Proprietary Virtual Worlds: Risk Constraining Innovation
Proprietary virtual worlds have sparked initial growth but risk constraining innovation; http://eicker.at/MetaverseResearch
Tagged: Growth Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Display Ads: Strong Growth
Display ads will continue to see strong growth, thanks to the healthy appetite for banner ads; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2012
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Gerrit Eicker
Pinteresting
Shareaholic: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube, LinkedIn combined; http://eicker.at/Pinteresting
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Stats
Allen: Google Plus passes 62 million users, adds 625K new per day. 400M by end of 2012; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusStats
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Gerrit Eicker
Allen: “Google+ Growth Accelerating. Passes 62 million users. Adding 625,000 new users per day. Prediction: 400 million users by end of 2012. – Google+ is adding new users at a very rapid pace. It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors, but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks. – Each week my team from elance runs hundreds of queries on various surnames which we have been tracking since July. We revised our model based on the actual user announcements made by Google on July 13th and Oct 13th. … If this rate of new signups (625k daily) continues then Google+ will reach 100 million users on Feb. 25th and 200 million users on August 3. They will finish 2012 with 293 million users. – I expect the growth to continue to accelerate however. Google can continue to integrate Google+ into its other products and word of mouth will continue to build. … Based on the accelerated growth I’m seeing and all the dials and levers Google can still utilize, and the developer ecosystem that will be developed, I predict that 2012 is going to be a breakout year for Google+ and that it will end next year with more than 400 million users.”
TC: “Google+ now has more than 62 million users, according to Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder and unofficial traffic analyst for Google’s social network. That’s not 62 million active users, though – a point that everyone covering these numbers seems to have missed. It’s just the number of total users. And specifically, it’s the number of new surnames that Allen’s team has tracked being created on the service. – Because Google has aggressively integrated G+ into many other properties, including its top navigation bar and the OneBox, one would expect a certain baseline amount of sign-ups from among the hundreds of millions of people using other Google products. … But there’s support out there for Allen’s latest numbers, from someone trying to answer the usage question. Last week, comScore told us that G+ had grown to 67 million monthly unique visitors in November, up 2 million from October. That’s significantly more than the 50 million total users that Allen reported at the end of the month. … Allen’s big conclusion, based on the most recent growth increases, is that the service could reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. If that turns out to be the case, I’m sure active usage will also be increasing. But the question remains the same: how many G+ users stay active?”
VB: “For a social network that was invite-only until July 2011, those numbers are not bad. However, Google+ has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to Facebook’s 800 million users. … A Google spokesperson told VentureBeat that the company does not ‘have any additional metrics to provide based on Paul Allen’s estimates,’ but that more than 40 million people have signed up for the social network. That number comes from Google’s latest earnings call which took place on October 13. … In an attempt to garner more attention, Google+ rolled out a new ad campaign over the holiday season. The ads featured NBA annoucers and the Muppets to highlight Hangouts and other cool features of the social network. Perhaps the ads were enough to remind people that yes, Google+ does still exist and help it nab those 12 million extra users for December.”
TC: “For Google+, User Count Is A Journey Not A Race – That’s a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its ‘invite only’ launch strategy saw all its disconnect users flailing independently. But in the long run that might not matter much, because Google+ doesn’t need a critical mass or tons of engagement. It needs signups so it can get its identity layer under users of its other products. That way it can turn everyone’s searches, mapping, email, and more into fuel for its ad targeting engine. … With enough cajoling, users are registering even if their social network needs are already being met by Facebook and Twitter. – Google may never beat those services in terms of engagement with a content stream. … If it takes Google 4 years to start catching up to Facebook in terms of user count, so be it. The company has plenty of money to burn so it can take this long-term approach. What matters isn’t when, but if if it can eventually grow its registration base large enough for Google+ to produce ROI.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora Growth
Diaspora just hit a quarter of a million Diaspora Seeds on the developers’ Diaspora Pod alone; http://eicker.at/DiasporaGrowth
Gerrit Eicker
Diaspora #NewHere
Joined Diaspora 3 months ago (#62659). Now there are more than 150,000 saying: #NewHere Join! http://eicker.at/DiasporaNewHere
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Gerrit Eicker
Some ‘historical’ Diaspora posts here on Wir sprechen Online:
- Diaspora rockets on Kickstarter, 15.05.2010
- Diaspora gets funded with $200K, 03.06.2010
- Diaspora’s first month and first progress, 04.07.2010
- Diaspora works! 27.08.2010
- Diaspora Alpha, the developer release, 16.09.2010
- Joindiaspora.com opens its doors in private alpha, 24.11.2010
- Diaspora summary, 20.07.2011
- Diaspora’s First Year, 18.09.2011
- Social Freedom, 29.09.2011
- Diaspora Communications, 02.10.2011
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Market Share
Hitwise: Google Plus market share at 0.084% (visits) – Allen: 50 millionen users soon; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusMarketShare
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Gerrit Eicker
Hitwise: “Google+ emerged as the third largest site in the Social Network and Forums category last Wednesday, a day after the site went from ‘invitation-only’ to ‘open access’ available to everyone. – Opening access created a massive spike in market share of visits for the site, with a 1269% growth from the week ending September 17th to the week of September 24th. The site also received nearly 15 million total US visits last week. … In just one week, Google+ went from ranking as 54th most visited site in our Social Networking and Forums category to 8th place. … In comparison to the online population, Google + continued to over-index for and win a high share of its visits from Mosaic USA 2011 Types which contain ‘Influencers’, ‘Early Adopters’ and the internet-savvy, like ‘Bohemian Groove’, ‘Gotham Blend’ and ‘Progressive Potpourri’; this indicates that ‘Early Adopters’ still account for a large share of Google+’s traffic.”
Allen: “Google+ Reaches 50 Million User Mark in About 88 Days – Until a few months ago, there was widespread skepticism in the tech and investor community about Google’s ability to ‘get social.’ … But yesterday (give or take a few days) Google+ likely crossed the 50 million user mark. … None of this is necessarily bad news for Facebook. Competition can make companies much better. Facebook has improved its functionality in the past few weeks by implementing changes inspired by Google+… Competition is great. Even though they have been fiercely competing for decades, Apple is worth $367 billion and Microsoft is worth $209 billion. … My model is going to break in the next couple of months as more and more of my rare surnames end up with more than 1,000 Google+ users, which is the maximum number of hits I am able to count for any given surname query. At that point, I have some ideas about how to work with a group of even more rare surnames, but my accuracy will probably be affected.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Growth
Google Plus is joined by millions of new users since its opening, according to Paul Allen; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusGrowth
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Gerrit Eicker
Allen: “My team just completed a new round of counting Google+ users by surname. And I have updated my model. Our sampling of 400 uncommon surnames in the U.S. also reflects usage in many other countries, since the list of 400 includes names that are popular in India, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, and many other countries. … On September 9, our model showed 28.7 million users – This morning, our model shows 37.8 million users, with most of the growth coming in the last 2 days – By adding a fudge factor (see below) to account for private user profiles and for non-Roman surnames (both of which are totally overlooked by our surname counting model), my current estimate is 43.4 million users … My earlier model… which proved to be very accurate in the first 2-3 weeks, did not address either private profiles or non-Roman alphabet. According to FindPeopleOnPlus.com, there are substantial numbers of users from countries like Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, and many other countries, which my surname counting approach does not include. So I have decided to add a 5% privacy fudge factor and a 10% non-Roman alphabet fudge factor in my Google+ model. I’ll need to develop a way to actually calculate those percentages somehow, rather than just guess on them.”
SEL: “A Google+ post by Paul Allen, founder of ancestry.com and a self-proclaimed ‘unofficial Google+ statistician’, shows significant growth of Google’s social network since opening to the public. These growth rates were only first seen during the first few weeks of field testing when the user numbers were very low. In terms of the current growth spurt Allen states: ‘it is clear that Google+ is absolutely exploding – 30% growth in just 2 days and with a base of nearly 30 million members already.’ … So what does this mean? Google+ may be cementing themselves as a credible social network, but the mass exodus from Facebook just isn’t happening.”
eWeek: “Facebook now has 800 million users. Grumble as they might at the privacy and UI changes Facebook makes every few months, the users that comprise the vast social network stick around. – That’s user engagement, and by extension social advertising opportunities, Google can only aspire to at this stage.”
UG: “With Facebook’s recent introduction of the Timeline profile, the two networks are going to be quite different from one other – which is a good thing in my opinion. After all why would anybody want to use two of the same thing? Google is keeping it simple and minimalistic, while Facebook seems to be going in the opposite direction by letting users add even more about themselves on the network. Both services have their merits, so I guess we’ll continue to see users using Facebook and Google+ instead of completely migrating to one.“
Gerrit Eicker
Software
Andreessen: Software is eating the world – virtually and in the physical world; http://eicker.at/Software
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Gerrit Eicker
Andreessen: “This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I’ve observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market. – In short, software is eating the world. … Why is this happening now? … Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day. … Software is also eating much of the value chain of industries that are widely viewed as primarily existing in the physical world. … Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. This includes even industries that are software-based today. … Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let’s seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what the broader consequences are for businesses and the economy and what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U.S. and around the world.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Adoption
Allen: I project [surname-based analysis] that Google [Plus] will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusAdoption
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Gerrit Eicker
Allen: “In brief, here is my model: The surname Cooke is the #996 most popular surname in the US. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 29844 Cookes in the US. I found 74 Cookes on Google+ so far. That would be .002479% of the total Cookes in the US. Taking the official current US population estimate of 311,677,540 and multiplying it by .00002479, you get 772,823 Google+ users, if all other surnames had the same distribution in the US as they do on Google+.”
Allen: “Today I squeezed in enough time before and after our local parade, and before our Fourth of July picnic to update my model and do a much better analysis. I increased the sample size from 50 surnames to 79 (I would have done 100 but ran out of time), and I split out users from the US and from outside the US. I had to look at hundreds of profiles to determine US vs. non-US.”
Allen: “My surname-based analysis shows that the number of Google+ users worldwide reached 7.3 million yesterday (July 10) – up from 1.7 million users on July 4th. That is a 350% increase in six days. The userbase is growing so quickly that it is challenging for me to keep up, since the number of users of any given surname (even the rare ones I am tracking) seems to be climbing every day. – More impressive than last week’s growth is the astonishing growth in users from yesterday at mid-day to tonight – a 30% jump. My latest estimate tonight shows approximately 9.5 million users. This suggests that 2.2 million people have joined Google+ in the past 32-34 hours. – I project that Google will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow and could reach 20 million user by this coming weekend if they keep the Invite Button available. As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Allen (in a comment): “My company is running a large survey of Facebook users (we have access to millions of Facebook users through our Facebook apps and fan pages) and I’ll be posting the results tomorrow. Facebook investors and employees will be very happy to see that the vast majority of their active users are happy at Facebook, and most of them haven’t even heard of Google+ yet. So even though Google’s growth is staggering, there is a huge loyal Facebook following who may not see a need to switch. That’s why I characterize this as a 15-round heavyweight bout. The fight is not going to be over anytime soon.”
RWW: “Google Plus’s estimated 20 million also pales in comparison to Facebook’s 750 million, half of which still log on to Facebook any given day. Google Plus, meanwhile, is seeing a lot of engagement too, but it’s still the new shiny toy of the Internet digerati, who often glom onto and obsess over the latest hip service until an even hipper one comes around. – But Google knows it needs to make Google Plus a regular habit once the new car smell wears off. According to Mark Striebeck, Google’s Engineering Manager for Gmail, the company is planning to integrate the service into Gmail (and wants your ideas for that). While Google’s previous attempt at merging social with Gmail (i.e. Google Buzz) was essentially a failure, Gmail could still serve as a large built-in user base for the emerging social network, assuming the integrations are thoughtful, useful and capable of enhancing the core Gmail offering itself. … Current estimates put the Gmail user base at around 200 million. Although not all Gmail users will join Google Plus, it’s a large, captive market for Google to get its hooks in.”
VB: “Since the data was obtained by a third-party source, it isn’t an official count of Google+ users. The company hasn’t released any public metrics around the number of people who have signed up for Google+. A Google spokesperson declined to comment about the accuracy of Allen’s information. – However, if the information is accurate, it means Google+ is one of the fastest-growing social networks, ever.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Larry Page: “Google+ is still only in field trial with limited access as we scale the system – Users have to be invited, sign up with a profile in order to use it – However, the growth on Google+ has been great–and I’m excited to release some new metrics for you today – Over 10M people have joined Google+ – Great achievement for the team – There’s also a ton of activity – We are seeing over 1 billion items shared and received in a single day – Our +1 button is already all over the web – It’s being served 2.3 billion times a day – So while we have a lot of work still to do, we are really excited about our progress with Google+ – Google+ is also a great example of another focus of mine – beautiful products that are simple and intuitive to use and was actually was one of the first products to contain our new visual redesign.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Allen: “The viral growth of Google+ has slowed somewhat over the past few days, but my new-and-improved 1,000 surname model shows that more than 750,000 people joined the site on Monday, bringing the total user base to just under 18 million. … Google hasn’t started marketing Google+ through any of its other channels yet. More than a billion people worldwide use Google products, including its top rated search engine, YouTube, and Blogger. Chairman Eric Schmidt says the vision is to integrate Circles and sharing with all the other Google properties. When that happens, you will likely see millions of people joining Google+ every day for some period of time.”
Shareaholic: “Welcome to Shareaholic’s Referral Traffic Report. According to our findings based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. … Pinterest grew from 2.5% of referral traffic in December to 3.6% of the referrals in January. That’s impressive growth from just owning .17% of the traffic back in July. … Referral traffic from Google+ dropped slightly in January, although Google’s product set (Google news, Google images, Gmail) continues to be a top referral source. Google continues to integrate Google+ into its offering more and more, so it will be an interesting trend to watch. … Eyeing its IPO this week, Facebook continues to dominate referral traffic, with mobile traffic alone accounting for 4.3% of overall referrals. Referral traffic grew by about 1% in January, making it the second fastest-growing site for referral traffic after Pinterest.”
GigaOM: “Not surprisingly, Facebook is holding steady at the top of Shareaholic’s survey, as it was responsible for more than a quarter of all referral traffic in January. Next in line was StumbleUpon, with 5.07 percent. It bears mention that while the Shareaholic survey is global, in the United States market alone StumbleUpon has in the past unseated Facebook as a top driver of referral traffic. – It’s exciting to see a relative newcomer growing so quickly in the web space. While the web’s more established companies are quite powerful these days, the fact that a startup like Pinterest has successfully established its own foothold shows that the competitive landscape is still alive and mainstream users are open to trying things from new players.”
Solis: “Many consumer brands are also experimenting with Pinterest, using pinboards to present complementary products, ideas, and imagery to inspire consumers to visualize and remix new possibilities. From fashion to interior design and home to retail to entertainment, brands are using Pinterest to thoughtfully assemble a curated lifestyle. And, they’re packaged for the social and mobile web and optimized for driving actions as part Facebook’s new frictionless sharing ecosystem.”
RWW: “Among many Pinterest users, as well as several artists who have had work pinned on the site, a code for giving proper credit is developing. Artist Laura C. George said Pinterest has no way of knowing if links tied to images link back to the original artists’ Web site, but so far Pinterest users have been better about giving credit than Tumblr.”