Android Leads U.S. Smart Phone Market Share and Data Usage

According to Nielsen’s April 2011 survey of mobile consumers, 36 percent of smart phone consumers now have an Android device, compared to 26 percent for Apple iOS smartphones (iPhones) and 23 percent for RIM Blackberry.

Some 74 percent of Android smart phone owners and 79 percent of iPhone owners report having downloaded apps in the past 30 days. About 43 percent of Android owners and 46 percent of iPhone owners say they streamed online music or mobile radio in the past 30 days.

Also, 35 percent of Android smart phone consumers and 37 percent of iPhone owners report having watched video or mobile TV in the past 30 days.

But smart phone users still consume little data, compared to fixed-line PC users. Android users used 582 Mbytes per month. BlackBerry users consumed just 127 Mbytes.

Android Leads in U.S. Smartphone Market Share and Data Usage

Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends To 150

Virtually all social networks, even when originally composed of people one actually knows, become "media" at about the point that any user reaches 150 people in the network, research suggests, because a human being cannot actually maintain more than 150 "strong link" relationships at a time.

Bruno Goncalves and researchers at Indiana University recently studied the network of links created by three million Twitter users over four years. These tweeters sent each a whopping 380 million tweets.

Researchers say it's not enough simply to follow or be followed by somebody for there to be a strong link. Instead, there has to be a conversation, an exchange of tweets. And these conversation have to be regular to be a sign of a significant social bond, so occasional contacts don't count.

At some point, "strong links" have to be replaced by "weak links." And turns any social network into a broadcast medium.

Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends To 150

Will Facebook Credits Work as a Real-World Currency?

Millions of Facebook users use Facebook Credits to pay for virtual goods inside games like CityVille and FarmVille. But the logical next step is to use Facebook Credits to purchase digital and real-world goods. That might have some implications for mobile payments, in some instances.

This has begun to transpire; we are seeing a robust Facebook Credit economy for virtual goods and an early stage Facebook Credit economy emerging for digital and real-world goods. Facebook Credits are used to purchase movie rentals, for example.

Will Facebook Credits Work as a Real-World Currency?

Twitter Becoming a Niche Media?

Some believe Twitter will increasingly be a one-to-a-few medium, with a small base of hard-core users, increasingly selective about the contents they broadcast and who they follow. To be sure, power Twitter users are few. About five percent of the users account for 75 percent of the page views.

As an example, a recent Pew Research study indicates that 85 percent of USA Today.com users visit the site less than three times a month. And for the top 25 American news sites, “power users” who visit a site more than 10 times a month, account for seven percent of total visits.

That has some observers questioning Twitters’s limitations as a channel to drive consumption of online news. According the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism, Twitter is an insignificant referral (one percent) source for news when compared to Facebook (five percent) or Google (30 percent).

Trifling Twitter | Monday Note

YouTube Reaches 3 Billion Daily Views

More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, the company says. This constitutes a 37 percent increase over the last six months, and 100 percent over the last year.

YouTube also has surpassed the three billion views-per-day mark. This is a 50 percent increase over views last year.

YouTube Celebrates 6th Birthday With 3 Billion Views Per Day

Apple has Serious Brand Equity

Researcher Eric Fisher analyzed millions of Flickr photos and recorded where each was taken by using associated geotags. He determined that the four most popular places to snap photos in Manhattan: Times Square (4), Columbus Circle (3), Rockefeller Center, (2) and the 5th Avenue Apple Store (1).

That is some serious brand equity.

More People Take Photos Of The NYC Apple Store Than Of Times Square

'Please ReTweet' Generates 4x More ReTweets

Dan Zarella, writing at HubSpot, suggests that asking followers to "re-tweet" actually results in much-higher re-tweet rates. After analyzing more than 10,000 tweets and found that 51 percent of tweets that included 'Please ReTweet' were retweeted more than once, 39 percent of those including 'Please RT' were re-tweeted more than once, and only 12 percent of tweets that included neither were retweeted more than once.

New Data Proves 'Please ReTweet' Generates 4x More ReTweets