Collectively, porn and other films make up 71% of illegally shared files

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"Envisional’s researchers looked through the 10,000 most popular files being managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker and broke it down by type. Pornography was, err, on top, with films coming next in popularity. Music sits way down the list.
The percentage obviously depends on just where you place your cutoff. The Pirate Bay’s overall top 100, for instance, has 10 recent albums in its list (the rest is almost exclusively video content). Still, the disparity in the numbers are eye-popping; pirates want movies more than music, and by a significant margin."
Source:  Research by Envisional & NBC Universal, reported by Wired, 3rd February 2011
Full study (pdf) here

Click rates on Facebook ads fell from 2009 to 2010, while the cost per click rose

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"Facebook advertising is predicted to hit US$4 billion this year, which is  twice the volume of 2010 spending according to eMarketer. While brands are rapidly investing in the space, they lack comparative experience to assess how well their campaigns are performing. Webtrends has analyzed  over eleven thousand campaigns to provide performance benchmarks brands can use to evaluate their own campaign performance.
The Webtrends database is a very large sample given the relatively young age of the Facebook ad network (see the stats at left). We focused on a few key metrics:
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Cost per Click (CPC)
• Cost per Thousand (CPM)
• Cost per Fan (CPF)
LESS cLickS for MorE MonEy
From 2009 to 2010 the average CTR dropped while the costs increased. This is a typical pattern for display ad networks as the audience becomes more savvy and demand causes prices to rise. Brands investing now will save money building their Facebook ad programs now by taking advantage of currently low rates that will continue to increase over time. Facebook’s top advertisers have increased their ad spend 10 fold."
Source:  Facebook Advertising Performance Benchmarks & Insights Whitepaper from Webtrends, 21st January 1011
(Lots more data including demographics in the full document)
Note on the data:
"Webtrends has amassed a large database of Facebook advertising campaign results. Here are a few stats on the volume of data analyzed for this report.
4.5 billion impressions
2.2 million clicks
11.2 thousand ads
1.5 thousand campaigns"

Less than 15% of Wikipedia's contributors are women

"In 10 short years, Wikipedia has accomplished some remarkable goals. More than 3.5 million articles in English? Done. More than 250 languages? Sure.
Why are there so many more men than women contributing to a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"?
But another number has proved to be an intractable obstacle for the online encyclopedia: surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.
About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.
Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women."
Source:  New York Times, 30th January 2011

Google's mobile ad network AdMob receives 2bn ad requests per day

"The AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day.  This represents an increase of more than 4x in the last twelve months.
Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than one billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from one country just a year ago.
The 10 countries in Western Europe with the most ad requests all experienced a greater than 400% growth in ad requests in 2010.
More than half of AdMob's top 50 brand advertising campaigns in December 2010 used the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
Ad Impressions for AdMob grew more than 500% in the past year from the AdMob Interstitial Ad Unit (NEW)
There are now over 50,000 publishers in the AdMob network that support their mobile businesses with mobile advertising (NEW)
Hundreds of mobile publishers, including Angry Birds, are earning over $100,000 per month from AdMob ads."
Source:  Google Mobile blog, 31st January 2011

The online & offline habits of teen and tween girls

"Media Habits & Relationships
'Being with friends' (in the real world) is what girls across all age groups (66%) enjoy doing, followed by 'shopping' and 'listening to music'. And when it comes to shortened attention spans, the research shows that a third (30%) of Gen Z girls regularly watch TV shows online for longer than 10 minutes.
Play & Games
Gaming has become a commonplace activity among a relatively new 'casual gamers' user group, but has the market now reached saturation? Not where girls are concerned. Half (49%) of older teens say they never spend time with portable gaming devices or console games. Gaming is more entrenched in younger girls lives, with 35% of 12 and under personally owning a portable gaming device. Social gaming habits, such as playing Farmville, CItyVille, Cafe World and Sims regularly, are prevalent, although vary depending on country: Brazil and Poland top the list (41% and 40%) for girls playing MMOGs (massive multiplayer online games) with Germany and France the lowest (21% and 22%). In the UK, 34% of girls play regularly and in the US the figure is 29%.
Spending Power
Girls like to shop - scoring it as their second favorite activity - but does their lack of plastic hamper their spending money online? It appears not. One in five girls aged 12 and under regularly visit online shopping sites, rising to one in four once they become teenagers. The majority of teenage girls are still buying products on the high street or at a shopping center rather than online, but this shopping medium is far from off limits - 13% of Generation Z girls regularly purchase products online regardless of age.
    Highlights:

    Under 12s
        - 64% use a gaming console
        - Only 35% put listening to music in their top 5 activities
        - More than 60% own a mobile phone
        - More than 60% never read a newspaper
        - Prefer instant messenger to social networks

    13-15 year olds
        - More than 45% say listening to music is one of their favorite
          activities
        - Almost 80% own a mobile
        - YouTube, followed by Facebook, are their favorite social networks
        - 25% regularly visit online shopping sites although only 13%
          Purchase products
        - Begin using mobile web and mobile social networks

    16-18 year olds
        - Most interested in music - nearly 50% list it in their top 5
          activities
        - Nearly 80% own a mobile
        - Are most likely to read newspapers
        - Are least likely to use a gaming console
        - The heaviest media users
        - More likely to use social networks rather than instant messages"
Source:  Press release from Stardoll and Carat, 27th January 2011
About the research
The research was conducted within the virtual world of Stardoll (http://www.stardoll.com), and the total number of respondents was 11,000. The study was conducted in August 2010 using Questback's advance survey tool EasyResearch. Respondents were recruited randomly on Stardoll.com by sending the survey to Stardoll members within the 11 markets (Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, UK and US).

26% of mobile apps are opened only once after download

"With 300,000 iPhone apps and 200,000 Android apps available for download, consumers aren’t willing to tolerate apps that at first sight don’t meet their standards.
Twenty-six percent of apps are only opened once after download, according to a study by software company Localytics.
Using its real-time app analytics tool, Localytics compiled data in 2010 about new users of thousands of Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 apps.
If these users did not open the apps a second time before January 26, 2011, they were counted as one-time users. "
Source:  Data from Localytics, reported by Mashable, 2nd February 2011

Sales of Android devices overtook sales of Symbian devices in Q4 2010

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"Canalys today published its final Q4 2010 global country-level smart phone market data, which revealed that Google’s Android has become the leading platform. Shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia’s Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smart phone vendor, with a share of 28%. The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smart phone market continue to soar, with shipments of 101.2 million units representing year-on-year growth of 89%. The final quarter took shipments for the year to fractionally below 300 million units, with an annual growth rate of 80% over 2009 (see table below).
In Q4 2010, volumes of Google OS-based smart phones (Android, OMS and Tapas) were again boosted by strong performances from a number of vendors, notably LG, Samsung, Acer and HTC, whose volumes across these platforms grew 4,127%, 1,474%, 709% and 371% respectively year-on-year. HTC and Samsung together accounted for nearly 45% of Google OS-based handset shipments."

Source:  Press release from Canalys, 31st January 2011