Real-time search startups blow away Google, Yahoo, and Bing at SMX West

This week at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West in Santa Clara, I sat in on two panels on realtime search: one with representatives from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and the other with four real-time search startups: Collecta, CrowdEye, OneRiot, and Topsy. It was readily apparent that real-time search is a very different problem to solve if you’re a major search engine than if you’re a start-up focusing on ways for users to get value out … Continue Reading

Android and RIM eat into Apple's share of mobile web

Data just released from web analytics firm Quantcast show that Android’s share of North American mobile web consumption was up 8.3% from January 2010, to 15.2% of total mobile web consumption for the month of February. Apple’s iPhone OS share, which so far has seemed untouchable, dropped 3.2% from January to February 2010, while the share for RIM OS (Blackberry) grew 13.2% in that period, to 9.2%.

What we don’t know is how much of … Continue Reading

OS X share up 29% in past year, slowly chipping away at Microsoft

Web measurement company Quantcast recently began publishing stats on operating system browser share from its sample of quantified publishers. Data shows that in January 2010, Microsoft Windows accounted for 86.8% share of North American web consumption, Apple OS X accounted for 10.9%, and mobile browsers accounted for 1.3%.

Apple’s relative share has grown by 29.4% in the past year, while Windows lost 3.8%. Mobile increased the most in the past year, more than doubling its … Continue Reading

Twitter traffic up 9% after Google real-time search launch

After the launch of Google’s real-time search, in December, I predicted that Twitter would get a boost in traffic after declining visitor counts since peaking during the summer of 2009.

Looks like I was right.

ComScore data show the number of unique visitors to Twitter increased by 9 percent from December 2009 to January 2010. The 21.79 million unique Twitter visitors in January was an all-time high, just over the 21.25 million visitors that comScore … Continue Reading

54% of US Internet users on Facebook, 27% on MySpace

December 2009 data from comScore puts Facebook’s unique US visitor count at nearly 112 million. With a total estimated US Internet population of 205 million, that means that 54% of all Internet users are on Facebook. MySpace captured a still strong 57 million users in December — 27% of the Internet population.

Social Networking by the Numbers, a study I conducted using comScore and Experian Hitwise data from December 2009, details US data on visitor … Continue Reading

Is Facebook becoming a portal? Now 4th largest source of traffic to news sites

New data from Experian Hitwise suggests that Facebook users are treating it increasingly like a portal — they’re using it as a source of news. Just under a year ago, less than 0.5% of visits to news and media sites came from Facebook, according to Experian Hitwise. Last week, 3.5% of visits to sites in the news and media category came from Facebook.

The only sites sending more traffic to news and media sites were … Continue Reading

AOL ranks as 5th most popular mobile internet brand

Media information company Nielsen has released new data on the top 10 mobile internet sites and brands. It shows that, to a large extent, mobile internet usage mirrors total internet use, with Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft among the most visited mobile brands. Surprisingly, the AOL network ranked fifth in terms of traffic.

Nielsen estimated from its mobile sample that in December 2009 the total mobile internet audience was 62 million. Over half of mobile … Continue Reading

MySpace now smaller than Facebook was a year ago

December data released by Nielsen examines year-over-year trends in unique visitor counts and time spent on social networking sites in the United States and around the world, including Facebook and Myspace.  US time spent on social networks increased faster than the average global increase of 82%, with the average US user spending 143% more time on social nets than last year.

Facebook, not surprisingly, was accountable for much of the increased social network usage in … Continue Reading

Revenue from mobile apps set to quadruple from 2010 to 2013

According to a new report from Gartner, worldwide revenue from mobile applications will total $6.8 billion in 2010, an increase of 60% over the $4.2 billion spent in 2009. Growth in revenue from mobile apps can be expected to continue at a rapid rate, as more consumers purchase smartphones and more apps become available. Gartner predicts that in 2013, 21.6 billion apps will be downloaded, generating nearly $30 billion in revenue — more than a … Continue Reading

Will The New York Times meter kill traffic from social media?

The New York Times just announced that it will begin charging frequent visitors a flat fee for full access to the site in early 2011. Non-paying visitors will be allowed to view a certain number of articles per month.

The New York Times is the leading print newspaper website according to Experian Hitwise, and accounted for nearly 15% of visits to all newspaper sites for the week ending January 16, 2010. But visits have been … Continue Reading

Nexus One beat iPhone in search volume during launch week — will the hype last?

Lasts week’s launch of Nexus One, Google’s Android phone, left smartphone users everywhere debating whether they should ditch their current phone and make the switch. According to weekly search data from Experian Hitwise, the volume of searches for “nexus one” outnumbered searches for “iphone” by more than 2:1 for the week ending January 10, 2010. The term “google phone” also experienced a significant spike in traffic, also beating out “iphone” for the week.

But will … Continue Reading

Millions of 3-D displays on the way — but what will we watch on them?

By some accounts, 3-D technology has been one of the biggest stories of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (taking place this week in Las Vegas). Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, and Sony have all launched 3-D televisions at the show, and the success of 3-D movie “Avatar” is setting the stage for what will likely be the biggest revival of 3-D filmmaking since its “golden age” in the 1950s. 3-D may even be coming to your … Continue Reading

Online holiday spending for '09 almost $30 billion, up 4%

ComScore released its holiday online shopping data today, showing that U.S. consumers spent $29.1 billion online, excluding travel, during the November-December holiday shopping period. Spending was up 4 percent over 2008, which exceeded comScore’s prediction of 3 percent.

A day-by-day comparison of online retail spending showed that in 2009, Dec. 15 was the heaviest spending day of both the year, and of all time, at $913 million, up 21 percent from the corresponding day in … Continue Reading

Android and iPhone users are the most active mobile shoppers

According to Compete’s Q3 2009 Smartphone Intelligence Survey of nearly 2,000 smartphone owners, 37% purchased something non-mobile with their handset in the past 6 months. While that’s still far from a majority, the study found that at least 68% of smartphone users conduct some mobile shopping activity, such as looking for reviews, shipping information, or store coupons.

The study found that iPhone and Android users were the most likely to conduct shopping related activities. Over … Continue Reading

Microsoft is most-mentioned brand online in 2009, Google ranks second

According to a study just released by online marketing agency Zeta Interactive, Microsoft was the most-mentioned brand in an analysis of online posts on Facebook, Twitter and blogs in 2009, with 4% more post volume than #2 Google.

Microsoft’s wide array of industry-leading software, hardware, development tools and online products, along with two major product releases — Windows 7 and Bing — gave it a bigger online buzz footprint than Google, whose many product forays … Continue Reading

Will Google's real-time search help Twitter?

Google is beginning to roll out real-time search results, which will include Twitter updates, along with updates from Friendfeed, blogs, and other social media sites. This could mean Twitter’s floundering traffic over the past few months is in for a rebound. Why?

First, breaking news stories generate a lot of searches, and Twitter stands to gain at least a small share of clicks resulting from those searches. Google Zeitgeist 2009 showed some of the newsworthy … Continue Reading

Twitter's stalled growth could spell bad news for Twitter ecosystem

October numbers are in, and Comscore, Compete, Google, and Quantcast all agree: US traffic to Twitter.com reached a peak in July or August and has begun to decline slowly.

According to Comscore, October 2009 traffic was down 8% from from September 2009, while Compete shows a more modest decline of 2.1%. Still, on a year-over year basis, US Twitter visitor counts are up 1,271% according to Comscore, and 578% according to Compete.

Twitter’s phenomenal growth … Continue Reading