psilva's prophecies: Our Digital Life Deciphered

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Our Digital Life Deciphered

comScore always has some very interesting statistics when measuring the digital world and these recent reports are no different. The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review has great info both in understanding media trends and knowing what the end user is actually doing out there. The 2010 Mobile Year in Review is also interesting in looking at mobile device and OS trends and the differences worldwide, both in models and what users are utilizing them for. There are tons of graphs and analysis covering areas like U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending, Percent of Time Spent for Top 5 U.S. Web Properties, U.S. Unique Visitor Trend for Leading Social Networking Sites, Percent Share of Searches Among U.S. Core Search Engines, Growth in Total U.S. Online Video Market, Top Mobile Activities in the U.S. and many more.

These were a few that I found interesting - taken directly from the reports.

* 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users now visit a social networking site each month.

* Facebook now accounts for 12.3% of time spent online in the US - up 7.2% just a year ago.

* After Portals, Social Networking now ranks as the next most engaging activity at 14.4 percent of time spent online (up 3.8 percentage points), while Entertainment ranks third at 12.6 percent (up 0.8 percentage points). As communication continues to shift to other channels, including social media and mobile, usage of web-based email declined 1.5 percentage points to 11.0 percent of time spent.

* An average of 179 million Americans watch video each month and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December, a 12-percent increase from last year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.

* In September 2010, smartphone ownership crossed the 25 percent threshold, marking a significant milestone in smartphone adoption in the U.S. By December 2010, smartphone penetration had reached 27 percent of the mobile market.

* Samsung unseated last year’s OEM (original equipment manufacturer) leader, Motorola, to rank as top OEM provider with 24.8 percent of devices owned by mobile subscribers in December 2010, up 3.6 percentage points from the previous year.