The jobless rate for people like me

How big is Windows Live Messenger worldwide? Really Big

via feedproxy.google.com

In a press release issued today, comScore breaks down the time spent online globally by properties, with Microsoft sites leading the way with nearly 15 percent of all time spent online (out of some 27 billion hours per month!):

comscoretimeonlineHowever in an interesting little sidelight, comScore reveals that “Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger representing nearly 70 percent of time spent on the property during the month”:

In September 2009, nearly 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet globally by a record online population of 1.2 billion Internet users age 15 and older. Microsoft Sites accounted for 14.5 percent of total minutes spent online in September, making it the most engaging global property, with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger representing nearly 70 percent of time spent on the property during the month. Google Sites captured 9.3 percent of total minutes (2.5 billion hours), with YouTube accounting for nearly half of total time spent (1.2 billion hours) at the property. Yahoo! Sites ranked as the third most engaging Web property at 1.7 billion hours, followed by Facebook.com at 1.4 billion hours. Facebook’s share of attention reached 5.1 percent in September, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from the previous year, as its continued growth in popularity precipitated this surge in share.

So a little quick math, and 70% of 3,92 billion gives Windows Live Messenger some 2,744 billion hours of time spent online worldwide in a month: that’s more than all time spend online on Google, or Yahoo, or Facebook sites, wow!

For those of us in the US this may come as quite a surprise, as Messenger is not quite as popular as it is elsewhere, but looking at the comScore breakdown of numbers by region you can see where Microsoft (and Messenger) are most popular:

Moms More Influenced Offline, While Kids Are Online

Two new studies point to a growing divide in how moms and kids communicate and are influenced...

First up, Nielsen/Pete Blackshaw's Pocket Guide to Social Media and Kids:

"In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call."

"A study due out next week from the Parenting Group found that while moms are avid web and social-media users, they still turn to family and friends first, whether by phone, e-mail or in-person, when making decisions about product purchases."

More in the images below.

Developers, don't panic! Not 80% of iPhone apps are sucking

Wow! we did not anticipate that our distribution graph would generate such a huge echo on the media and blogosphere - from ReadWriteWeb to PCWorld. We felt compelled to follow up with some thoughts.

We'd like to bring some clarity on the confusion that our data has spread over many blog readers out there

• The 80%/20% rule is pretty universal to start with, and it’s no surprise to find it here again
• 80% does NOT correspond to the number of apps that are not downloaded, but rather corresponds to the number of apps either not downloaded nor kept on the iPhone (eg i download something and uninstalled it). The difference is important (although we suspect not huge in %)
• It does not mean 80% of the apps are Crapps (self expression), or unused (we don t measure usage) it means that most of the apps are not found. 
• Does that mean you can't make a buck by being in the long tail? No. For example we have discovered that with the right pricing some apps with a few thousands install can make some very nice money. It depends what your ambition is, and how useful your app is
• Because it will always come down to that: a useless app has indeed very little chance to make it. And in those 80% there are some. let's not be blind. Users can spot them and sanction them
• Useful yet poorly marketed apps will also fail : wrong pricing, wrong merchandising, wrong promotion, wrong pre-appstore teasing....
• Timeline: we don't have the data and maybe other app analytics company (or Apple) could help with that, but in those 80% some apps have been launched and either not updated, or simply discontinued. We're not sure which part of the cake we're talking about, but definitely some apps are counted in cumulated and should not be included. Let’s not forget that a bunch of pre-3.0 apps no longer work on most devices; apps that were already in the long tail in the 2.x days have sank deeper by now.
• Actually what really matters is the number of apps that are actively maintained. It is definitely NOT 100k
• Our sample is composed of a few thousands users: yes we are a young service, and yes our sample is biased. We fully disclose that fact. But bear in mind that most if not all iPhone research that are published out there are based on similar if not smaller sample size that are extrapolated. Here we save the extrapolation because we give you 100% real data of what is actually installed on people's iPhone. (and not the apps that are sitting idle in the iTunes library)
• We count on the intelligence and sense of judgement from readers and bloggers to understand the context of that data. Like we said in a comment to one of our reader: what matters is not so much the data at a precise moment, but the trend over time. 
• This is why we 'll publish regularly an update of this data set so we'll see how right,or wrong we were.
• Btw the graph looks a bit different if you double click on it by category. We'll release soon data going in that direction.
• Our observation is that as we grow and progress it is harder to detect new apps installed and we are confident that the 20/80 rule will apply in the future
• What matter is the rotation of those 20k. It is easy to understand how this will change over time. New great apps will come and replace some others.

Bottom Line: While a few posts using our data conclude that it is not worth trying your way in the app store, we believe this is precisely the opposite. In fact, more than ever, there is a growing need for great if not awesome apps. Plenty of room there! As far as we are concerned, there is a massive potential to re establish some equilibrium with the way people find and install apps (worth having). A few startups and big companies are currently working on solving that issue. 

AppsFire is one of them.

flickr stats

YouTube now showing selected video stats to all users (even if they didn't upload the video)

So far you could only see stats for videos you uploaded yourself but now there's an additional tab underneath some YouTube videos that allows everyone to see a select set of data (example video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jlacP_LcXc).

PR Pros on Press Releases - Meh

Who does the most social media? Some data. Maybe.

I keep hearing how great Birmingham is at blogging and social media. That's a subjective thing and anyone can say it but I also keep hearing people saying or suggesting we do it the best, we do it the most, and that we're at the centre of it. That's a bit more problematic and I keep saying we need data.

Jason Navon tweeted me about this:

@jonhickman re claim the we do more social media in Brum - evidence in this report doesn't support it: http://bit.ly/1U4e4L #bigdebate

I've only skimmed the report so far (embedded below from scribd), but I'm sure some keen eyes will have concerns over the overall design of their survey and will want to ask what measures are being used to determine if a blog "is highly regarded by other, relevant influential sites". Scholars of network theory might like to ask if the personal networks of the London-based authors lead to a skew of influence to London. We might be concerned too about unevidenced assertions such as:

Consumers who originally used forums and chatrooms as discussion shops in the early days of online communities have graduated seamlessly to writing or consuming blogs on issues close to their hearts (p.6)

I'm pretty sure I've read literature and seen conference papers that suggest the forum is alive and well, so this doesn't make sense. If there's some evidence I'd love to see it. We might also wonder what the value is of a stat such as "London has the highest share of Twitter users in
the UK with 11%". What does that mean relative to city size?

Inevitably my main concerns about the whole thing will be about not the data, but the discourse. This is written from a marketing and communications position, and is measuring things relevant to that audience. That is fine, but it is presented as empircal and conclusive data about social media. In fact it's an interesting attempt to explain the blogging ecosystem for predominantly London based PR and marketing organisations. It's done that job pretty well, so it should be pleased with itself. It shouldn't pretend to be something else.

I still need to get my data.

Social Media Insight 2009 Low-res

(obtained from http://socialmedialibrary.co.uk/index.php?option=com_report_left&Itemid=57 - there is no copyright notice on the document so Im assuming it's OK to embed)

The appDiction is officially confirmed

via blog.flurry.com

We warned you :)

26 Millionen Deutsche sind in sozialen Netzwerken

via klauseck.posterous.com