Youtube Views Per Day Statistics

YouTube has surpassed 2 billion views per day. Check out this cool little YouTube infographic that summarizes some of the astounding numbers.

YouTube Highlights

YouTube History:
February 2005 – Founders register YouTube domain name.
April 23, 2005 – First video uploaded
May 2005 – Beta Launch of YouTube
June 2005 – YouTube embeds enabled
December 2005 – Official Launch – 8 million videos watched a day
July 2006 - 100 million video views per day
October 2006 – Google acquisition of YouTube – $1.65 billion
June 2007 – YouTube mobile site launched
December 2008 – 720p HD launched
May 2009 - 20 hours of video uploaded every minute
October 2009 - 1 Billion views per day
November 2009 - 1080p full-HD launched
May 2010 - YouTube exceeds 2 billion views per day

Other Interesting YouTube Facts & Statistics

19 seconds - The length of first video uploaded
1.96 million – Number of times the first video has been played
185.39 million – the number of times the most popular video on YouTube, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” has been played

2 billion views = double the prime-time audience of all 3 major US Broadcast networks combined
24 hours of video uploaded every minute
Average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube
More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks created in 60 years.

YouTube Infographic

• Share with us your thoughts on the astounding stats in the comments section!

Share your thoughts on the YouTube Statistics!

• What statistics is the most surprising or the most astounding?
• How many videos do you think you watch per week?

Related posts:

1. YouTube vs Hulu vs Facebook Statistics
2. Kids Consuming More Online Content

Top 10 General Security Tips for Facebook

Facebook is growing at a rapid rate, and now with Facebook open graph, they are looking to “socialize” all the world’s large webpages to be custom to your profile and social network.

So how do we protect our privacy?

[1] The #1 Facebook security tip is to set your Facebook privacy settings.

If you don’t know how just visit this step by step Facebook privacy settings post.

Once you have your privacy settings set – consider the following tips:

[2] Think carefully about who you allow to become your friend

Once you have accepted someone as your friend they will be able to access any information about you (including photographs) that you have marked as viewable by your friends. You can remove friends at any time should you change your mind about someone. Remember by making someone your friend, you are now giving them full access to majority of the information you post on Facebook.

[3] Use Your Friend Lists

You can organize your friends into different lists (church, co-workers, friends, family, monsters etc). Then you can create different accessibility and privacy options for each one meaning specify what they can and cannot see.

[4] Careful What You Share On Your Profile!

Avoid putting in any info you don’t need to share! No Address, no Phone Number, no Email. If you choose to do so make sure in your privacy settings ONLY friends can see it. (then be selective about who you friend).

[5] Careful What You Share – Photos & Videos!

Careful what photos or videos you post. Once it’s on the web, it’s on the web. Also be sensitive to the pictures and videos you share of your friends. It is embarrassing? Incriminating? Immature? Or just a really bad picture of them? Save your friend the drama and don’t post it. Imagine if someone posted such a picture and tagged you for all the world to see.. (or just friends if you diligently went through the privacy settings!).

[6] Careful What You Share – On your Facebook Wall

Depending on your privacy settings, lot of people may have access to your wall, so becareful what you post. Examples:

• Don’t declare your entire household will be off to vacation for a specified time. Burglars would love that info.
• Don’t say anything potentially embarrassing

[7] Want to Avoid Old or Bad Connections?

• Remove yourself from facebook and public search results (in privacy settings).
• Use an unidetifiable picture. So they can’t tell whether you are the right “John Kim”.. easier to ignore as well, then they assume it’s the wrong one.
• Don’t put identifiable info on your profile (address, IM, email, work..)
• If all fails, just get off Facebook and regain hours of your life

[8] Avoid Useless & Random Apps

Facebook application sometimes requests information, others automatically posts things to your wall. You may get invitations to try out apps from others – but unless you know what it is just avoid it altogether. By nature, Facebook apps are made to utilize your profile information and social connections.

[9] Leave out Full Birth date

Do not leave your full birthdate (your birthdate is valuable information) leave out the year.

[10] Monitor Your Children

If your children use it, you need to monitor what they say. They are not educated in what kind of info is bad to share. (ex. “i am home alone”, “we are leaving tonight to go for a 2 weeks vacations”). You should also be weary about who is talking to them and vice versa. You should setup their privacy settings and then “friend” your children. Even better – just make it a rule you have their password so they can login whenever they want.

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[Bonus #11] Conclusion: Better Safe than Sorry

It’s simple. Don’t say, write, post up anything that is even slightly embarrassing. When you put info up on the web, there is always the possibility someone will find it. Your friends, your co-workers, your boss, future recruiters, your mom, your arch enemy, your political opponent, the guy 10 years from now try to sue you, some stalker, some guy planning to rob your home, guy looking for more identification for identify theft and so on. Yes some of these are ridiculous – but again, better safe than sorry. Save yourself potential future headache by playing it safe and thinking carefully about what you post.

Hope this was helpful.
Facebook is looking to simplify their Privacy Settings again so we’ll see what happens next.

Please let us know your thoughts!

• What other potential dangers are there by sharing your info?
• Any other general tips about safe facebook use?
• Parents! How do you monitor your children?

Related posts:

1. Complete Facebook Privacy Settings Checklist
2. Social Network – Facebook – Friends Forever
3. Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter Statistics: Raising $200 Million

Facebook Privacy Concerns Overblown

There has been a lot of news about Facebook Privacy concerns in news lately. However in my opinion, it’s being overblown by the media because it is a juicy subject to talk and write about. It capitalizes on the new big fear of privacy in the rapidly growing online world. But recent history shows that privacy concerns are short lived. Privacy issues always come up whenever large companies like Google or Facebook launches something new and different (i.e. Google Buzz, Facebook News Feeds etc). Usually the companies respond with a new set of privacy features and within weeks all the clamoring dies down as people accept it as the norm.

The last Facebook uproar was more legitimate as it was a demand from the public that Facebook provide privacy options so the user can better control what gets shared. Facebook responded by providing more privacy settings. Facebook doesn’t have it right just yet and needs to provide more functionality, but all the concerns about sharing information shouldn’t be blamed on Facebook because we have the settings control to limit what get’s shared. By nature Facebook is a social site – meaning it is meant to be able to share information so it shouldn’t be alarming that Facebook makes it easy as possible for information to be shared.

So what can we do to protect ourselves?

It boils down to two things:

1) Use privacy settings to be safe and limit who has access to what on your profile.

2) Be very careful about what you share. Once it is out on the net it is OUT.

Ok that makes sense. But let’s break it down below step by step as well as some of my personal recommendation to help you get started in protecting your Facebook account. By all means you should tailor the accessibility to your info to what you are comfortable with. I only share my own “minimum recommendation” as a starting point since it may be helpful for some.

Minimum Recommended Settings in [Brackets]

COMPLETE LIST OF PRIVACY SETTINGS ON FACEBOOK

[Located on the top right nav bar under "account". Select Privacy Settings]

Adjusting your Facebook privacy settings is a must to help protect your identity and to prevent mass sharing of personal information. GO THROUGH EACH LINE ITEM. I’ve listed all the settings but only highlighted the more important or confusing ones below. Where relevant I’ve also added my personal recommended “minimum” setting in brackets. Hope this helps.

The Privacy Settings page is organized into the following sections:

Personal Information and Posts:

Covers personal details like your birthday, email address and political views. It also covers your content and content others have posted to your Wall. You control who is able to see each type of information.

• Bio: About Me – Don’t put sensitive info in your profile ever. If you want to put private info, use this to block people from seeing your bio.
• Birthday: [Friends of Friends] – Recommend leaving out birth year. Birth Date is important piece of info useful for stolen credit cards and identity theft.
• Interested In & Looking For
• Religious & Political Views
• Photo Albums – You can pick and choose who has access to what album. Don’t put up potentially embarrassing photos of you OR your friends!
• Posts by Me [Friends of Friends] – Best to keep your posts amongst a smaller circle.
• Allow Friends to Post on my Wall [yes] – Shouldn’t be a problem unless you have some immature friends.
• Post by Friends [Only Friends] – Entirely up to you. You know your friends and how they behave.
• Comments on Posts [Only Friends] – Who do you want to enable to comment on all your posts?

Contact Information:

Covers contact details like your mailing address and phone number. We recommend you make this visible to friends only.

• IM Screen Name
• Mobile Phone – I would not post this at all. Don’t put sensitive info on the web.
• Other Phone
• Current Address – I would not post this at all.
• Website
• Add me as a friend – Everyone is fine. Unless you don’t want people to befriend you.
• Send me a message – I would limit to friends of friends so you don’t get spammed by random people.
• Email Address – Friends Only or None!

Friends, Tags and Connections:

Covers information and content that’s shared between you and others on Facebook. This includes relationships, interests, and photos you’re tagged in. These settings let you control who sees this information on your actual profile.

• Friends [Friends] – Do you want everyone you connect to know who else you are connected to? Up to you.
• Family [Friends of Friends]
• Relationships [Friends] – Do you really want the world to know your relational status update? Think about it before posting anything.
• Photos and Videos of Me [Friends] – I would limit this as well as someone “tagging” you in a photo is out of your control. What embarrassing picture might your friends have from the past or some event you were at? If someone else TAGS you in a picture, this privacy setting limits who can actually see those pictures from your profile. Remember, it’s really easy for recruiters or executives to look you up on Facebook. What will they see?
• Current City [Everyone] – Posting your current city will help people identify your profile especially if you have a generic name. However do not post anything more specific then this.
• Hometown
• Education & Work – Remember, anything you post that is identifiable allows more people to find you through that connection. If you want people to find you, post your college & high school. If not, then leave it all blank.
• Activities
• Interest
• Things I Like

Be very careful about what you post and keep in mind who can access it. If you have odd activities or interest that you don’t want your co-workers, your mom, or your children to know… then… actually you probably shouldn’t be doing those things!.. But you get the idea.

Search:

Facebook Search Results: [Everyone] – If you don’t want your friends and old contacts to find you, you can limit it right here. If you put “Friends” no one will be able to find you, until you invite them to be your friend. Why would I not want my friends to find me? If your friends can find you, so can that old stalker boyfriend, the ex-wife, bad influences from the past, old acquaintance you want to avoid and so on.

Public Search Results: [Disallow] – Just opt-out. Why make it so easy for random strangers, recruiters, stalkers to find you via Google? Unless your goal is to have the biggest friend list in all of facebook, just turn it off.

Application and Websites:

Covers what information is available to the applications you and your friends use.

• What you Share - Click this to see more info.
• What your friends can share about you – I would check OFF the following: My photos, birthdays, photos and videos I’m tagged In. Everything else is “ok” but completely up to you. Birthdays because it is usable info for credit card theft & identify theft.
• Blocked Application – Don’t worry about this. Only useful if you want to block specific applications.
• Ignored Application Invites – Just an option to stop that annoying friend who invites you to every application he/she tries out.
• Activity on Applications & Games Dashboards [Friends] – Again up to you. I would limit it to Friends as sometimes you have no idea what your application is broadcasting. When your friend is spamming your profile with their recent Mafia War updates or another “I just planted an eggplant” notification from farmville, most of them have no idea they are doing that.
• Instant Personalization Pilot Program [Off] – just turn it off for now. it’s relatively new so could have flaws and privacy concerns. This pilot program allows facebook to share basic info with partner sites to customize your experience. This isn’t anything to be alarmed about and it is where internet is headed, but while it is still in development, better to be safe and turn it off until they work out all the details.

Block List:

Allows you to identify specific people who you want to prevent from interacting with you on Facebook.

Do you like this article? Please “Like” our Facebook Page!

Hope this was helpful.
Facebook is looking to simplify their Privacy Settings again so we’ll see what happens next.

Please come back for our follow-up post “Top 10 General Security Tips for Facebook”.

Please let us know your thoughts!

• Was this helpful for you?
• What other potential dangers are there by sharing your info?
• Any other suggestions or comments about any of these sections?
• Any other general tips about safe facebook use?
• Parents! How do you monitor your children?

Related posts:

1. Top 10 General Security Tips for Facebook
2. Social Network – Facebook – Friends Forever
3. Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter Statistics: Raising $200 Million

Facebook 3rd Largest Country in the World

In the beginning of 2009, Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) proudly stated that if Facebook was a country it would be the 8th largest country in the world. As of 2010? It would stand as the third largest country in the world, right behind China & India and ahead of the United States.

Growth of Social Media Video

It wasn’t long ago that Social Media made big news when it overtook Email in terms of online activity. Now, it is the #1 activity online and it continues to grow at a rapid pace both in the United States and around the world. The video below is a follow up to a the first Did You Know Socialnomics Video that quickly went viral due to all the fascinating statistics about the growth of social media. It has a lot of fascinating statistics.

Watch the video and tell us what statistics wowed you the most in the comment section below!

Some Social Media Statistics

• More than half the population is under 30
• 96% of Millennials have joined a social network
• Facebook has more internet traffic than Google.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
• Amazon sold more e-books for the Kindle than physical books on Christmas
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• If you were paid $1 for each posted Wikipedia article, you’d make $1,712.32 per hour!
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment
• Social Media is the #1 activity on the web.

Social Media’s Influence on Culture

There is no doubt that social media is increasingly becoming a huge part of our daily lives. Facebook records 60 million status updates that inform people of what friends are doing. Twitter records 50 million tweets a day (source: twitter) and a large number of that is news from around the world. We no longer search for news, the news simply finds us. Also everything on the web is becoming personalized. With the amount of social information now available via the networks, both self-declared or deduced from connections within the networks, – everything from advertising to news is becoming customized to the user whether we like it or not.

When was the last time you were online and saw ads for something you were just looking at yesterday? It’s not coincidence.

How many sites have you been on where you see a Facebook “like” feature and pictures of your friends who also like the site or bought something? (like clean cut media!)

• Please Comment below with your thoughts on the video
• What statistics jumped out at you the most?
• What are your thoughts about what part social media will play in our lives?

Related posts:

1. Social Media Statistics Video – Growth & Impact
2. Social Networking overtakes Email
3. Social Networks in Asia: Korea, Japan, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore

BBC News recently put up a visual map showing the internet growth from 1998 to 2008. You can scroll through each year and visually see when and where the internet started to grow.

It starts from 1998 where only a few countries had significant number of internet users. Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Netherlands, Denmark, and the United States were the only countries with at least 20% of the population online.

Within 10 years, it is astonishing how quickly the internet penetrated into our daily lives. It was only a decade ago that we all survived freely without the “internet” or “email”. Just 15 years ago, cell phones were novel as well. Now we are very dependent on these technologies – just the mere idea of surviving without them seems unfathomable.

A second tab shows internet user counts around the world. As of the time this post was written? 1,719,053,000 users. 214 billion emails sent TODAY, 455,500 blog posts written TODAY (we claim one of those!) and 2.285 Google searches TODAY. Don’t tell me we are not dependent on the internet!

Question of the Day:

Please share your thoughts below!

Related posts:

1. Late Night Internet Statistics: Online Videos, Games & Chat
2. South Korea: World’s Fastest Internet, PC Gaming Capital
3. Social Media Statistics Video – Growth & Impact

Internet Speeds Getting Faster, Asia Leads the Way

Internet speed around the world continues to become faster as technologies advance. That is not a surprise. However the speed difference between a country like Korea and the United States are quite startling.

South Korea, who already has the fastest connection in the world, continues to increase their national internet speed at the fastest rate as well. Korea owns 6 of the top 10 fastest cities in Asia and as a country averages 14.6 Mbps. Compare that to the United States where only 4.4% of users are above 10 Mbps. Korea averages 14.6 Mbps. In Korea 45.6% of users have connections above 10Mbps. 75% are connected above 5 Mbps while only 24% of the United States is at that level.

Compared to 2009, the distribution of connections in South Korea has risen in all the high speed categories. 16% of South Korean users are above 25 Mbps compare to only 1.9% for Japan who falls second in these rankings.

Why the huge gap in South Korea?

The primary reason South Korea sits so far ahead in terms of connection speed, is that Korea has the infrastructure to do so. Back in the late 1990s there was a nationwide focus on developing cutting edge technology. The government built out the infrastructure necessary to get the entire country on high speed broadband. In the United States you have to walk into a Starbucks with an AT&T account or Borders to get some free wifi. Connections are now available everywhere you go. It has become part of the culture and an expectation.

Another more interesting topic, and worth it’s own blog posting, is South Korea’s obsession with Internet Gaming. South Korea could easily be considered the gaming capital of the world. The “elite” of the PC gaming world are often full fledged celebrities as thousands gathers in stadiums to watch the elite play each other on a game of Starcraft. These tournaments are broadcast nationally on TV by five national channels dedicated solely to gaming. Believe it. 1% of all TV watched is accounted for by these channels. That is a lot of people!

South Korea - Starcraft Tournament

Korea has five major leagues for professional Starcraft alone. All the elite gaming teams know if they want fame, they need to travel to Korea to compete in tournaments. These “clans” get corporate sponsorships and wear corporate logos as if they were about to enter into a nascar race. It has become a popular desire for high school boys to pursue a career in being a professional gamer just as boys would want to become a professional basketball player. Even the “commentators” on these networks have become full fledged celebrities just as famous sports commentators.

Some 26,000+ Net cafes and game rooms are found all over the nation where people can come to pay to play games in a room full of fast computers and fast connections. These cafes make up around $6 billion a year from visiting gamers.

With gaming so tightly integrated with Korean culture, it is not surprising that the demand for faster high speed internet continues to raise the bar in terms of internet connection speeds across the nation.

*image source: thomascrampton.com

• What are your initial reactions to Korea’s whopping internet speeds?
• What are your opinions about the Korean PC Gaming Industry?
• How do you feel about the fact that Korean boys dream and seek to become celebrity gamers?
• How about the fact that elite gamers are even considered celebrities, with endorsements, fans and immense fame?

Related posts:

1. Social Networks in Asia: Korea, Japan, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore
2. Late Night Internet Statistics: Online Videos, Games & Chat
3. Internet Growth Map Visuals 1998-2008

What is Google Buzz?

On Tuesday February 9th, Google suddenly swooped into the social media fray by introducing Google Buzz. What is Google Buzz? It is a twitter like service for sharing thoughts, multimedia and other information with your friends who are also part of Gmail.

Google Buzz is the Buzz of the Internet

Within 2 days, Google reported they are averaging 160,000 comments and posts per hour. Pretty wild numbers especially considering so many social media companies have tried and failed to stir the social media industry. However let’s remember that lot of people are seeing this for the first time and there are plenty of people who will “buzz” once or twice then proceed to forget about it.

Also unlike other services, Google connected their new service with Gmail which means on the flip of a switch they had millions and millions of users signed up for their service. However it remains to be seen what this service will morph into.

Privacy Controls

There was a huge controversy as soon as Google Buzz went live. Since it is linked directly into Gmail, you are now mixing something private such as your personal email with something as public as Buzz. The result? Lot of angry people.

After Google Wave found criticism for the difficulties of finding other members using it, Google Buzz launched with you connected to tons of people from the get go. All your frequent contacts were automatically added as followers. “Frequency” being quite generous. It could be you emailing them or them emailing you. That’s all it really took. People became very upset that it was easy for people to see who you interact with the most and people who perhaps you do not want to be connected with were automatically being connected because they had emailed you sometime before.

Why the anger? It also opened up access to one’s Google profile thus allowing access to Google Reader Comments and Picasa Albums.

However it really makes one think:

• Do people have that much to hide that it brings up so much passionate anger?
• Why is it so bad other people can see your buzz conversation?
• Does this outcry over privacy reveal anything about our culture and what we value?

Note: If you want it private conversation, don’t use a public tool!

Google Responds Quickly

Google responded very quickly in shoring up the Privacy Concerns by making the auto-follow into an auto-suggest. But for those who were activated early? You’ll have to manually block everyone.

They also added an option to block others from seeing your list as well as the ability shut off buzz altogether.

I was going to post some instructionals on how to deal with privacy issues and also how to shut off buzz, but Google keeps changing the process. All the tutorials out there are outdated. Google outsmarted us again!

Google Buzz UPDATE:
If you’d like to alter your privacy settings you go to “settings” on the top right corner of your gmail, then hit “buzz”. This “buzz” link seemed to be being implemented slowly as different people were unable to see it until very recently. See screenshot below:

What is the Purpose of Google Buzz?

• Can you think of a good reason to use Google Buzz?
• What niche do you figure it will fill considering Facebook and Twitter are already well established?
• Could this potentially become just another time sink and a distraction?

Nominees for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize includes a Russian human rights group, a Chinese dissident and of course the Internet.

Nobel Peace Prize Founder Alfred Nobel: Not Amused

Say what?

The Internet to Win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes, the Internet was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the year after Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing at the time he won. It sparked a lot of debate on the value of the Nobel Peace Prize as well as the whether the committee should ever award a nomination based on “potential” rather than concrete actions. Before discussing the Internet, let’s note the other real-human candidates that are known at this time.

Svetlana Gannushkina – Russian Human Rights

One nomination is a Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and her group “Memorial”. Nominated by Erna Solberg, the head of Norway’s Conservative Party, this organization often leads the criticism against the Kremlin.

“These are people who are at the forefront of human rights and are putting their lives at risk for their work,” Solberg told The Associated Press.

Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident

Kwame Anthony Appiah, president of the PEN American Center and a Princeton philosophy professor mentioned that he had nominated Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese dissident who was jailed by the government. Kwame Anthony Appiah says that he nominated Liu due to his “distinguished and principled leadership in the area of human and political rights and freedom of expression.” The Chinese government is obviously against this nomination.

“It would be completely wrong for the Nobel Prize committee to award the prize to such a person,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu

George Ryan, Former Illinois Governor

Francis A. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, nominated Former Illinois Governor George Ryan who is currently in jail for federal corruption charges. He was nominated for his campaign to abolish the death penalty.

Alfred Nobel: 2010 Winner.. What the heck is an Internet?

Would they really give the Nobel Peace Prize to the Internet?

Last year’s choice of Obama already stirred a great deal of controversy as Obama had just joined office and had no real accomplishments that warranted the prize. Some felt that it cheapened the Award.

This year, some speculate that due to the controversy the committee may select a conservative winner. Others say that last year is just more evidence that we can expect anything.

Alfred Nobel left simple, vague instructions on how to select winners in his 1895 will. It was to promote “fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies”. It was meant for people who promoted peace through what they did. This definition has since been broadened by the Nobel Committee to also include human rights activist and the protection of the environment. The Nobel Committee is appointed by Norway’s parliament.

Why mention Nobel Peace Prize on this Blog?

The mere fact that the Internet is being nominated for what is considered one of the greatest awards today speaks volumes about how central internet has become.

Plus the internet is a mixed bag. Yes the internet has brought upon great proliferation of information and news. Yes, it has connected people from all around the world. It has opened new doors and opportunities to collaborate. It has truly been amazing. However we also know the Internet has caused a whole new set of emotional issues. It has opened the world to wide spread pornography and other degrading material for easy access to all ages. It has caused more people to waste more time staring at a screen whether it be simply cruising the internet or playing online multi-player video games. Our children grow up watching 8 hours of screen time a day, a huge chunk of that watching videos or tv shows on the Internet. 8 hours per day. There are many studies and professionals who mourn at the influence of media on our children’s development.

Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Process

Before getting carried away, let’s remember that numerous people are nominated every year for the Nobel Peace Prize. The information regarding who was nominated is not released by the Nobel Foundation until 50 years after the prize, but some information is made public by the ones who nominate the candidate. Yes the Internet was nominated, but in the past so was Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and believe it or not Adolf Hitler, thought the latter was done out of protest to the nomination of a different candidate. Meanwhile candidates like Mohandas Gandhi was nominated several times but never awarded.

• What is your first gut reaction to this news?
• What do you think? Does the Internet warrant consideration?
• Do you think if the Internet wins the Nobel Peace Prize, it cheapens the Prize?
• Did the Internet bring about Peace in some way?

Related posts:

1. Google stands against Chinese Internet Censorship
2. South Korea: World’s Fastest Internet, PC Gaming Capital
3. Internet Growth Map Visuals 1998-2008

Children Consume nearly 8 hours of Media per Day

Kaiser Family Foundation released their most recent media usage study. Six years ago they found the usage of 8 to 18 year old was about 6 hours and 21 minutes of media consumption a day. This recent study shows that the media consumption rate has risen to 7 hours and 38 minutes. That is almost as much time as adults spend at work except remember that adults only work 5 days a week.

The amount of media consumed by children has always been a point of concern as media has been found to have great affects in molding a child’s view of the world. With the proliferation of online media, increased video sharing, and mobile media – these numbers are shocking, yet they are not a surprise.

For the first time, Traditional TV consumption actually fell as other mediums such as video games, music, online media and movie watching has increased. What is even more wild is that kids are often watching multiple forms of media at once. The actual consumption of media was found to be closer to 10 hours and 45 minutes.

Growth of Mobile Media

Greater adoption of iPods and other MP3 devices has increased access and usage of mobile media. Children are able to surf the internet while listening to music and perhaps watching TV all in the same time. In 2004, only 39% of 8 to 18 year olds owned a cell phone. Now it is closer to 66%. Ipods? Jumped from 18% to 76%.

Television Consumption goes Online

TV broadcast consumption fell from 3:04 to 2:39. However TV consumption as a whole has increased by 38 minutes. This increase can be partially attributed to mobile media as kids watch movies and videos on their cell phones, but also a continuous trend towards TV show streams being available online.

Did You Know:

• Home Internet Access has grown from 74% to 84%
• Youth with Laptops jumped from 12% to 29%
• Internet Access from the Bedroom jumped 20% to 33%
• 71% of all 8 to 18 year olds have their own TV in their rooms.
• An Average home with an 8 to 18 year old contains 3.8 TVs, 2.8 DVD/VCR players, 1 digital video recorder, 2.2 CD players, 2.5 radios, 2 computers, and 2.3 console video game players.

Youths who spend more time with media show lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment

Nearly half of all heavy users who consume more than 16 hours of media per day (21% of all 8 to 18 year olds) report having fair or poor grades compared to 23% of light users who show less than three hours of consumption. Unfortunately statistics still support that majority of parents do not engage in much regulation of media consumption.

Did You Know:

• 7th-12th grader spend 1.5 hours/day TEXTING

Media Usage Statistics Study

This report was based on a national survey of 2,002 3rd to 12th grade students and includes a subsample of 702 respondents who volunteered to complete seven-day media use diaries. This is the third of such reports by Kaiser Family Foundation.

Download the full Study Here:

Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds

It is a pretty long study with lot of great media consumption statistics to consume. We’ll try to break it down for you hear at Clean Cut Media with future posts. So be sure to come back!

Related posts:

1. You Watch 153 Hours of TV & Online 68 Hours
2. Powerful Impact of Media on Children
3. Who Regulates Online Advertising & Marketing to Children?

It has been no secret that the Chinese government censors the media. China has received great criticism over their internet censorship such as blocking historical content that hurts the government’s image (i.e. tiananmen square), monitoring skype message, replacing Olympic faces with “prettier” faces to enhance their image, or unfair jailing of protestors during the Beijing Olympics and lying about it.

China’s Media Control over Media

Search engines had no choice but to comply to the Chinese government’s demands in order to make inroads into China’s 1.3 billion population. Thus it is big news today that Google announced they will no longer comply and will pull out of China if needed be. This was partially a response to a sophisticated and targeted attack on their corporate infrastructure. Google found an organized attack that originated from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property. It was an attack targeting 20+ large companies from different range of businesses. However what made this attack significant was that there is strong evidence that the primary goal of the attacker was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activist. They also discovered that independent of this attack, that the email accounts of these human right activist were “routinely accessed by third parties” via phishing scams and malware placed on their computer.

Chinese Censorship History

China has been heavily criticized in the past for unfairly monitoring and putting down human rights activist. In the Beijing Olympics, China communicated as if their people were free to voice their opinions but had strict and often unfair methods of jailing anyone who would protest (most protests has to do with human rights). The Chinese government is also notorious for unfairly jailing activist as well as people of faith.

Google’s Stance on Chinese Censorship over Time

When Google launched in china, they noted “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.” It seems Google has finally had it and has thrown down the gauntlet.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Basically, no more censorship or we bounce. The choice is up to China. Whether other search engines will follow suit is still to be determined.

This isn’t the first time Google and China butted heads. China’s CIIRC (China Internet Illegal information Reporting Center) has several times made demands for specific items to be blocked and has even blocked full sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr when sites did not meet their demands.

Search Engine Shares in China: Google, Baidu, MSN, Yahoo

Yahoo had long ago pulled out of direct competition in China but since then took the tactic of making investments into local search players. Yahoo has been sued several times by pro-democracy advocates who claimed Yahoo gave personal information to the Chinese authorities. In November ComScore showed that Baidu had 62.2% of the Chinese search market while Google only had 14.1%, MSN at 5.1%. However Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing, said that Baidu’s share was closer to 58.4% in Q4 compared to 35.6% in Google. As of last tuesday, Baidu’s shares jumped in stock price.

How will China Respond to Google’s Stance on Censorship

How will China response? This is not just an issue between Google and China, but a political issue. Google doesn’t have the power to convince China to change it’s ways and China will not lose out on much by letting Google go, however China can’t be happy with bad press they are receiving through this ordeal and the political aftermath if Google eventually has to leave.

[UPDATE] As expected, China gave an indifferent response. Basically anyone who wants to do business in China must follow their laws. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, “The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet.” If Google sticks to their guns, they’ll have to simply move their way out of China. But should they?

• What do you think? Will Google have to leave or will there be some resolution?
• What is your position on this?
• Will China ever blink or will they continue to hold an iron grip on it’s media?

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Google still reigns the search world with 65% search share (data from comScore Oct). Yahoo currently holds shy of 19% search share though that figure is expected to rise once the Yahoo/ Microsoft deal is complete.

You’ll find the data quite revealing about what our culture truly cares about.

Note that these are searches on Yahoo & Bing. This does not include Google.

The Top 10 Searches in 2009 (Yahoo)

Top 10 Overall Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson (Celebrity)
2. Twilight (Movie)
3. WWE (TV – Wrestling)
4. Megan Fox (Celebrity)
5. Britney Spears (Celebrity)
6. Naruto (TV – Cartoon)
7. American Idol (TV)
8. Kim Kardashian (Celebrity)
9. NASCAR (Sport)
10. Runescape (Game)

Top 10 Mobile Searches for 2009

1. Megan Fox
2. Mobile Games
3. Michael Jackson
4. Movies
5. Rihanna
6. Mail
7. Lady Gaga
8. NFL
9. Ringtones
10. iPhone

Top 10 Economy-Related Searches for 2009

1. Coupons
2. Unemployment
3. Stimulus Plan
4. Cash for Clunkers
5. Student Loans
6. IRS Refund
7. Foreclosures
8. Government Jobs
9. Bernard Madoff
10. Health Care Bill

Top Obama Searches for 2009

1. Obama Inauguration
2. Obama Biography
3. Obama Speech
4. Obama Stimulus Plan
5. Obama Family
6. Obama Health Care Reform
7. Obama Approval Ratings
8. Obama Facebook
9. Obama Overseas (a roundup of his numerous travels)
10. Obama Dramas (a roundup of controversies)

Top 10 Celebrity Farewell Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson
2. Farrah Fawcett
3. Patrick Swayze
4. Natasha Richardson
5. Jett Travolta
6. Billy Mays
7. David Carradine
8. Steve McNair
9. Jade Goody
10. Ted Kennedy

Top 10 Sudden-Fame Searches for 2009

1. Jon & Kate Gosselin
2. Erin Andrews
3. Susan Boyle
4. Kris Allen & Adam Lambert
5. Nadya Suleman
6. Carrie Prejean
7. Governor Mark Sanford
8. Portuguese Water Dog
9. Falcon Heene
10. Sonia Sotomayor

The Top 10 Searches in 2009 (Bing)

10. Jaycee Dugard: National News. Jaycee was kidnapped in 1991 and was found on August 2009.

9. Billy Mays: Passed away in June 2009. Famous pitchman.

8. Jon and Kate Gosselin: Their fallout in their marriage was huge news in 2009. Former stars of Jon and Kate Plus

7. Cash for Clunkers: US government program to replace less fuel efficient vehicles with newer, more fuel-economic cars.

6. Patrick Swayze: Famous Actor who passed away in September 2009.

5. Farrah Fawcett: Famous Actress who passed away in June 2009.

4. Stock Market

3. Swine Flu: Huge health concerns in 2009 over this virus.

2. Twitter

1. Michael Jackson: Pop icon, his passing in June was huge news. The internet went wild – never has the world seen such a huge response online.

Very interesting to see Yahoo is more media centric than bing. Part of the reason is that Yahoo is also defined as a PORTAL than a SEARCH ENGINE. A PORTAL is a site someone visits to access all their information (news, mail, sports, finance, weather etc).

• Do any of these search rankings surprise you?
• How do you feel about the fact that the highest search terms are mostly about celebrities? (Yahoo: 4 of top 10 searches are celebrity related)
• What does this say about our culture?

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1. Kids Consuming More Online Content
2. Bias of American Media – Influence of Media Money
3. South Korea: World’s Fastest Internet, PC Gaming Capital

Average American watches 153 Hours of TV & online 68 Hours per Month

A new report for the Nielsen Company reported that in September 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent approximately 68 hours online per month. The figure may not seem all that staggering, but consider this: The average American watches 153 hours of television per month (1Q 2009) [Nielsen's A2M2 Three Screen Report].

2 Hours per day online. 3 Hours per day TV. Just between those two mediums that is 5 hours per day spent in front of a TV or a cruising the internet. An average American is also exposed to an hour worth of TV ads every single day! Everyone should be familiar with how the media influences and shapes our views both from childhood and throughout our adulthood. Whether it is overall happiness or direct issues such as sex and pregnancy, media has such a power influence on our outlook on life. Thus the rising trend of media engagement is very alarming.

Online Usage Statistics – 68 Hours Per Month? How?

Online Usage Statistics – Where are users going?

Online Users visits almost 2700 websites and spends about a minute per site. The average user spent 1 hour and 53 minutes a month on Google and 3 hours and 8 minutes on Yahoo. Users also average 5 hours and 24 minutes on Facebook.

Media Consumption up across the board

Ameericans are also increasing in their media consumption across most mediums. Hours spent watching TV is at an all time high. 153 hours in 1Q and 141 Hours in 2Q – both all time highs compared to past years. The number of people watching mobile video is up 70% from last year.

Other Interesting Media Consumption Facts and Trends

• Average U.S. home in 2009 has 2.5 people but 2.86 television sets.
• 54% of American homes had 3 or more TV sets at home.
• Mobile video viewing has increased 70% in 2009 versus 2008.

Let us know your thoughts!

• What are your first thoughts about the sheer number of ours spent watching TV and on the internet?
• Do you find this alarming as well?
• How long do you think it will take for Internet Use to Catch up to TV?
• What media medium do you use the most? How many hours are you on the Internet?

Related posts:

1. Children Media Consumption: 7.5 Hours a Day
2. Kids Consuming More Online Content
3. Late Night Internet Statistics: Online Videos, Games & Chat