1222North.com

Author: Almir

Many companies, ranging from carriers like AT&T to advertising companies like Google, are hoping that Americans become as dependent on using the Internet on their phones as they are on their computers. So far, that’s still a work in progress.

The number of American mobile subscribers using the Internet to access “news and information” on their phones has doubled in the last year, comScore notes today (3/16/2009). In January, 63 million used the mobile Internet once in the month, up 71% from 37 million a year ago. And 22.3 million used the mobile Internet daily, up 107% from 10.8 million a year ago.

But that’s still a small percentage of mobile subscribers: With about 250 million subs in the U.S., that means only about 25% of subscribers use the Internet to access information and news on their phones at all, and only about 10% use it daily. There’s still a lot of work left if companies like Google ever expect to make the same amount of money off the mobile Web as the normal Web.

Author: Almir

President Obama used it to get elected. Dell will recruit new hires with it. Microsoft’s new operating system borrows from it. No question, Facebook has friends in high places. Can CEO Mark Zuckerberg make those connections pay off? Fortune Magazine’s Jessi Hempel puts it all into perspective. Read the rest of the insightful article here.

Author: Almir

According to Hitwise, last week’s visits to Twitter.com surpassed visits to Digg.com for the first time. Hitwise measures visits in terms of ?market share,? which isn?t a very helpful metric (both have 0.021 percent market share, but Twitter is ranked No. 84 and Digg is No. 85). This data is as of last week, when visits to Twitter surged following the much-Tweeted emergency landing of a plane on the Hudson. (Note that these numbers do not include usage on mobile devices, desktop apps, or through other Websites via Twitter?s API).

Today, traffic to Twitter was even higher with everybody feeling compelled to let everyone else know that, yes, in fact, the U.S. has a new president and that they saw his inauguration speech. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone blogs that Twitter saw five times as many Tweets per second today compared to last week. So maybe those two lines between Digg and Twitter will keep diverging.

For what it?s worth, Google Trends for Websites also shows Twitter catching up to Digg (but not yet passing). Other measuring services, such as Quantcast and comScore, still show a wide gap.

Author: Almir

Wow, that little App Store side project Apple has going on sure doesn’t seem to be settling down. After launching in July of ‘08 and hitting 100 million downloads in September, the App Store has just crossed the 500 million download mark; a mere six months after opening. Compare that to the iTunes Music Store, which took two whole years to cross the 500 million mark. Although to be fair, we have little idea of the paid to free ratio of app downloads. There are over 15,000 apps in the App Store currently, and many of them are free, but we have to hand it to Apple for the unprecedented success in the mobile download space!

Author: Almir

Facebook and Twitter may be more popular than ever among users, but what are they worth? Fortune magazine?s Jessie Hempel wrote a great article on the struggle of Web 2.0 companies to come up with viable, profitable business models.