Times & Sunday Times paid online subscribers increased by 29,000 in 5 months

"The Times and The Sunday Times had 79,000 monthly digital subscribers at the end of February - up 29,000 over the previous five months.
The figures, released by the publications' owner News International, are closely watched to see if the 'paywall' model is making progress.
There were 228,000 joint print/digital and digital-only subscribers to The Times and Sunday Times.
Chief executive Rebekah Brooks said she was "delighted" with the figures.
The company said the total number of people paying to read The Times - print or digital - had increased by 3%."
Source:  BBC News, 29th March 2011

An estimated 1 billion TV viewers watched India play Pakistan in the Semi Final of the Cricket World Cup

"It’s estimated that a television audience of more than a billion people watched India play Pakistan in the semi-final of the world cup of cricket. To put that in perspective, around 0.7 billion people tuned in for the final of the last football world cup in South Africa.
At stake, in sporting terms, was the chance to contest the world cup final against regional neighbours Sri Lanka. India won as it happens, by 29 runs for those who understand cricket. But even for those who don’t have the slightest idea what the sport is, the match is still of great significance.
This is the first time either country has hosted the other in a cricket match since the Mumbai attacks perpetrated by Pakistani-based militants. Relations between India and Pakistan, tense at the best of times, have been at a new low ever since."

Source:  EuroNews, 30th March 2011
Note - No source quoted for where the estimates actually come from

52% of Chinese mobile internet users use mobile banking

"According to the "2011 China Mobile Banking Industry User Survey" recently issued in Beijing by Chinese mobile internet portal 3G.cn, as of February 2011, mobile banking reached a penetration rate of 52.2% among Chinese mobile internet users, compared to 36.8% in July 2010. The report also shows that the industry is making inroads amongst the middle-age demographic, and users' personal monthly income level continues to rise."
Source:  Marbridge Daily, 30th March 2011

The Cheezeburger network bought Know Your Meme for 'a seven figure sum'

"In a deal that combines some of the Internet’s most loved memes with the definitive site chronicling them, the Cheezburger Network has acquired Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme. The acquisition, first reported by Tubefilter and confirmed by Rocketboom and Cheezburger, was reportedly valued in the low seven digits — though neither party would publicly comment on the price.
Know Your Meme was created in 2007 as a complement to videos Rocketboom was creating at the time. The site included a wiki designed to curate all the memes that were hitting the Internet, as well as a blog to chronicle all the latest meme news. But the most famous part of the project was probably the long-running Know Your Meme web show, which provided easy-to-understand video companions to many of the Internet’s most (in)famous memes."

Source:  GigaOM, 28th March 2011

The internet accounts for 25% of all advertising in the UK

"UK online advertising has bucked the recession with strong growth of 12.8% on a like-for-like basis in 2010 to reach a new milestone of £4,097 million, according to the bi-annual advertising spend study from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC.
With total UK advertising spend in 2010 valued at £16.6 billion, this takes the internet’s market share to a record high of 25% (23% in 2009), meaning that £1 in every £4 invested by advertisers is spent online.
These findings demonstrate that, despite the recession, online advertising is in rude health. Significantly, marketers are increasingly using online channels to drive their brand building campaigns. Consumer goods and retail advertisers increased their investment in online to become two of the top four big spenders in display, capitalising on the medium’s core strengths of reach and engagement as well as accountability.
In 2010 the biggest gain was display advertising, thanks to a nearly 200% surge in display advertising in a social media environment (on a like-for-like basis)* and 91% year-on-year (absolute growth) in video formats. Expenditure on pre-, mid- and post-roll video advertising nearly doubled to £54 million (£28 million in 2009). Overall display grew by more than a quarter (27.5%) on a like-for-like basis to a new high of £945.1 million, representing 23% of total online spend (up from 20% in 2009).
Consumer goods manufacturers became a top three display spender in the first half of 2010 with 12% share, jumping to 13% in the second half. The top spender in online display is finance with 15.2% share, indicating that as the economy recovers, finance brands are seeing their marketing budgets re-emerge. Finance market share has overtaken entertainment and media, which has dipped slightly to a 14% market share.
Paid-search continues to perform strongly with growth of 8% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to £2,346 million, representing 57% of total online spend (61% in 2009).
Despite pressure on the housing, recruitment and automotive markets, online classified advertising bounced back in 2010 recording 9.7% growth on a like-for-like basis to £751 million – a share of 18% (19% in 2009).
Mobile advertising has experienced a staggering 116% year on year growth (on a like for like basis), up from 32% in 2009. Advertisers spent £83 million on mobile advertising in 2010, led by the entertainment and media sector, but with encouraging growth from finance, telecoms and consumer goods advertising."
Source:  Data from IAB / PwC, reported on the IAB UK website, 29th March 2011

Debenhams' iPhone app generated more than £1m in sales in the first five months

"Debenhams launched its iPhone app in October last year, but this week added Android and Nokia versions, which it says makes it the first high-street retailer to have an app presence on all three platforms.
That first iPhone app generated more than £1m of sales in its first five months, according to the retailer. 110,000 people have used the app more than five times – a better metric of active usage than pure download stats – with more than 2.4 million "shopping sessions"."

Source:  The Guardian, 23ed March, 2011

Apple accounts for nearly 85% of digital indie music revenues

"Perhaps that was totally obvious, though Apple makes up nearly 85 percent of digital indie revenue, worldwide, and that includes aggregated downloads, subscription, and streaming sources.  And, it also leaves both Amazon and Spotify with paltry shares of roughly 5-6 percent each."
Source:  Music trade group AIM, reported by DigitalMusicNews, 28th March 2011

Global recorded music sales fell by almost $1.5bn in 2010

"Global recorded music sales fell by almost $1.5bn (£930m) last year as digital piracy continued to take its toll on the industry, with the UK losing its mantle as the third-largest music market after "physical" sales of CDs collapsed by almost a fifth.
Global recorded music revenues fell 8.4% last year, about $1.45bn, to $15.9bn according to the annual Recording Industry in Numbers report by international music industry body the IFPI.
Overall physical sales, the term used in the industry for sales of products such as CDs, fell by 14.2% year on year to $10.4bn.
Digital revenues grew by 5.3% year on year to $4.6bn to account for 29% of all recorded music revenues. However, the rate of digital revenue growth has halved year on year as the industry continues to struggle with piracy and winning consumers over to legal download models.
The world's two largest markets, the US and Japan, took a hammering last year accounting for 57% of the total global decline in trade revenues. In 2009 the two countries accounted for 80% of the global decline.
In the US overall sales fell by 10% with physical sales down 20% to just over $2bn and digital sales stagnating with 1.2% growth to $2bn. Japan saw an overall market decline of 8.3% with the report noting that "rapidly rising online is threatening the development of the digital market"."
Source:  Data from IFPI, reported by The Guardian, 28th March 2011

50% of tweets with links are generated by just 20,000 twitter users

"We study several longstanding questions in media communications research, in the context of the microblogging service Twitter, regarding the production, flow, and consumption of information. To do so, we exploit a recently introduced feature of Twitter---known as Twitter lists---to distinguish between elite users, by which we mean specifically celebrities, bloggers, and representatives of media outlets and other formal organizations, and ordinary users. Based on this classification, we find a striking concentration of attention on Twitter---roughly 50% of tweets consumed are generated by just 20K elite users---where the media produces the most information, but celebrities are the most followed."
Source:  Shaomei Wu, Cornell University, Jake M. Hofman, Yahoo! Research, Winter A. Mason, Yahoo! Research, Duncan J. Watts, Yahoo! Research, 'Twitter Flow' 28th March 2011
(Includes a link to download the full research report)
Note 1 - Why just just looked at tweets with links (& in fact just tweets with B.t.ly Urls:
From the full pdf:
"In addition to the follower graph, we are interested in the content being shared on Twitter|particularly URLs|and so we examined the corpus of all 5B tweets generated over a 223 day period from July 28, 2009 to March 8, 2010 using data from the Twitter \ rehose," the complete stream of all tweets2. Because our objective is to understand the flow of information, it is useful for us to restrict attention to tweets containing URLs, for two reasons. First, URLs add easily identi able tags to individual tweets, allowing us to observe when a particular piece of content is either retweeted or subsequently reintroduced by another user. And second, because URLs point to online content outside of Twitter, they provide a much richer source of variation than is possible in the typical 140 character tweet. Finally, we note that almost all URLs broadcast on Twitter have been shortened using one of a number of URL shorteners, of which the most popular is http://bit.ly/. From the total of 5B tweets recorded during our observation period, therefore, we focus our attention on the subset of 260M containing bit.ly URLs."

Note 2 - According to the authors of the report, in an email to me in response to my queries, 'attention' is actually defined as being potentially exposed to tweets.  So if I follow @aplusk I am paying attention to his tweets.  It's a bit of a shame that they've used this very low measure of involvement, rather than to look at clicks, re-tweets or replies, in my opinion
So in fact the title should say "50% of the potential impressions generated by tweets with links are generated by just 20,000 users"

TV accounts for 47% of the time American children spend with media

"Television use dwarfs internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it. The analysis found that during the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and that television use among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years. Of the time that children spend on all types of media, television accounts for a whopping 47%.
Heavy television viewing may even be partially responsible for the rising number of children who use the Internet. Parents in one study indicated that more than 60% of children under age three watch video online. That percentage decreases as children get older (the report suggests this is because school-age children have less time at home), but even 8- to 18-year-old children reported in another study that they consume about 20% of their video content online, on cellphones, or on other portable devices like iPods."
Source:  Data from Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop, reported by Mashable, 14th March 2011

O2 was the top online ad spender in the UK in 2010

"According to figures compiled exclusively for Marketing by Nielsen, mobile services provider O2 was the biggest online display advertiser in the UK, despite reducing its budget by almost 30% year on year to £9.9m.
Although the figures do not include spend on keyword search or social media, they suggest that major FMCG firms still allocate only a small proportion of their budgets to paid-for online advertising.
Procter & Gamble, the UK's biggest advertiser, devotes just 1.3% of its spend to paid-for online display ads, while Unilever invests £2.6m, just 1.9% of its total media spend.
The COI posted the biggest year-on-year fall in the top 10, slashing its spend by 52% year on year to £4.6m. Conversely, Google increased its investment by 175% to £4m, dedicating 61% of its total media spend to online display ads."
Source:  Data from Nielsen and Marketing Magazine, reported by Marketing Magazine, 22nd March 2011
Note:  As the figures don't include search (which is about 70% of all UK online ad spend), they should be treated with caution.

American online video viewing time rose 45% per viewer Y-o-Y in January 2011

"According to a recent release by Nielsen, online video usage in the U.S. is up considerably from the same time last year, as time spent viewing video on PC/Mac/laptops from home and work locations increased by 45%. Although the number of unique online video viewers only increased by 3.1% from last January, level of activity was up as viewers streamed 28% more video and spent 45% more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5% to 14.5 billion streams."

Source:  Data from Nielsen, reported by MediaPost, 17th March 2011

Mobile advertising spend grew by 116% in the UK in 2010

"The adoption of smartphones has boosted traditional advertisers’ confidence in the mobile space, according to new research from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PwC.
Mobile advertising has experienced a staggering 116% year on year growth (on a like for like basis), up from 32% growth in 2009. Advertisers spent £83 million on mobile advertising in 2010, according to the third annual IAB and PwC mobile study.
Entertainment and media has dominated the spend for the past couple of years, but its dominance is reducing as other advertisers – in particular financial, telecom providers and consumer good brands – see the opportunity the sector has to offer.
Smartphone adoption isn’t the only driver for the growth in spend. The way consumers are using mobile to access media has changed dramatically over the past few years.
Advertisers’ spend on search on mobile has nearly tripled from 2009, going up from £20.2 million to £54.9 million. Display advertising in the form of banner ads, text links, and tenancies experienced a rise of 62% to £23.7 million, from £14.6 million in 2009. The mobile format of pre-and post-roll adverts also experienced a rise of 492% to £1.1 million, up from £0.2 million in 2009, showing that the rich media opportunities that smartphones offer are being taken advantage of by advertisers."
Source:  Data from the IAB & PwC, reported on the IAB UK website, 22nd March 2011

E-book sales more than doubled in the US Y-o-Y in January 2011

"E-books and downloadable audio books continue to grow in popularity according to the January 2011 sales report of the Association of American Publishers. Figures for the first month of the new year show that E-book net sales increased by 115.8% vs January 2010 (from $32.4 Million to $69.9M). Sales of Downloadable Audio Books also rose by 8.8% vs the previous year ($6.0M to $6.5M). As AAP reported last month in its December 2010 monthly report and full 2010 analysis, E-book sales have increased annually and significantly in all nine years of tracking the category."
Source:  Press release from the AAP, reported by Engadget, 20th March 2011

More than 600m people used online music services in China in 2010

"Despite China’s online music market being plagued by piracy, the country’s online music industry saw a 14 percent increase in profits in 2010 over the previous year, 90 percent of which came from mobile downloads.
According to a report released by  China’s Ministry of Culture, online music content and service providers earned around 2.3 billion yuan ($349.8 million) last year, a 14.4 percent jump from 2009. 2.02 billion yuan, or a huge 90 percent of the total revenue, came from wireless music services via mobile phones, including ringtone and music downloads — a year-on-year rise of 9.8 percent. While the revenue from online music services via personal computers remained a meager 280 million yuan, it increased significantly year-on-year by 64 percent, said the report.
More than 600 million people, or 70 percent of mobile phone subscribers, used music services in China which resulted in 27.9 billion yuan in revenues for telecom companies that charge for online music services."

Source:  Data from CNNIC, reported by The Next Web, 10th March 2011

40% of Google Maps usage is through mobile devices

"Mayer revealed that 40% of Google Maps usage is mobile. And Christmas and New Years day had mobile usage of Maps surpass the desktop — which is a first for Google products. Google Maps now has 150 million mobile users. To put that in context, Maps for mobile had 100 million users in August of last year."
Source:  Marissa Mayer of Google, speaking at SXSW, reported by Techcrunch, 11th March 2011

42% of tweets are made through non-official apps

Click to enlarge

"In unveiling changes to its API rules last week, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver claimed that according to the company’s data “90% of active Twitters users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.” Twitter defines “official” as applications it owns and operates for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone.
It was an assertion that captured our attention because previous studies by Sysomos suggested there were significantly more “non-official” users. In a June 2009 report, for example, we found TweetDeck had nearly 20% of the client market.
To determine usage of different Twitter clients, we reviewed a sample of 25 million tweets on March 11 – the day Twitter unveiled its new API policy. The data shows that 42% of tweets were made by non-officials apps – more than four times the amount claimed by Twitter."
Source:  Research by Sysomos, reported on their blog, 15th March 2011

Digital video accounts for a quarter of all video watched in American homes

"Netflix’s share of digital movie units viewed reached 61 percent between January and February, according to research firm NPD Group.
It calculated the share of companies for movies downloaded or streamed.
Cable giant Comcast came in a distant second with a share of eight percent, followed by a three-way tie of DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Apple for third place at four percent share.
The information was collected as part of NPD's new VideoWatch Digital tracking service, so there is no historical information for comparisons with past periods yet.
NPD also said on Tuesday that digital video now makes up one quarter of all video volume in the home.
“Sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs still drive most home-video revenue, but VOD and other digital options are now beginning to make inroads with consumers,” said NPD analyst Russ Crupnick. “Overwhelmingly digital movie buyers do not believe physical discs are out of fashion, but their digital transactions were motivated by the immediate access and ease of acquisition provided by streaming and downloading digital video files.”"
Source:  Data from NPD, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, 15th March 2011

Amazon is seen as the 'best value brand' in the UK

"The company beat the likes of eBay and Visa in a list of groups Britons find it hard to live without – but not at any cost.
Toothpaste brand Colgate squeezed into second place, computer software giant Microsoft came in third, eBay secured fourth and Asda cashed in at fifth place.
The UK retailer was the only supermarket to make the top ten list.
‘What is needed is a balance between the consumers’ desire for a brand and the price they are prepared to pay for it,’ said Peter Walshe, director of researchers Millward Brown."
Source:  Data from Millward Brown, reported by Metro, 14th March 2011

Nearly half a million twitter accounts are created each day - Official twitter statistics, March 2011

"Today, on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace. Here are some numbers:
#tweets
3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
#accounts
572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
#employees
8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today."
Source:  Blog post by twitter, 14th March 2011

Facebook is the most popular social network in at least 15 European markets

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Source:  Data from comScore, reported by PR Daily, 10th March 2011

50% of online Australians have access to the mobile internet

"While use of the internet amongst the Australian population has reached maturity, the online landscape is at a turning point, as another dimension is gaining significant momentum.  That of the internet-connected mobile device – whether this be smartphones, tablet computers, eReader, connected games devices or some other hybrid forms likely to emerge, according to the Nielsen Australian Online Consumer Report, released today.
The Nielsen Online Consumer report shows that Mobile internet, for the first time, reached 50% penetration amongst online Australians in 2010, and while consumption is currently modest, based on intended uptake there will be surge of activity taking place in 2011.  From social networking to simultaneous media consumption, the report shows that Smartphones are becoming an important stimulant to driving overall online activity.
Penetration has already surpassed a third of online Australians, and with ownership intentions high over the next twelve months, smartphones are expected to have a big impact on the evolving behaviours of consumers."

Source:  Press release from Nielsen Online, 9th March 2011

81.7% of new album sales in the US come from just 1% of new release titles

"An incredible 81.7% of new album sales come from just 1% of new release titles, according to details released by Nielsen Soundscan on Wednesday morning.  "It's ridiculous," commented Nielsen executive David Bakula during the presentation at Canadian Music Week in Toronto.    
But it's been that way for years, at least in the US.  According to the same Nielsen dataset, the top 1% accounted for 83.3% of new album sales in 2009, and 82.8% in 2008.  And, the figure was just shy of 80% in 2005, 2006, and 2007."

Source:  Digital Music News, 10th March 2011

The Kinect is the fastest selling consumer electronics device ever

"Microsoft has announced that the Kinect sensor for Xbox 360 has already sold 10 million units, earning the peripheral a Guinness World Record.
The motion gaming add-on is now the "fastest selling consumer electronics device" after shifting 133,333 units a day in the 60-day period between the launch on November 4th and January 3rd.
Gaz Deaves, gaming editor for Guinness World Records said: "The sales figures here speak for themselves.
"According to independent research, no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector."
The figures announced by Microsoft today outstrip even Nintendo Wii sales, which took 2 years to reach the 10 million mark."
Source:  TechRadar, 9th March 2011

Over a quarter of a million businesses have claimed their business on Foursquare

"Last year, we introduced the foursquare Merchant Platform to give businesses an easy way to reward their customers and find new ones. We wanted to give merchants a way to learn more about their best customers and start offering Specials to help them get new people into their location.
Now, over a quarter of a million businesses have claimed their business on foursquare. We’ve had everything from mom-n-pop sub shops to thousand-location national chains, and everything in between. And we’ve gotten lots of feedback along the way – about making it easier to create Specials, about different ways people have been growing their business, and about tons of fun ways businesses use foursquare."

Source:  Blog post from Foursquare, 9th March 2011

The Android app store has 250,000 apps, compared to 350,000 for the iPhone app store

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Source:  Business Insider, 9th March 2011

Data on Facebook 'Likes'

The Like Log Study from Yury Lifshits on Vimeo.

Source:  The Like Log Study, Yahoo Labs, 2011
Click on the link for tables etc

The mobile game Angry Birds cost €100,000 to make, and has generated more than €50m in revenue

"Angry Birds is the first waste of 75 millions people's time that can be accurately quantified. Every day, users spend 200 million minutes -- 16 years every hour -- playing the mobile game. Three trillion pigs have been popped. It has filled billions of those interstitial moments spent riding the bus, on a plane or in important work meetings, and it is or has been the number-one paid app on iTunes in 68 countries, as well as the best-selling paid app of all time. It went straight to the top of the new Mac App Store in January, selling 150,000 copies in its first week. Sixty thousand Angry Birds soft toys have been sold. In January, the trailer for the new Angry Birds Rio racked up 500,000 YouTube views in a weekend; on official videos alone, Angry Birds has had 27 million total views. In total, the "brand" has taken more than €50 million: not bad for a game that cost €100,000 to make. On the first anniversary of its release, 2,405 people in 756 cities worldwide wasted even more of their time holding events in celebration of "Angry Birds Day"."
Source:  Wired UK, 7th March 2011

The Chinese online music market was worth RMB 2,3bn (USD 350m) in 2010

"According to the 2010 China Online Music Market Annual Report recently released by the Cultural Market Department of China's Ministry of Culture, China's online music market (including mobile) grew 14.4% YoY to reach a total value of RMB 2.3 bln in 2010.
Revenues from internet-based online music rose 64% YoY to reach RMB 280 mln, while revenue from mobile music sales rose 9.8% YoY to RMB 2.02 bln (based on service providers' gross revenues), accounting for 87.8% of the overall online music market. Telecom operators saw revenue from mobile music rise 3.5% YoY to RMB 27.9 bln."
Source:  Marbridge Daily, 10th March 2011
Currency translated using XE.com - RMB 1 = 0.15 US Dollars

Mobile ad spend by market, 2005-2009

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Source:  Page 219 of Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2010

Online ad spend as a proportion of total ad spend, multiple markets

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Source:  Page 214 of Ofcom International Communications Market Report, December 2010

Skype has 145m monthy users

"With 145 million average monthly connected users for the fourth quarter of 2010 and 29 million concurrent users at peak times, Skype’s reach and engaged user base makes it an attractive platform for brands to market their products. The first advertisers to sign up with Skype include: Groupon, Nokia, Universal Pictures, and Visa."

Source:  Press release from Skype, 7th March 2011

Charlie Sheen reached a million twitter followers in just over 25 hours

"Charlie Sheen may or may not be “winning,” in life, but he has won a rare honor: the “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers” Guinness World Record.
Guinness community manager Dan Barrett says the agency “just researched and approved” the record this morning. According to Barrett, Sheen reached that milestone in 25 hours and 17 minutes. As of this writing, Sheen’s Twitter account, @CharlieSheen, has close to 1.2 million followers. Guinness did not have a previous record for that category, Barrett says. Sheen also set a Guinness record for “Highest Paid TV Actor Per Episode — Current” at $1.25 million."
Source:  Mashable, 3rd March 2011

Over 10m Sky TV iPhone or iPad apps have been downloaded

"Sky is keen to launch mobile apps across many smartphone and tablet platforms, despite challenges around monetisation and rights, according to its general manager for mobile, David Gibbs.
"We've seen success on iPhone, with 10.2m downloads of our applications," he said at the Mobile Monday event in London."But it's important if we're going to make a real commitment to mobile, we need to be ubiquitous as possible. It's important that we spread ourselves across all of the platforms. That can be quite expensive, but if you're committed to it, you have to invest.""

Source:  The Guardian, 8th March 2011

Spotify has one million paying subscribers

"It seems like only yesterday we were hatching ideas for a new music service in a tiny office-cum-apartment with a broken coffee machine, and the party we threw having reached one million users almost two years ago today was one to remember.
So it’s with a sense of real pride and excitement that we can announce a new milestone today, having welcomed our millionth paying subscriber to the service. It’s a testament to our fantastic users who continue to support us and spread the Spotify word, either by telling friends or sharing some of the 200 million playlists that you’ve put together so far."
Source:  Spotify blog, 8th March 2011
Note - "Spotify is currently only available in Sweden, Spain, Norway, Finland, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Currently only customers with credit cards issued in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account."

Source:  Wikipedia, retrieved 8th March 2011

More than 20% of Britons regularly eat in front of their computer

"Britons are swapping TV dinners for PC dinners as people in the UK increasingly combine their bites with megabytes, a new survey suggests.
It found three-fifths of people had settled down to eat their evening meal in front of a computer.
And more than a fifth had eaten their dinner hunched over their computer on a regular basis, according to online viewing service SeeSaw.com."
Source:  Press Association, 7th March 2011

Mazda sold 100 cars at a 20% discount as part of a Facebook Deals promotion

"The ability to attract the attention of smartphone users making local check-ins. Clothing retailer The Gap gave away 10,000 pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 customers to use the Facebook local check-in service, and Mazda sold 100 cars--exceeding expectations--with a 20-percent-off offer at five U.K. auto dealerships, Haines said."
Source:  Facebook UK's Stephen Haines, reported by CNet, 2nd March 2011

The ads from the 2011 Super Bowl collectively achieved over 320m online views in 10 days

"2011 Super Bowl views beats all previous Super Bowl views combined. In aggregate, the entire flight of the 2011 Super Bowl ads have generated over 230 million views. Remember, this is in 10 days. We project that 2011 views will eclipse the total combined view counts for the Super Bowl ads from 2009 (99 million views) and 2010 (150 million views).
Social video is accelerating while broadcast grows steadily. Super Bowl ads generate half their views in the first three days after the game, putting 2011 projections at more than 300 million views total. This would be a 100% increase from 2010 to 2011 and a 50% increase from 2009 to 2010. Contrast this with broadcast viewership, which has grown from 99 million viewers in 2009, to 106 million views in 2010, to 111 million views in 2011, between 5% -7% annual growth.
Top 10 views are way up. In aggregate, the Top 10 2011 Super Bowl ads have generated over 96 million views (as of 10 days after the game).  For comparison, the entire flight of the 2009 Super Bowl ads generated a total 99 million views.
The Top 10 threshold is up dramatically. Doritos' The Best Part ad was able to take 10th place with 5.0 million views this year. In the same time period last year, 5.0 million views would have been good enough for 3rd place (second place was 5.1 million views).  The 2010 threshold at this time last year was 3.0 million views."
Source:  Visible Measures, 22nd February 2011