The FT has more than 900,000 paying subscribers

"The Financial Times has surpassed 900,000 paid-for readers for the first time.  Celebrating this success in a note to staff, FT CEO John Ridding said:
“Last week, we burst through the 900,000 paid-for reader level.
“That is a major milestone and a fantastic achievement, and I wanted to say a big thank you for getting us to this historic record. Never before in our 130 year history have so many people paid to read the FT.
“It was a company-wide and coordinated push – from our excellent editorial coverage, with a string of strong exclusives and beautifully written features, to smart marketing, customer service and product and tech. It was also the result of many individual efforts, such as sending gift articles to friends and contacts and spreading the message about the FT."

Source:  Financial Times, 20th November 2017

Alibaba sold $25bn worth of products on Singles Day 2017

"Alibaba has set another Single’s Day record after the e-commerce giant sold over $25 billion of product on the Chinese biggest online shopping date.
The full number comes in at 163.8 billion RMB, that’s roughly $25.3 billion, in GMV — that’s “gross merchandise volume” which is used to measure a dollar value for all sales on a platform. In Alibaba’s case, that predominantly means its Taobao marketplace and Tmall brand store although it does offer sales via its international services and it ships worldwide. All told, Alibaba handled 1.48 Billion transactions during the 24-hour period.
That represents an impressive 39 percent increase on last year’s sales total of RMB 120.7 billion ($17.79 billion), and it comes nicely on the heels of another blockbuster quarter in which Alibaba’s revenue surged by 61 percent thanks to its core business in China.
For comparison, Alibaba’s Single’s Day haul puts America’s largest shopping days in the corner. Retailers pulled in a record $3 billion on Black Friday and then $3.45 billion on Cyber Monday, both of which were records."
Source:  Techcrunch, 12th November 2017
Plus - 90% on mobile, up from 82% in 2016 and 69% in 2015

WeChat users send 38bn messages per day

"The chatty users of WeChat have just set a new record, sending 38 billion messages per day. That’s 25 percent more than last year.
[WhatsApp has 55bn per day]
Tencent, maker of WeChat, also revealed a few more stats today in its 2017 WeChat Data Report:
6.1 billion voice messages sent each day
205 million video and voice calls daily
50 million “seniors” – age 55-70 – are active users
3.5 million active “official accounts,” used by brands, media outlets, bloggers, and celebrities
797 million users actively browse through content from official accounts"

Source:  Tech in Asia, 9th November 2017

More in WeChat's 2017 Data Report

The most popular emoji on iPhones & other iOS devices

Source:  Apple's Differential Privacy Overview, November 2017

Amazon is now the second largest US company by headcount

"It's hard to imagine a company that already employed 382,400 people could grow its headcount 77% in just three months.
But that's exactly what Amazon did. At the end of September, the e-commerce giant employed 541,900 people, up 159,500 from the end of June.
The boost in employees mostly came from Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August. That deal added 90,000 people to Amazon's payroll. But even setting that deal aside, Amazon still brought on board 70,000 additional new employees.
An undisclosed number of those came from Souq.com, the Middle East's biggest e-commerce player, which Amazon also bought last quarter, Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, told analysts during the company's quarterly conference call on Thursday. Excluding Whole Foods and Souq, Amazon's headcount would have grown 47%, Olsavsky said.
Amazon is now the second largest US company by headcount. However, it's still a long way behind Walmart, which has 2.3 million employees."

Source:  Business Insider, 27th October 2017

53% of US broadband households subscribe to both pay TV & paid OTT services

Source:  Research by Parks Associates, 26th October 2017

Online orders account for 57% of Domino's deliveries; Mobile is 69% of this

Source:  Data from Domino's, reported by Next Big What, Octoberber 2017
Original source:  Domino's presentation

Contactless payments account for 45% of Visa's transactions in the UK

Fun fact from Visa’s Oliver Jenkyn: Contactless payments = 91% transactions 🇦🇺, 45% 🇬🇧, 5% 🇺🇸 #money2020

— Chloe Cornish (@ChloeNCornish) October 23, 2017

Stranger Things 2 generated 750,000 reactions on social media in the first 24 hours of release

"Data science and media technology company, 4C Insights, has unveiled that Stranger Things is closing in on Game of Thrones as the second season drew over three quarters of a million engagements across social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc).
Most notable findings include:
The number of social media engagements rose from 148,063 the night before the premiere (October 26th) to a huge 750,409 on release day of the show on Netflix, with sentiment almost matching the opening night of the seventh season of Game of Thrones at 68 per cent.
Compared to the Game of Thrones premiere earlier this year, which raked in 1,114,152 social engagements, Stranger Things has a very strong following on social media for being in its infant stage and only on its second season.
Engagement on social media tailed off over the weekend to 181,749 by Sunday. Nevertheless, sentiment towards the highly anticipated show rose to 72 per cent (October 29th), indicating strong reviews from the audience, which had access to the entire season from Friday night."
Source:  Advanced Television, 31st October 2017

Also - Nielsen estimates that episode 1 of season 2 had 15.8m viewers in the first 3 days

The Guardian has 800,000 paying readers - inc 300,000 'members' & 300,000 donors

"This significant shift in the Guardian’s business model, making it less dependent on a highly challenging advertising market for media companies, results largely from a quadrupling in the number of readers making monthly payments under the title’s membership scheme, which has grown from 75,000 to 300,000 members in the past year.
The paper has also slightly increased – to 200,000 – its subscriber base for its print and digital products. And in a development which has even surprised senior Guardian executives, a further 300,000 individuals have made single donations to the paper, which has been posting appeals at the end of articles, urging readers to financially support its commitment to open access journalism.
These one-off donations, totalling several million pounds, come from 140 countries but a substantial proportion has arrived from the US, suggesting that despite a recent diminution of the Guardian US operation, the paper has a committed audience in a country with established traditions of supporting public interest journalism through philanthropy.
Together, the 800,000 contributors (members, subscribers and donors), along with casual sales of the physical paper, give the Guardian a record number of paying readers; more than the half-a-million pinnacle in print circulation achieved in the late 1980s."

Source:  The Drum, 26th October 2017