New Twitter stats: 15% of online adults use Twitter, 8% do so on a typical day
We’ve got brand spanking new Twitter numbers out today! As of February 2012, overall Twitter adoption by online adults is at 15%, which has remained steady since May 2011, when overall Twitter adoption by Internet users was 13%. Notably, though, the % of online adults who use Twitter on a typical day has doubled since May 2011 and has quadrupled since late 2010—at that point just 2% of online adults used Twitter on a typical day. Now, 8% of online adults use Twitter on a typical day.
More key findings:
African-Americans continue to use Twitter at very high rates—28% of online African-Americans are Twitter adopters, and 13% use the service on a typical day.
Usage by young internet users (those 18-24 years old) increased dramatically over the last year, with nearly one in three now using Twitter.
Our data also suggests that these trends are deeply intertwined with mobile Twitter usage on smartphones. Fully 20% of smartphone owners use Twitter overall, and 16% use the service specifically on their cell phones.
The humble SMS is 20 years old… and a far more important invention than the flashier inventions that have followed it
Here’s a question: what’s bigger and far more important than Facebook? Hint: it’s very low-tech and doesn’t need a smartphone or even an internet connection. And this year marks its 20th birthday, which means that in internet time it’s 140 years old. Oh, and it doesn’t involve LOLcats either.
Got it yet? It’s SMS – text messaging to you and me. Or txt msng, if you prefer. Two-thirds of the world’s population – that’s over 4 billion people – have access to it because that’s the number of people who have mobile phones, and even the cheapest, clunkiest handset can send SMS messages. It’s had a much bigger impact on people’s lives than anything dreamed up in Silicon Valley….Continue reading at The Guardian
May 23
“The power laws that control brand leadership can be reduced to a simple formula: first mover + popularity = leadership.”
— - MARTY NEUMEIER
The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year. There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment.
During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%.
Those three buttons resulted in $144,146,165 of additional tips. Per year. Those are some very valuable buttons.
May 03
Somebody is Watching You
A recent NYTimes article titled, How to Muddy Your Tracks, speaks to the challenges we face in protecting our metadata in an increasingly digital world. In a piece we posted last year, Your digitalDNA™: Be Forewarned and be Forearmed,we coined the phrase, digitalDNA™ which refers to the mountains of metadata that we create as we continue to log on to facebook and twitter, do google searches and move “freely” around the internet.
People are becoming more aware that moving around “freely” doesn’t insulate them from sophisticated computer programs gathering information on their internet habits. The data culled from this traffic analysis can create a virtual encyclopedia of all of your steps which can be logged and later used for various reasons some of which may prove to be nefarious.
Some take the attitude that their is not much they can do, at this point, but their are adjustments one can make to their patterns in order to inject, what is often referred to in the tech world as anomalies, into ones digitalDNA™
We all adjust our habits, in the real world, so to not create a pattern that can leave us susceptible to a predator or make us the victim of a crime. We should also take steps to to protect our digitalDNA™ in the virtual world.
Their are many ways to “muddy your tracks” or poison your digitalDNA™ . Not all of the solutions are perfect but if you analyze your digital security needs you’ll be able to come up with the right combination of tools to better protect you from unwanted traffic analysis. We recommend taking a look at the Tor Project , as a good starting point and a way to begin confusing unwanted prying eyes.
How We Watch From Screen to Screen
The average American watches nearly five hours of video each day, 98 percent of which they watch on a traditional TV set, according to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, released today. Although this ratio is less than it was just a few years ago, and continues to change, the fact remains that Americans are not turning off. They are shifting to new technologies and devices that make it easier for them to watch the video they want, whenever and wherever they want.
TV is Still the Center of Viewing In the past year, the number of homes with an HDTV grew by more than 8 million to 80.2 million, leaving little doubt that the TV screen remains the dominant platform on which to consume video content. But the means by which the content is delivered appear to be shifting.
Traditional—live and timeshifted—TV viewing remains the primary role of the TV, accounting for more than 33 hours per week despite a decline one half of one percent in time spent compared to Q4 2010. To fill the gap, consumers are finding new ways to use their TVs.
Game Consoles Now in Nearly Half of TV Homes Consoles have become strategically positioned as a secondary gateway to TV content, and can now be found in 45 percent of TV homes, an increase of three percent over last year. With Netflix and other streaming apps, Blu-ray players, social gaming and point of purchase seamlessly integrated into game consoles, it is no surprise that consumers are relying on their consoles to perform double (and triple) duty. These new activities are adding up and contributing to the growth of content consumption. Interestingly, households without children are leading the way in new game console adoption, demonstrating that game consoles are appealing to a range of audiences for a variety of purposes.
Mobile Viewership Small but Growing With improving screens, Internet connectivity and the advantage of being “the best screen available” while on the go, smartphones are increasingly becoming portable TVs. In fact, 33.5 million mobile phone owners now watch video on their phones—an increase of 35.7 percent since last year. While mobile phones won’t replace other screens anytime soon, they are part of the ever-increasing number of ways in which consumers consume content.
Apr 30
Apps Used to Report Community Issues in Arizona
More Valley cities are using mobile technology to enable residents to report neighborhood issues like overgrown weeds or barking dogs, but critics say the smartphone applications could foster distrust and suspicion as ordinary citizens become the eyes and ears of local government.
The increasingly popular “citizen reporter” apps make it easier for officials to resolve public-property issues, such as graffiti and potholes, but many communities have expanded the technology to include more personal violations, including unsanctioned yard sales or even expired vehicle tags.
Nick Dranias, constitutional policy director for the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, said the apps encourage people to “surreptitiously report on their neighbors.”
Apr 19
Microsoft Contemplates A Web Based Skype
It looks like Microsoft is ready to let people use Skype through Web apps, not just native apps.
Microsoft is hiring staff “to help us bring Skype experience on to the Web,” a move that could help people use the Internet-based video and audio chat service more broadly.
Skype’s VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service today requires a native app to run on various operating systems. A browser-based version, though, could bring the service to OSes that aren’t supported, such as Google’s Chrome OS; make it easier for people to use Skype on a machine for which they don’t have installation privileges; and potentially integrate with other Web-based services.
Microsoft revealed the project through recent jobads.
21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them.
One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks.1 In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.
The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone.
Download the full Pew Internet Research report here
