-year, with a new user registering every second)
800,000 songs
80,000 artists
3.9 billion listening hours for the year ending January 31st, 2011 (up 86% from 2.1 billion the prior year.)
50 million mobile app downloads to-date, in the US alone."
Source:  Data from Pandora, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 11th February 2011

Lady Gaga's single Born This Way is the fastest selling single in the history of iTunes

"The lady is still a champ. As expected, Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" became the fastest-selling single in the history of iTunes, hitting the top spot in 21 of 23 countries where the music service is available.
It took a mere five hours for the first single from Gaga's forthcoming album of the same title to jump to the number 1 position. With lyrics that address race and sexuality, Gaga, as well as close friends Elton John and Perez Hilton, have called the song the next great "gay anthem.""
Source:  The Advocate, 11th February 2011

3G penetration by market, Q3 2010

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Source:  Informa WCIS, from page 10 of KPCB Top 10 Mobile Trends Feb 2011, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, 10th February 2011
Earlier - 3G penetrations in Q2, 2010

70% of new customers to Vodafone in the UK demand a smartphone

"Vittorio Colao, chief executive, said Britain's "digital citizens" are much more up to date with the latest technology than mainland Europeans.
Vodafone said 70pc of new customers signing up for a contract in the UK demand a smartphone, such as Apple's iPhone, compared with just four-in-10 in Europe.
Britons' desire for the latest technology pushed Vodafone's UK sales in the three months to the end of December up 7pc to £1.26bn - its best quarter since the summer of 2007.
The UK, alongside Turkey and India, was highlighted as a star performer, helping Vodafone achieve a 2.1pc increase in service revenues to £10.96bn."
Source:  The Telegraph, 4th February 2011

'Other' handset manufacturers sold nearly 500m handsets in 2010

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"Others - 488,569,300, or 30.6% share, up from 199,617,200 in 2009, or 16.5% share"
Source:  Press release from Gartner, 9th February 2011

1.6bn mobile devices were sold in 2010

"Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009 (see Table 1), according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010.
"Strong smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 pushed Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) up in our 2010 worldwide ranking of mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "Nokia and LG saw their market share erode in 2010 as they came under increasing pressure to refine their smartphone strategies.""

Source:  Press release from Gartner, 9th February 2010

The Android operating system grew by nearly 900% in 2010

"In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, ''Android grew 888.8 percent in 2010 and moved to the No. 2 position. Android sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 continued to be driven by broad availability of many high-end products from HTC (Desire range, Incredible and EVO), Samsung (Galaxy S) and Motorola (Droid X, Droid 2).
Symbian’s market share dropped further in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 32.6 percent or 32.6 million units. This allowed Android to overtake Nokia's Symbian unit sales during the fourth quarter of 2010. However, the Symbian OS is also used by Fujitsu and Sharp as well as in legacy products from Sony Ericsson and Samsung. “This aggregated volume kept Symbian slightly ahead of Android,” said Ms. Cozza.
The wider availability of the iPhone 4 helped Apple to maintain its share of the smartphone market to 16.0 percent in the fourth quarter 2010 and led the iPhone OS platform to reach the No. 4 position in 2010. "As a platform, iOS is in excellent shape," said Ms. Milanesi. With every iPad and iPod Touch sold, Apple increases the profile of iOS with potential iPhone buyers and strengthens its developer ecosystem."
Source:  Press release from Gartner, 9th February 2011

The mobile browser Opera Mini has over 100m users

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"In this month’s State of the Mobile Web report, we are highlighting a major milestone in the growth of the mobile Web. When we combine the number of people who used the Opera Mini browser (90.36 million) in January with the approximate number of Opera Mobile (15 million) users in January, we get over 100 million people who are using Opera browsers on their handsets. That number only includes people who have downloaded the public version of the Opera Mini browser; it does not include people who use Opera Mini instances that are preinstalled on phones by operators. As such, 100 million is actually an underestimate, but we are not concerned, as that number will be eclipsed shortly. Opera Mini’s increasing growth rate over the last five years has been nothing short of astounding, and our expectations are high for 2011 and beyond.
Consider these numbers:
Between January 2006 and January 2007, the number of Opera Mini users increased by 1.9 million.
Between January 2007 and January 2008, the number of Opera Mini users increased by 5.3 million.
Between January 2008 and January 2009, the number of Opera Mini users increased by 12.4 million.
Between January 2009 and January 2010, the number of Opera Mini users increased by 29.8 million.
Between January 2010 and January 2011, the number of Opera Mini users increased by 40.6 million.
Based on that growth trend, we think there is legitimate cause to say that mobile web browsing is the wave of the future, a future we are helping to create via our mission of providing the best Internet experience on all devices."

Source:  State of the Mobile Web January 2011, Opera, 9th February 2011

Super Bowl XLV was the most watched TV programme in American history

"The world's greatest sporting event has cemented its place in pop-culture history by netting the most amount of Americans to ever watch a TV show. And not even Christina Aguilera's flub or Groupon's offensive ad could do anything about it.
In fact, they probably contributed to the 111 million viewers that tuned in for Sunday's thrilling Super Bowl between the victorious Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. The NFL's showpiece game actually broke its own record, with five million more tuning in this year compared to 2010's showdown between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts.
Until then, the series finale of M*A*S*H had famously held the record for 27 years with an impressive tally of just under 106 million, but now the Super Bowl has taken over the top two spots, as well as numbers four and five. "Super Bowl XLV caps what is arguably the most successful season that any sports league has ever had," said Pat McDonough, senior vice president for insight and analysis at the Nielsen Co. "The number of people watching NFL games has never been higher, with 24% more people watching the average NFL game this year than just five years ago. The Super Bowl continues to be in a category of its own.""
Source:  Time, 8th February 2011
Earlier - Super Bowl XLIV was the most watched TV programme in American history

Orkut has 52m members

"Over 52 million active users worldwide
Over 34 billion pageviews each month
Average user visits the site 26 times each month, spending over 8 minutes per visit
Source: comScore Media Metrics, 2010, as reported by Orkut
Also:  site demographics - 51% of the membership is from Brazil, 20% from India, 18% from the US.
Also:
"Photos and scraps continue to be strong features, and over the last month, we’ve hit a few records. On Christmas Eve, users shared 93 milion scraps, an all-time high, and on January 3rd after New Years, users viewed 1.6 billion photos, which is almost 19,000 photo views a second. For context, YouTube crossed the 1 billion video view mark in October 2009, and crossed the 2 billion mark in May of last year."

Source:  Orkut blog, 26th January 2011 (on the occasion of their 7th birthday)

US internet users spend twice as long on Hulu as on the 5 major network TV websites combined

"When it comes to premium video on the Web, Hulu still rules. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. online audience watched 19.4 billion minutes of video on Hulu, which was twice as much as the how much viewers watched on the websites of the five major TV networks combined. Viewers watched another 9.7 billion minutes of online video on the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW. The chart above comes from a new Digital Year in Review report from comScore.
While Hulu still dominates, the individual network sites are growing faster. They grew 82 percent in terms of time spent watching video online, compared to 17 percent growth for Hulu. Taken together, Hulu and the five top networks, saw 33 percent growth in minutes viewed."
Source:  Data from comScore, reported by Techcrunch, 7th February 2011

Russian social network Vkontakte has more than 100m registered users

"Vkontakte - the most visited resources of the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet ( TNS Gallup ).
The share of the site for more than half of Internet traffic CIS ( Liveinternet ).
The site recorded more than 100 million users.
More than 21.5 million users come to the site every day ( Liveinternet ).
More than 2.5 billion pages open daily ( Liveinternet ).
Approximately 65% of visitors live in Russia.
25% of visitors - from Moscow, 18% - from St. Petersburg ( Liveinternet ).
58% of visitors aged over 25 ( TNS Gallup )."

Source:  Vkontake, retrieved 9th February 2011, translated by Google Translate

Note - amusingly Google translates 'Vkontakte' as 'Facebook'.  I've corrected this.
Update - VK, the English language version claims that the site has 112m members

There are 36,000 active twitter users in Sweden

"Today, there are exactly 35 993 active twitter in Sweden. In total there are 91 462 Swedish accounts on Twitter, the report said "Twittercensus" presented today. The majority of all accounts is therefore dormant.
But Intellecta, behind the large census, argues that Twitter's media impact is large.
- It can sometimes seem like a small elite had a greater influence thanks to Twitter. It is true but is not the whole truth. It's about already established individuals who started to communicate in a new and more open platform, "says Hampus Brynolf, web strategist at Intellecta Corporate and one of the people behind the site makthavare.se in a statement.
Last year, stopped the growth rate of rigorously on micro-blog. Rapp notes that any root growth is not really to talk about anymore. But despite this, the number of references to Twitter in the media. Something that has become clear, particularly in Resume.se."
Source:  Data from Intellecta, reported by Resume,se, 3rd February 2011, and translated using Google Translate

FEMME FATALE, the title of the new Britney Spears album, is the longest running continual Top 10 Trend on twitter

"Britney Spears, who last week announced her seventh studio album, Femme Fatale, was the #1 Trending Topic on Twitter during the Super Bowl.
Femme Fatale has been a trending topic for six days straight now and has broken records to become the Top 10 longest running Trending Topic of Twitter."
Source:  Britney Spears' own blog, 8th February 2011
Note - yes, ok, maybe not the most reliable or disinterested source.

Smartphones outsold PCs in Q4 2010

"Only three years after the iPhone launched, the smartphone market is already bigger than the PC market.
According to IDC, 101 million smartphones were sold in Q4, versus 92 million PCs.
Smartphone shipments, meanwhile, grew 87% year over year, while PCs only grew 3%.
Android vaulted past all contenders, including Apple and Nokia, to become the No. 1 smartphone platform in the quarter (Nokia still sold the most phones, with 28% of the market). Apple's share doubled to 16% year over year.
All of this is good news for smartphone makers and supply chains and horrible news for PC makers and supply chains."
Source:  Data from IDC, reported by Business Insider, 8th February 2011

Collectively, porn and other films make up 71% of illegally shared files

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"Envisional’s researchers looked through the 10,000 most popular files being managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker and broke it down by type. Pornography was, err, on top, with films coming next in popularity. Music sits way down the list.
The percentage obviously depends on just where you place your cutoff. The Pirate Bay’s overall top 100, for instance, has 10 recent albums in its list (the rest is almost exclusively video content). Still, the disparity in the numbers are eye-popping; pirates want movies more than music, and by a significant margin."
Source:  Research by Envisional & NBC Universal, reported by Wired, 3rd February 2011
Full study (pdf) here

Click rates on Facebook ads fell from 2009 to 2010, while the cost per click rose

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"Facebook advertising is predicted to hit US$4 billion this year, which is  twice the volume of 2010 spending according to eMarketer. While brands are rapidly investing in the space, they lack comparative experience to assess how well their campaigns are performing. Webtrends has analyzed  over eleven thousand campaigns to provide performance benchmarks brands can use to evaluate their own campaign performance.
The Webtrends database is a very large sample given the relatively young age of the Facebook ad network (see the stats at left). We focused on a few key metrics:
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Cost per Click (CPC)
• Cost per Thousand (CPM)
• Cost per Fan (CPF)
LESS cLickS for MorE MonEy
From 2009 to 2010 the average CTR dropped while the costs increased. This is a typical pattern for display ad networks as the audience becomes more savvy and demand causes prices to rise. Brands investing now will save money building their Facebook ad programs now by taking advantage of currently low rates that will continue to increase over time. Facebook’s top advertisers have increased their ad spend 10 fold."
Source:  Facebook Advertising Performance Benchmarks & Insights Whitepaper from Webtrends, 21st January 1011
(Lots more data including demographics in the full document)
Note on the data:
"Webtrends has amassed a large database of Facebook advertising campaign results. Here are a few stats on the volume of data analyzed for this report.
4.5 billion impressions
2.2 million clicks
11.2 thousand ads
1.5 thousand campaigns"

Less than 15% of Wikipedia's contributors are women

"In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure.
Why are there so many more men than women contributing to a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"?
But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.
About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women."
Source:  New York Times, 30th January 2011

Google's mobile ad network AdMob receives 2bn ad requests per day

"The AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day.  This represents an increase of more than 4x in the last twelve months.
Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than one billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from one country just a year ago.
The 10 countries in Western Europe with the most ad requests all experienced a greater than 400% growth in ad requests in 2010.
More than half of AdMob's top 50 brand advertising campaigns in December 2010 used the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
Ad Impressions for AdMob grew more than 500% in the past year from the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
There are now over 50,000 publishers in the AdMob network that support their mobile businesses with mobile advertising (NEW)
Hundreds of mobile publishers, including Angry Birds, are earning over $100,000 per month from AdMob ads."
Source:  Google Mobile blog, 31st January 2011

The online & offline habits of teen and tween girls

"Media Habits & Relationships
'Being with friends' (in the real world) is what girls across all age groups (66%) enjoy doing, followed by 'shopping' and 'listening to music'. And when it comes to shortened attention spans, the research shows that a third (30%) of Gen Z girls regularly watch TV shows online for longer than 10 minutes.
Play & Games
Gaming has become a commonplace activity among a relatively new 'casual gamers' user group, but has the market now reached saturation? Not where girls are concerned. Half (49%) of older teens say they never spend time with portable gaming devices or console games. Gaming is more entrenched in younger girls lives, with 35% of 12 and under personally owning a portable gaming device. Social gaming habits, such as playing Farmville, CItyVille, Cafe World and Sims regularly, are prevalent, although vary depending on country: Brazil and Poland top the list (41% and 40%) for girls playing MMOGs (massive multiplayer online games) with Germany and France the lowest (21% and 22%). In the UK, 34% of girls play regularly and in the US the figure is 29%.
Spending Power
Girls like to shop - scoring it as their second favorite activity - but does their lack of plastic hamper their spending money online? It appears not. One in five girls aged 12 and under regularly visit online shopping sites, rising to one in four once they become teenagers. The majority of teenage girls are still buying products on the high street or at a shopping center rather than online, but this shopping medium is far from off limits - 13% of Generation Z girls regularly purchase products online regardless of age.
    Highlights:

    Under 12s
        - 64% use a gaming console
        - Only 35% put listening to music in their top 5 activities
        - More than 60% own a mobile phone
        - More than 60% never read a newspaper
        - Prefer instant messenger to social networks

    13-15 year olds
        - More than 45% say listening to music is one of their favorite
          activities
        - Almost 80% own a mobile
        - YouTube, followed by Facebook, are their favorite social networks
        - 25% regularly visit online shopping sites although only 13%
          Purchase products
        - Begin using mobile web and mobile social networks

    16-18 year olds
        - Most interested in music - nearly 50% list it in their top 5
          activities
        - Nearly 80% own a mobile
        - Are most likely to read newspapers
        - Are least likely to use a gaming console
        - The heaviest media users
        - More likely to use social networks rather than instant messages"
Source:  Press release from Stardoll and Carat, 27th January 2011
About the research
The research was conducted within the virtual world of Stardoll (http://www.stardoll.com), and the total number of respondents was 11,000. The study was conducted in August 2010 using Questback's advance survey tool EasyResearch. Respondents were recruited randomly on Stardoll.com by sending the survey to Stardoll members within the 11 markets (Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, UK and US).

26% of mobile apps are opened only once after download

"With 300,000 iPhone apps and 200,000 Android apps available for download, consumers aren’t willing to tolerate apps that at first sight don’t meet their standards.
Twenty-six percent of apps are only opened once after download, according to a study by software company Localytics.
Using its real-time app analytics tool, Localytics compiled data in 2010 about new users of thousands of Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 apps.
If these users did not open the apps a second time before January 26, 2011, they were counted as one-time users. "
Source:  Data from Localytics, reported by Mashable, 2nd February 2011

Sales of Android devices overtook sales of Symbian devices in Q4 2010

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"Canalys today published its final Q4 2010 global country-level smart phone market data, which revealed that Google’s Android has become the leading platform. Shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia’s Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smart phone vendor, with a share of 28%. The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smart phone market continue to soar, with shipments of 101.2 million units representing year-on-year growth of 89%. The final quarter took shipments for the year to fractionally below 300 million units, with an annual growth rate of 80% over 2009 (see table below).
In Q4 2010, volumes of Google OS-based smart phones (Android, OMS and Tapas) were again boosted by strong performances from a number of vendors, notably LG, Samsung, Acer and HTC, whose volumes across these platforms grew 4,127%, 1,474%, 709% and 371% respectively year-on-year. HTC and Samsung together accounted for nearly 45% of Google OS-based handset shipments."

Source:  Press release from Canalys, 31st January 2011