Pinteresting
Shareaholic: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube, LinkedIn combined; http://eicker.at/Pinteresting
Shareaholic: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube, LinkedIn combined; http://eicker.at/Pinteresting
Pew: 52% of adult cell phone owners make their in-store decisions mobile, 19% purchase online; http://eicker.at/MobileCommerce
Pew: “More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions. During a 30 day period before and after Christmas: 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making, 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store, 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else… Taken together, just over half (52%) of all adult cell owners used their phone for at least one of these three reasons over the holiday shopping season and one third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store – either product reviews or pricing information.”
Pew: “There are a number of demographic patterns in these survey findings. Specifically: Cell owners ages 18-49 are significantly more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than are cell owners ages 50 and older. Cell owners ages 65 and older are especially unlikely to do this-just 4% did so this holiday season. Urban and suburban cell owners are roughly twice as likely as rural cell owners to have recently used their phone to look up online reviews of a product they found in a physical store. Non-white cell owners are more likely than white cell owners to look up online product reviews, and those who have attended college are more likely to do so than those who have not. … Online price matching and looking up online reviews frequently go hand in hand. Overall, of the 33% of cell owners who used their phone recently in a store to look up either product reviews or prices online, roughly half (representing 17% of all cell owners) used their phones to engage in both of these activities. … One in five ‘mobile price matchers’ ultimately made their most recent purchase from an online store, rather than a physical location – When asked what happened on the most recent occasion where they used their phone to look up the price online of a product they found in a store, these mobile price matchers point to a range of outcomes: 37% decided to not purchase the product at all, 35% purchased the product at that store, 19% purchased the product online, 8% purchased the product at another store”
GigaOM: “This last piece of data shows the challenge for retailers, who lost about 5 percent of transactions that began with online price research, even though they have the customer in-store. That’s something that retailers have been increasingly sensitive about, especially with promotions like Amazon’s holiday offer to knock off $5 from certain products if users checked prices through Amazon. But the data also show how retailers can fight back. They obviously need to be aware of prices online, and they may look at ways to lower prices or match online prices in-store to remain competitive. … The challenge is still considerable for retailers of all sizes. Having consumers walk in with connected computers in their pocket means many of them can find a potentially better deal online or in another store. But retailers should be thinking about how to satisfy their customers’ shifting buying patterns. … It’s definitely going to be harder for physical retailers in this new mobile-enhanced shopping era but there’s still ways to compete as buyers get a lot smarter.”
RWW: “The strategy revolves around having a strong mobile Web presence. That does not necessarily mean an actual native app. If you are in a retail store researching with your phone and you Google the product, the retail store should be one of the first results. With the location abilities of smartphones, the search could even tell you what store or neighborhood you are actually in. The retailer could then be able to offer a deal or an incentive to buy and offer to complete the transaction through the device. The mobile Web app could hook into your mobile wallet and bill you directly or instruct the consumer to see the cashier where payment could be made by either near field communications (NFC) or by scanning a QR code. The idea is to control both the research and the transaction. Channel the consumer to your product.“
Google: Plus now has 90 million users globally. – Stats indicate it’s a bunch of Sleepers; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusSleepers
Google: “‘Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year. Full year revenue was up 29%, and our quarterly revenue blew past the $10 billion mark for the first time,’ said Larry Page, CEO of Google. ‘I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.'”
Batelle: “You getting that? The lead quote had to do with Google+, pretty much, not the company’s earnings, which ended up being a miss (Google is blaming fluctuations in foreign currency for much of that, and I have no idea whether that’s true, false, or silly). – But here’s my question: When is Google going to release actual engagement numbers for Google+? Because in the end, that’s all that really matters. … But can you get those folks to engage, deeply? That’d be a real win, and one I’d give full credit to Google for executing. After all, it’s one thing to get the horse to water…another to have it pull up a chair and share a few stories with friends. … Er….so you’re saying the folks who use Google+ use *Google* a lot. That’s not surprising – most of them came to Google+ because they were already using Google a lot. But what about minutes per month using Google+? I’m guessing if Google had good news on that particular front, they’d be trumpeting it in a more direct fashion.”
TC: “Does Google+ Really Have 60% Daily Engagement? Probably Not – Google+ has lots of skeptics out there (and I’ll go on the record that I’m not one of them and actually really like the product). This kind of stuff just isn’t helping it to win those skeptics over. When it comes to user numbers, saying ‘we have 90 million users’ doesn’t mean much. What matters is daily engagement. Lots of apps claim they have a million downloads on iOS, for example, but that doesn’t mean they have a million active users (or even 10,000 for all we know). Google would really help itself here if it clarified these numbers but the company would prefer to keep things vague instead, it seems.”
ATD: “I tried all sorts of nice ways to persuade Google spokespeople to clarify what exactly that means in terms of active users of the Google+ service. They told me that the text of Page’s remarks and an accompanying post by Google’s head of social, Vic Gundotra, spell it out exactly. – That is to say: Over 60 percent of Google+ users use Google products on a daily basis. Over 80 percent of Google+ users use Google products every week. … The unspoken reference here is that Facebook has said for years that half of its active user count is composed of people who log in on a daily basis. (I can’t remember a time when Facebook ever gave out a registered user count. Those hundreds of millions of people you hear them talk about all log in at least once a month.) – So nope, no apples to apples to see here.“
Allen: Google Plus passes 62 million users, adds 625K new per day. 400M by end of 2012; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusStats
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.“
Hitwise: Google Plus market share at 0.084% (visits) – Allen: 50 millionen users soon; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusMarketShare
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.”
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!”
Hitwise: The Times paywall results in a steep loss of market share, traffic already (no payment yet); http://j.mp/c5r2cx
Hitwise: “Following months of speculation, News International has finally erected a paywall around the Times newspaper website. After a couple of weeks running two sites, (http://www.timesonline.co.uk and http://www.thetimes.co.uk) in parallel, visitors to the former site are now automatically redirected to the latter. Since last Tuesday, users have had to register to read content on the Times website (as well the separate Sunday Times site). However, they don’t yet have to pay: during the trial period, which is expected to last until the end of the month, simply having registered is enough to access the content behind the paywall. … So, its still early days, but the conclusion so far seems to be this: since it forced users to register in order to view its content, the Times has lost market share. However, this decline has clearly not been catastrophic and none of the paper’s rivals has particularly benefitted. Yet. The real test will come when people actually have to pay rather than simply register to view the Times’ content.“
Gerrit Eicker 16:30 on 1. February 2012 Permalink |
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.”