Daily Bits

Internet

Top 100 Social Brands of 2009, iPhone Tops Again

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Vitrue, a social media management company has just released their Top 100 Social Brands of 2009. For the second time, iPhone is again at the number 1. Following the iPhone are Disney, CNN, MTV, MTV and NBA.

Aside from iPhone other social brands that show significant trend in 2009 are game consoles with Nintendo Wii at #7, PlayStation at #13, and Nintendo at #21. Adidas also made it to the top of the list among the sports apparel brands.  For Sports, NBA and MLB are among the most talked about brands.

For the fashion circuit, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Burberry made it to the top of the list while media brands such as CNN, MTV, ESPN, CBS among others also made some noise in 2009.

Incidentally, don’t be surprised if you can’t find Google, Facebok and Twitter on the list. According to Vitrue, they omitted these companies from the list since they are only measuring those that use social technology and not the companies who are the technology themselves.

Vitrue’s analysis comprised on over 2,000 popular brands on the social web.

Here’s the Top 100 Social Brands of 2009 according to Vitrue. [Read more…] about Top 100 Social Brands of 2009, iPhone Tops Again

Facebook Had a Better Christmas than Google

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For the first time in its history, Facebook has become the most visited website in the United States on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. According to Experian Hitwise via a Twitter post, Facebook which was number two most visited website on the same day last year has dislodged Google which was now at the no. 2 spot.

Of course this is not surprising since Facebook users have probably used the site to communicate with their family and friends through the site, exchanging Holiday greetings and sharing photos of their celebration. And this might seem that email has become a thing of the past during this time of the year.

Interestingly, all through out 2009, Facebook has been running third behind Google and Yahoo! Mail despite being the most popular search query from all major search engines, as noted by Hitwise.

That’s worth noting. HitWise reported last year that Facebook was number two behind Google on Christmas. People say that Facebook vs. Google will be the Web’s biggest battle in coming years – but it looks like Facebook has already won the battle for Christmas.

Another interesting point to mention is the fact that the surge of site visits on Facebook happened amidst controversial privacy issues hurled at Facebook this year. Either users no longer mind these issues or they just couldn’t find a better and faster way to communicate with their friends and family during the Holiday Season.

With 2010 just a few days away, it would be interesting to see whether Facebook can sustain this trend and how Google will possibly react.

Cool Weather App for Star Wars Fans

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There are many great weather apps out there but nothing comes close to the coolness factor of Tom Scott’s weather app which was made for Star Wars fan. You see, apart from telling you the weather in a particular place which you enter on the site’s search box, the site also gives you different backgrounds and commentaries mentioning the different locations in the Star Wars universe.

So depending on which city you’re from, you will get weather commentaries such as:

“Oh, 9C Fair. It’s like Naboo out there. Temperate, dry and fairly pleasant.”

“Hmm, 9C, Partly Cloudy?, It’s like Endor out there. Temperate but grey and cloudy”

Well, of course aside from the commentaries, the weather report is actually pretty accurate because the site fetches weather data from Yahoo Weather.

And while you’re at it, you might want to check out Tom Scott’s other creation which includes – Two Drums and Cymbal Fall Off a Cliff, The Corruscant Juggling Club and more. They are pretty cool stuff and makes you think that this guy is really enjoying his work.

Who is Tom Scott? Here’s a short bio:

Tom Scott is a geek comedian. He won the 2008 Kevin Greening Award for Creativity at the Student Radio Awards, once got in trouble with the Cabinet Officefor his version of their Preparing for Emergencies site, and has been described as a”sometime internet funny man” by The Register.

He runs the British part of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and accidentally got elected as president of his students’ union after running as “Mad Cap’n Tom”.

His work has been shown on BBC One, Channel 4, and at the paraflows net-art exhibition in Vienna.

He also once got five gold runs on ‘Blockbusters’.

So, go check out the the Star Wars Weather app and tell us, how’s the weather out there?

Via Download Squad

Adult Internet Users Spend 13 Hours Online Weekly

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Harris Poll has released some interesting numbers on the daily usage patterns of Internet users. The survey which was conducted through telephone interviews with respondents reveal that the number of hours spent online by adult Internet now totals to 13 hours on a weekly basis. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive between July 7 and 12 and October 13 and 18.

It’s interesting to note that over the years, the average hours spent online by Internet users have increased consistently. From 1999 to 2002 it was only 7 hours. This increased to 8 to 9 hours in 2003-2005 then to 11 hours in 2007 before reaching  14 hours in 2008.

While this year’s 13 hours is less than the number of hours spent online in 2008, it is quite understandable since more people resort to going online due to the economic recession and the start of the U.S. election campaign. And now that the economy has gone back to its feet, Americans are gradually shifting from doing things online to going back to their daily chores in the offline world. [Read more…] about Adult Internet Users Spend 13 Hours Online Weekly

FarmVille, FML, Swine Flu Top Facebook’s Status Updates in 2009

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Following the tradition of year-end list, Facebook released its Memology: Top  which according to the Facebook blog is a study of how “memes” or new ideas and trends spread on Facebook, through member’s status updates and wall postings. Facebook mapped the top trending words and phrases in the U.S. Facebook members to come up with this 2009 list.

If you’ve been following similar annual trend list released by other websites including Google, Twitter and YouTube where the top trends are mostly entertainment and global affairs related, the top trends on Facebook clings more on personal topics. This is of course understandable since Facebook networks are more personalized.

Here’s Facebook’s explanation on how they came up with the list:

To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.

So, here goes Facebook’s Top 5 Status Trends of 2009:

1. Facebook Applications – specific words: Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living

2. FML – specific words: F_ _ k My Life

3. Swine Flu – specific words – Flu, Swine Flu, H1N1

4. Celebrity Deaths – specific words: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays

5. Family – specific words: family, mom, dad, son, daughter, kids

Study Reveals Most Active People Online are Educated

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I don’t know if this report by Eurostat is rather comforting or not. But according to the report people who spend most time online are the most educated member of the society.

The study was conducted on European households with at least one person aged 16-74.  And the study found out that 90% of those who used the Internet on a regular basic  have high formal education. Age-wise though, the numbers are insignificant but it is also worth noting that most of these people belong to the 16-24 age range.

But of course the study was European-based and we could probably assume that Europe probably has one of the highest literacy rate among the developed countries. So, it is rather  no disturbing if majority of those who spend time online are educated because their difference with the not-so-educated Europeans may not be that huge.

But what if this study is to be carried out in the developing countries where literacy is inferior with that of the European countries. Of course, the result might be the same. But what is not so comforting is the fact that if education plays a vital role into IT literacy and usage, what happens now with the majority of uneducated people in the developing countries? Will they be given a chance to learn about technology and how it can change one’s daily life?

And how could the developing countries cope up with the technological revolution if majority of  their population remains uneducated and technologically deprived?