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The Twitter Trends of 2009

Now that Twitter employs a Chief Scientist, we will benefit from the ongoing interpretation and publishing of Twitter behavior and activity to better understand how Twitter is constantly evolving. In a discussion with Robert Scoble recently, I suggested that Twitter also consider hiring a digital anthropologist or sociologist, to not only analyze and comprehend data, but also effectively observe cultures...

Firefox 3.5 Currently Most Popular Browser in the World

According to data from StatCounter, Mozilla’s web browser Firefox 3.5 is now the world’s most popular browser. It has just surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, which has beend steadily declining. For December 20, StatCounter has IE 7 at 21.2% market share, and Firefox 3.5 at 21.93%. Microsoft’s IE 8 is closing in though. Its share has been steadily increasing, presumably...

October Marked First Decline For Twitter Visitors In A Year

Before you read any further just lean back and take a deep breath. You are about to enter the “Research Zone”. You know the place well. It’s where we give you shocking numbers that someone has come up with using their “methodology” and it is then used to create shocking headlines around the Internet for your reading enjoyment. It’s almost like having an informant...

Data Suggests the ‘Connect Program’ was the Reason Behind Facebook’s Surge

In case you missed it, Facebook is pretty popular. As of June 2008, they’d beat MySpace in terms of total unique visitors worldwide (ballooning to twice as many uniques as MySpace in January 2009)—and even in the US, one of the few Facebook-is-#2 holdouts, Facebook has caught up to MySpace. Hitwise takes a look at the stats—and they say that Facebook Connect gave the popular social...

July Was a Good Month for Tweeting

It appears that the number of new Twitter users has slowed a bit over the past month, although it’s still growing significantly. Regardless, it hasn’t prevented the number of Tweets from jumping. It’s not as though Twitter has been in the spotlight any less. News of a Twitter documentary surfaced (my interview with its creator here). Twitter launched a new homepage design (with...

Facebook Dealing With a Click Fraud and Data Access Lawsuit

It’s a saga we’re all familiar with by now: create a pretty awesome web service, start a trend, become a media sweetheart, make lots of money (VC or acquisition), get slapped with a lawsuit. Or two. Or fifty billion. Facebook added two more lawsuits to its heap recently: a countersuit from Power.com and a click fraud proceeding. Facebook filed suit against Power.com in December. Facebook...

The Older Demographic Makes A Large Push On Facebook

The demographic has shifted dramatically over at Facebook and that change could lead to billions in revenue, according to one prominent board member. iStrategyLabs spent the last six months collecting user demographic data and discovered the number of users over the age of 55 soared from 1 million to nearly 6 million. During the same 6 month period, high school and college users dropped by as much...