...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Data

So, the Official Charts Company is doing a streaming chart. This is VERY cool.

What's awesome is that they've split out the data between the streaming and the sales chart, so we can pruriently nose around and see which acts are selling more than they're streaming and vice versa.

It's the vice versa that interests me - I knocked together the chart above which shows which artists are higher up the sales chart than the streaming one (or the other way round).

(I know, I know, there's no axis labels, doesn't take absolute value into account etc etc etc, it'sjust to give a visual representation of which bands are more likely to be bought than only listened to. Don't give me any guff, I'm in a rush.)

Anyway, I suspect the story in here is around which bands are popular vs which ones are actually selling stuff. For example, are we prepared to check Lana del Ray out on the Internet but not commit to purchase? Or how about Florence & The Machine, wildly popular, but still not 'pop' enough to properly break through yet? Both feel about right, with nothing but gut telling me they've got a small problem with the final conversion-to-sale stage.

There are a few oddities (I don't think One Direction or Adele are struggling at all, for instance), but when you consider Coldplay quite famously refused to put their latest on Spotify initially, and then see that they're noticeably higher up the streaming chart than the sales one, you suspect the labels have had this data for ages, which puts their motivation into a lot clearer focus.

So - I like these numbers, and I'll keep an eye on them since I reckon this is the first true chart data we've seen that really starts to speaks about fame vs the actual value of that fame.

Ohai, Amazon, top again eh?

Aside from some blazingly obvious sites (Apple, duh), this is actually a really great list to keep an eye on and to revisit if you're dealing with anyone who's redesigning their ecommerce assets - it gives you examples to follow, trends to spot and a target to aim for.

Seriously, this is nice stuff, and - the horror! - actually has a practical use.

Download the full thing for free here

So, Pingdom have released a new thing on global mobile web traffic and there's some flipping massive increases in traffic on there, even though nothing at all about that is really a surprise to anyone.

Since I'm now in Oz, I note with interest that - despite having a ridiculous amount of folk on smartphones here, more per capita than any 'Western' nation - the proportion of all web traffic coming from mobiles is still lower than that of the UK. There might be something in there about Brits having longer commutes etc I guess, or maybe it's just down to the fact that the networks down under are (ahem) "unpredictable" and that data costs real, actual money here.

Anyway, there's a handy map chart above, plus some raw data, the headline numbers I've stuck below - but go read the full thing, there's more numbers and analysis if you want it. I'm sure there are a million ways you could use these figures to back up whatever spurious caper you have in the works that relies on selling someone on the idea that mobile is, like, totally huge now.

Original: Pingdom

New Comscore stuff's out - Mobile Metrix 2.0, it's called, and don't even get me started on the x in that name - and it's taking a deeper look at mobile usage in the US. 

Main thing is that while roughly the same amount of people access the big sites via browsers as via apps, something like 80% of the time is being spent with these platforms via apps, with the notable exception of Microsoft sites. 

If you make the not-very-mad assumption that anyone who installs and regularly uses an app is de facto pretty invested in that app's property, then for me (and discounting stuff like Apple, the bulk of whose stuff you can ONLY get to via an app), this is basically a league table of the properties with the most engaged users, no?

Original: ComScore

The infographic's a bit shonky (one more doughnut chart not adding up to 100% and I'll lose it), but the raw data's all there too, and the forecast-y stuff's pretty handy.

Original's here: http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-ad-spending

Deloitte have done the sixth in their 'State Of The Media Democracy' annual surveys looking at media usage in the US. No surprises in here, but some useful benchmarks, especially in the jump in usage and penetration of smartphones, movie streaming and so forth.

They'll be doing a webcast of the findings on the 22nd February, plus there's a full press release here (which has got most of the headline numbers), but if you're feeling particularly lazy today, WARC has a short article which basically rips the numbers out of the presser.

For me, the big figures are the jumps mentioned above (smartphone penetration up to 42% in 2011 from 25% in 2010, 42% of Americans have streamed a movie, up from 28% in 2009), plus the ones about tablet usage (especially in home) replacing laptop usage, something I've been keeping a bit of a weather eye on. The good news for you and me is that as we buy more of these devices, the content we receive gets more and more richly visual - the problem is that, for mobile operators in particular, this is putting enormous strain on their networks. Which will break first? Our desire for video-rich entertainment in our hands, or the network's ability to deliver it? And what effect will this strain put on costs?

Various figures from a nice and meaty NYT piece on mobile internet usage, quoting a number of surveys. Basically, we’re chewing through mobile data like there’s no tomorrow, and the networks are obviously going to have to do something about this, infrastructure-wise. Anyway, key points for those who just want the numbers and not the analysis:

Users

• 1 percent of consumers generate half of all mobile traffic
• 10 percent of users consume 90 percent of wireless bandwidth
• In 2009, the top 3 percent of heavy users generated 40 percent of network traffic
• In 2011, the top 3 percent of heavy users generated 70 percent of network traffic

Devices used for mobile internet usage

• 64 percent of extreme users were using a laptop
• a third were using a smartphone
• 3 percent had an iPad.

Smartphones

• Just 13.2 percent of the world’s 6.1 billion cellphones are smartphones, according to Ericsson, the leading maker of mobile network equipment, but the rate exceeds 30 percent in larger markets like the United States, Germany and Britain.
• In countries like Sweden and Finland, smartphones now account for more than half of all mobile phones

Behaviours

• 40 percent of heavy users’ time spent watching video
• 40 percent of heavy users time spent on e-mails, social networking, file sharing and software downloads
• 20 percent of heavy users’ time spent surfing the web
• Apple’s iPhone 4S users downloaded 276 percent more data from an operator’s network than did people with the Apple 3G (hypothesis is cloud-based services and Siri causes this)
• HTC Desire S users uploaded 323 percent more data than those with the iPhone 3G
• HTC Google Nexus One users made 221 percent more calls to the network than those with the iPhone 3G
• 40 percent of smartphone owners in an Ericsson survey used their devices to gain access to mobile broadband connections even before getting out of bed.

Forecasts

• Ericsson expects the volume of global mobile data to rise tenfold from 2011 to 2016.

Another quick one with some particularly garish colouring and some extremely crappy outline trimming on the YouTube and iPlayer logos (sorry about that, I was rushing) - this time on UK Online Video viewing data bagged off of Hitwise.

There are a couple of news pieces with some of this data floating about, but I thought I'd stick it all on one graphic for convenience - as opposed to deluing myself that it looks any good...

[Source data's at Experian Hitwise]

Mary Meeker's latest Internet Trends report is now up, as presented at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week. With a huge volume of data, plus its unusually outward-looking views on international trends, as opposed to being at all US-centric, it's a must-read - again.

Original at KCPB, via PSFK