Twitter is Growing Like Crazy: Up 422% in 12 Months

Via Mashable

September 16, 2008 – 2:09 pm PDT – by Adam Ostrow 3 Comments

The latest numbers are in, and Twitter is apparently growing at a torrid pace. According to stats just released from Nielsen Online, Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique visitors in August (US-only), an increase of 422% from the same period last year.

Moreover, visitors to Twitter spent 55% more time on the site on average – a total of more than 7 minutes per user. Those numbers point to rather robust growth for the site, especially considering many of its most rabid users access it through a third-party client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.

Elsewhere in the social networking space, Facebook continued to narrow the gap on MySpace, a trend we also noticed last month. Unique visitors to the site grew to 38.2 million, representing a more than 10% month-over-month increase and a 100% jump year-over-year. MySpace saw 61.3 million unique visitors – up slightly from last month, but still essentially flat compared to the same period last year.

Some other trends worth noting:

- LinkedIn grew 146% year-over-year to 10.8 million unique visitors

- Imeem fell from 3.9 million unique visitors in July to 3.4 million in August. They could be one of the more impacted companies from this month’s expected launch of MySpace Music.

- Buzznet traffic fell 54% year-over-year to 1.8 million unique visitors. The company has recently made a number of acquisitions including Idolator and Qloud to bolster its audience.

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Internet traffic grows 53 per cent from mid-2007

Via the Globe and Mail

PETER SVENSSON

Associated Press

NEW YORK — International Internet traffic kept growing in the last year, but at a slower rate than before, and carriers more than kept pace by adding more capacity, a research firm said Wednesday.

The findings by TeleGeography Research are important because some U.S. Internet service providers say they are struggling with the expansion of online traffic, and are imposing monthly download limits on heavy users. The figures from TeleGeography don’t exactly correlate to average Internet usage by U.S. households, but give an indication of wider trends.

TeleGeography said traffic grew 53 per cent from mid-2007 to mid-2008, down from a growth rate of 61 per cent in the previous 12 months.

Growth on long-haul lines in the U.S. was even slower, at 47 per cent. The big increase came in regions where the Internet is less mature. Traffic between the U.S. and Latin America more than doubled.

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Pew Internet Report: Teens and Social Media (PDF)

Pew Internet Report: Teens and Social Media (PDF)

59% of teens create content online reports this study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that the next generation at least is switched on and producing content.

It’s Official: U.S. Social Networking Sites See Slow Down – Via Creative Capital

I just got a hold of the ComScore numbers for U.S. social networking sites, and it ain’t pretty folks. (See an abridged version of the chart below this post.) After peaking in October of 2007 with 71.9 million users, MySpace, the leading social network, has seen its audience fall back to around 68.9 million unique visitors. December saw no growth over November, though visitors were up 13% from last December.

More alarming are the engagement metrics. Since December 2006, when MySpace engagement peaked at about 234 minutes spent per visitor, time spent on the site has dropped consistently throughout the year. In December, time spent per visitor saw its biggest month-to-month drop, of about 8.5%, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, down from 196 minutes in November. That equates to a 24% year-over-year drop.

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Forrester: Social networking will be biggest enterprise 2.0 priority by 2013; Smaller businesses reticentForrester: Social networking will be biggest enterprise 2.0 priority by 2013; Smaller businesses reticent

Enterprise 2.0 will become a $4.6 billion industry by 2013 and social networking tools will garner the bulk of the money, according to a report by Forrester Research.

The report, released on Monday and penned by Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young, shows a few notable trends that are worth diving into. Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb first detailed the report. Here are the charts that jumped out for me.

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Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating – Tech Crunch

Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report from last month takes a big turn from previous reports – the focus is nearly 100% on social applications and how they are taking over the Internet (Yahoo apparently read it). Key takeaways:

• YouTube + Facebook page views > Google or Yahoo page views (and may be bigger than both combined)
• 6/10 top internet sites are social (youtube, live.com, facebook, hi5, wikipedia, orkut); none were on the list in 2005
• YouTube has 258 million users, 50% visit weekly or more
• >50% of Facebook users log in daily, 95% of Facebook users have used at least one third party application
• Skype revenue is $1.67/user/year, up 9% Y/Y
• 14 million photos uploaded daily on Facebook
• Google + Yahoo = 61% of U.S. Online Ad Revenue
• Google: $4.4b ad revenue in Q4, paid out $1.4 billion to partners
• Yahoo: $1.6 billion in ad revenue in Q4, paid out $429 million to partners

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Companies to spend billions on social networking: IDC

A study released this week found the market for corporate social networking nearly tripled last year, as companies try to foster communication among employees, customers and partners. Find out what IT managers should keep in mind if they’re thinking of rolling this out.

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Yankee Group Forecasts US Online Advertising Market to Reach $50 Billion by 2011

Increased Online Spending and Improved Ad Targeting Help Drive Market Growth 24% Annually

Boston, MA, January 18, 2008—Yankee Group today announced that the US online advertising market will reach $50.3 billion in revenue by 2011, more than doubling 2007’s revenue. The internet accounts for approximately 20% of overall media consumption in the US, but advertisers currently invest only 7.5% of their budget online. There is tremendous potential for marketplace growth as advertisers bridge this gap. By 2011, nearly 25% of all media consumption will be online, drawing 15% of the advertising dollars.

According to the recently published Yankee Group Research Report, The Cowboys Dance On…and On: 2007 Online Advertising Forecast, online advertising will grow rapidly in the coming year and beyond as the marketplace evolves. The factors driving this continued growth are:

• Increased online audiences
• The development of new types of advertising
• The creation of new publisher business models that help sell interactive advertising

The internet has become the proving ground for new advertising formats, which will propel new media technologies into established print and television outlets. However, despite large online audiences and growing internet media consumption, advertisers& online budgets continue to lag compared with traditional media. The challenge for digital media companies is to convert internet media into online advertising revenue. This Yankee Group Report provides insight into how to confidently select the right platforms and adapt storytelling of business opportunities for the evolving multi-platform, digitized environment.

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008 Digital Future Report – Center for the Digital Future

he Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School is pleased to present the results of the seventh year of our project, “Surveying the Digital Future.”  The seven years of longitudinal research comprise an absolutely unique data base that completely captures broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and, now, social networking.

This year’s report contains a large module looking at on-line communities and social networking in great detail. Readers can compare the social networking data and correlate it to seven years of attitudes and behaviors on-line. As usual, the report continues to track off-line media use, purchasing both off-line and through e-commerce, social and political activity and a wealth of other data.

The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School has been tracking a representative sample of the American population for over seven years, watching as people move on line and then move from modems to broadband. The project also carefully tracks those who drop off the net each year and whether they return and if so, when and what brings them back. At the end of seven years, we also have an unparalleled view of the non-users who do not go on-line. We carefully examine why they are not users and whether they are likely to ever go on-line.

The Center is committed to providing highlights of the Digital Future Report free of charge to anyone interested in tracking the ways in which technology is changing the social, political or economic fabric of our lives.  The full report, 143 pages of charts, narrative and great detail is available for purchase.

The highlights of the report are available here:
http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/2008-Digital-Future-Report-Final-Release.pdf

The full report is available for purchase as of January 17 :
http://store.digitalcenter.org

Canadian Internet Use Survey – Stats Canada

2007

Previous release

Canadians are making greater and more diverse use of the Internet, but a digital divide persists among various groups, according to new data for 2007 from the Canadian Internet Use Survey.

Almost three-quarters (73%), or 19.2 million Canadians aged 16 and older, went online for personal reasons during the 12 months prior to the survey. This was up from just over two-thirds (68%) in 2005 when the survey was last conducted.

For the first time, the survey covered young people aged 16 and 17. They accounted for almost one of the five percentage point increase in Internet use between 2005 and 2007.

Survey results showed that the digital divide, or gap in the rate of Internet use, still existed among certain groups of Canadians on the basis of income, education and age.

The survey also showed that people living in urban areas continued to be more likely to have used the Internet than those from smaller towns and rural areas. Only 65% of residents living in small towns or rural areas accessed the Internet, well below the national average, while just over three-quarters (76%) of urban residents did so. Both proportions were higher than in 2005.

Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week. On average, men were online more often and for longer periods than women.

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