The latest from TechCrunch
- O Canada! World's Most Web Connected Land
- So Much For FREE!: Apple Will Sell $2B in Apps in 2011
- Begun The Talent Wars Have – How Twitter's London HQ Could Woo Google Staff
- See What Went Popular And When With Rrrewind
- What The "Great Delicious Exodus" Looked Like For Pin-Sized Competitor Pinboard
| O Canada! World's Most Web Connected Land | Top |
| According to a recent comScore report, Canada has beaten out the US, the UK, France, and everyone else in the world in various metrics relating to broadband and internet use. While the conspicuous absence of the likes of Sweden, a perennial leader in these categories, fills me with suspicion, the numbers are still fun, and slightly surprising. One statistic calculated to both please and terrify is that, by comScore’s measurements, just over half the population of Canada is on Facebook. That amounts to about 16 million people — a drop in the bucket with Facebook’s user base — but it’s the proportion that matters. US usage is around 40% by some estimates, which is of course significant, but it’s fun that Canada has passed us up in this race. I’m guessing it has something to do with the weather up there. The comScore report (not actually provided, so this information is second-hand) also makes mention of some other specific services; internet-enabled TV, in the form of Netflix Streaming, Google TV, and so on, is far less prevalent there. Reuters attributes this to regulation debates, but I think that international licensing agreements are decades behind where they should be. This causes TV, movies, music, even ostensibly public-domain works to be inaccessible in some countries. Canada seems to be passed up whenever I hear about expansions by media distribution companies to to new markets. Another interesting statistic, and one that strikes me as being rather anachronistic, is that Canadians spend an average of 42 hours per month on the internet. What exactly does “on the internet” mean in this case? I am on the internet upwards of 700 hours per month, depending on the number of days, since I have an always-connected smartphone. The internet is no longer accessed in terms of hours; we don’t log in and log out, or at least very few of us do any more. While these metrics are certainly fun to think about, there are dozens more that are less conscientiously tracked, and less impressive-sounding. Uptake of next-generation services like cross-platform synchronization of files and calendars would be a good indicator, and smartphone use statistics are also highly relevant. Mapping information use is becoming an incredibly complicated field, and while Canada deserves a measure of glory for winning this little round-up, that glory will succumb quickly to a little scrutiny. And for good measure: And because some people found the above image offensive, which was placed there as a very serious commentary on international politics and culture, and not at all a joke, it seems only fair that I should add a similarly serious contribution from the Canadian side (from the great Kate Beaton ): | |
| So Much For FREE!: Apple Will Sell $2B in Apps in 2011 | Top |
| I’ve often wondered if the early Web pioneers had it all to do over again if Web companies would have put less of an emphasis on free. People have been conditioned against paying for services or content on the Web, and the Web elite only have each other to blame. For all the talk of Web companies getting users first and “figuring out” how to make money later, the only two jaw-droppingly, multi-billion-dollar, innovative new ways to advertise online have been Google’s paid search ads and Groupon’s solution to unlocking local ad dollars on a mass scale. Those who win big–like Google– just perpetuate the cult of free content and services as a way of spoiling would be competitors. Witness a big disconnect between popularity and money. Exhibit A: Yahoo. As a result, Netflix and Match.com are two of the only companies to have figured out ways to build large, lucrative subscription businesses online. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is one of the only Web 2.0 companies that has created a huge business with a freemium business model. But on the mobile Web it’s a do-over, and it’s a totally different playbook from FREE! People are conditioned to pay for stuff over phones in a way they aren’t online, and they’re not flinching. According to Citibank’s US Internet Stock 2011 Playbook released today, Apple will generated as much as $2 billion in gross app revenue in 2011. For perspective, that’s about the same size as Citibank’s estimate for the entire online video advertising market next year, nevermind way more people watch YouTube than have an iPhone and it’s been in the cultural zeitgeist longer. The report also cites Gartner’s estimates that the total app market was around $4 billion in 2010 and should grow to a whopping $27 billion by 2013. The biggest driver is smart phone penetration, the impact of which Citibank compares to the spread of broadband on the computer-based Internet in the early 2000s. Globally, smart phone unit sales grew 53% in 2010, and Citibank expects it to grow 29% in 2011 and stay in the mid-20% growth range through 2013. Several years ago, it was controversial to say that a fledgling product called Android — not the hyped up purchase of YouTube– would be Google’s best bet at another hit on the scale of paid search. Android is already making $1 billion in revenues with an indirect monetization strategy, and Citibank expects that could double next year– not only eclipsing YouTube but the entire online video category. Now calling Android Google’s future is almost a cliche . Good thing Google hedged its bets. | |
| Begun The Talent Wars Have – How Twitter's London HQ Could Woo Google Staff | Top |
| We’ve reported before about how the escalating war for talent in Silicon Valley is effectively creating a kind of arms race between tech companies. For example, Google is offering employees a 10% pay increase for 2011; companies like About.me are getting acquired days after launch ; and job postings in the IT industry are shooting to astronomical levels. Even Google’s Eric Schmidt has admitted to this battle . Facebook, Google, Zynga and Twitter are hiring like crazy – and this insatiable desire for staff is likely to spill over into other countries. And perhaps the obvious first target outside of the Valley is London: English speaking, and a magnet for existing tech people in Europe working for US multinationals. And the latest to consider extending its reach there is Twitter . | |
| See What Went Popular And When With Rrrewind | Top |
| Developer Roberto Martinez wanted an easy way to see what was popular on any given social content site on any given day so he built Rrrewind , which lets you see what was hot on Delicious, Digg, Hacker News, Reddit, Hulu, Yahoo Videos, YouTube, Dribbble, Flickr, Amazon and Yahoo Buzz for any day in 2010 and some in 2009. Like a snapshot in virality or a Popurls with a history focus, Rrrewind allows you to go back in time and see an archive of the most viewed items on the Internet. Says Martinez, “It is NOT a social, local, deal related, disruptive app, just a damn useful site that let you go back in time and see what was popular on some sites. I built it because I hate to miss hot stuff on Delicious (snif), Hacker News, etc.” Martinez has been collecting information for the site since 2009 but finally got around to building it over this holiday season. My favorite part is the sites that include visuals, like what went popular on the design community Dribbble and Flickr. It seems to be harder to aggregate the video content and the Hulu option seems to be particularly iffy. Martinez plans on adding a calendar option (right now you can use the archives link) and more music services like iTunes and Last.fm as well as Google and Twitter search trends. As one Hacker News commenter pointed out , the theme of “This day in history” has appeared in print, then radio, then on birthday cards, then television, and now on the Internet, “If you look, you’ll find what you seek pretty much everywhere.” CrunchBase Information Rrrewind Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| What The "Great Delicious Exodus" Looked Like For Pin-Sized Competitor Pinboard | Top |
| When word got out two weeks ago that Yahoo is not 100% committed to Delicious, people who still use the bookmarking service started to panic and look for alternatives. One competing bookmarking site that some people turned to is Pinboard , a barebones bookmarking site which looks a lot like Delicious did in its early years: lean, no-frills, and very useful. The company saw an influx of traffic and activity. The chart above shows requests per minute to its servers in the three days following the Delicious news compared to the week before. A couple hour ago, Pinboard Tweeted out a link to the chart: @PinboardIN Pinboard This is what the Great Delicious Exodus looked like to our servers: http://bit.ly/frLwmA (contrasted with normal traffic a week earlier) about 18 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply The service wasn’t handling a huge number of requests to begin with—a few hundred per minute at peak—but that number increased about tenfold to over 2,500 requests per minute. Pinboard allows you to import your bookmarks out of Delicious. Mike suggested switching from Delicious more than a year ago. But from what I can tell it only has about 9,000 users. You are asked to pay a one-time fee to sign up, which helps to prevent spammers from joining. The current fee is $9.07 and it is based on the number of users. So not a whole lot of Delicious users switched to Pinboard, but it was enough to move the needle for the small bookmarking site. The longer Delicious remains in purgatory , the more users are going to look for alternatives like Pinboard. The site even provides an honest list of pros and cons for those considering the switch. CrunchBase Information Pinboard delicious Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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