Posts tagged Million
[Data Visualization] How Yahoo’s Homepage Delivers Personalized News to 700 Million People
Feb 10th
With all the attention focused on Facebook and Google, it’s sometimes easy to forget how many people visit Yahoo on a typical day. The site has over 700 million users and gets a massive amount of page views each day. As the company struggles to figure out what its future focus should be, one thing they’ve prioritized highly is content.
Every day, Yahoo displays about 13 million different news story combination on its homepage. Those stories are personalized based on demographic data and reading behavior, and the company keeps track of what kind of stories do well with which groups of people.
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To do that, Yahoo utilizes a complex set of algorithms it calls the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (CORE). The system crunches 1.2 terabytes of data per hour to determine which stories to deliver to which users. The result is a line-up of stories on the homepage that’s customized for each user, based on calculations that take milliseconds to crunch as the page loads. It also lead to a substantial increase in engagement on Yahoo’s site, where click-throughs to news stories have increased by 300% since this technology was first implemented.
To illustrate how this works, Yahoo has created an interactive data visualization that shows visitor traffic data in nearly real time. Using it, one can drill down into specific age groups, genders and story types to see what people’s aggregate reading habits look like.
You can view and play with the data visualization here. They even designed the UI in HTML5 rather than Flash so you can check it out on your iPad.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How Yahoo’s Homepage Delivers Personalized News to 700 Million People (Visualization)
Feb 10th
With all the attention focused on sites like Facebook and Google’s properties, it’s sometimes easy to forget how many people visit Yahoo on a typical day. The site has over 700 million users and gets a massive amount of page views each day. As the company struggles to figure out what its future focus should be, one thing they’ve prioritized highly is content.
Every day, Yahoo displays about 13 million different news story combination on its homepage. Those stories are personalized based on demographic data and reading behavior, and the company keeps track of what kind of stories do well with which groups of people.
Sponsor
To do that, Yahoo utilizes a complex set of algorithms it calls the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (CORE). The system crunches 1.2 terabytes of data per hour to determine which stories to deliver to which users. The result is a line-up of stories on the homepage that’s customized for each user, based on calculations that take milliseconds to crunch as the page loads. It’s also lead to a substantial increase in engagement on Yahoo’s engagement, where click-throughs to news stories have increased by 300% since this technology was first implemented.
To illustrate how this works, Yahoo has created an interactive data visualization that shows visitor traffic data in nearly real time. Using it, one can drill down into specific age groups, genders and story types to see what people’s aggregate reading habits look like.
You can view and play with the data visualization here. They even designed the UI in HTML5 rather than Flash so you can check it out on your iPad.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Infographic: ShutterStock Reaches 200 Million Image Downloads
Feb 7th
Shutterstock.com claims it is the first such venture to reach a total of 200 million downloads of licensed images of stock photography, vector graphics and other illustrations. “Searching the word ‘networking’ used to return images of handshakes and business contacts; now it’s all about online social networking,” says Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of the company.
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Yes, images about cats lead the way, no surprise with over 400,000 downloads, surpassing “only” 79,000 downloads of last year’s Royal Wedding. But what is interesting is that vector graphic downloads are on the increase, and vintage images are also up. Who knew the Internets could be so nostalgic?
Shutterstock has been providing licensed images to businesses, agencies and media organizations since 2004 and has more than 17 million images online.
Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses Shutterstock for some of its post illustrations.
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Bing Out Of “Betaphase” In Germany, Claims 10 Million Users
Jan 27th
Bing is reportedly now out of betaphase in Deutschland. According to Microsoft, Bing has 10 million users or 20 percent of active internet users in Germany: Mittlerweile benutzen fast 10 Millionen Nutzer in Deutschland regelmäßig Bing, das sind 20 Prozent der aktiven Internetnutzer hierzulande….
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
iOS Developers Take Home $700 Million in Q1
Jan 24th
Apple just blew everybody out of the water. It is astonishing, really. Revenue of $46.33 billion? Yeah, Greece called. It is looking for a bailout. Anyway, there is one number that is making mobile developers across the world salivate: $700 million.
That is the amount that Apple paid out to iOS developers in the last quarter. Apple has paid out $4 billion cumulatively to iOS developers through the App Store. If we extrapolate those numbers considering Apple’s 30% take of App Store purchases, the company did $1 billion in gross sales through the App Store in the quarter. Mobile developers: this is the carrot you are chasing.
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We have written several times that it is unlikely that developers will ditch iOS in favor of writing for other platforms, such as Android or Windows Phone. There is too much money to be made in iOS for developers to choose and Android-first strategy, unless they are looking at some market inefficiencies that could be better served by developing for something other than iOS. We have seen some developers focus on RIM for that specific reason.
There are 550,000 apps in the App Store according to Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer and that includes 170,000 for the iPad (a number that could be misleading as many iPad apps are made with the “+” designation that means they function on both the iPad and iPhone). If we figure that the Android Market is generating even 50% of what the App Store does, that makes mobile applications about a $1.5 billion quarterly market or $6 billion a year. That is probably a high estimate considering that Apple’s last quarter happened to coincide with the holiday shopping season (Oppenheimer did note a lot of activity on iTunes and the App Store on Dec. 25).
Note, we are talking gross revenue here, not just application sales. That would include in-app purchases as well. What this does not include is money made through advertising within mobile apps, which makes the number quite a bit higher. Google does not take a cut for itself with 70% going to developers and 30% split among various parties like payment processors.
For 2012, perhaps $6 billion is not low at all between Andriod and iOS app revenue. Smartphones such as the iPhone 4S and new Android devices continue to make their way into more and more hands. Apple has sold 315 million iOS devices in its history and Android still technically outsells Apple devices. There were 37 million iOS devices sold in the last quarter and about 15 million iPads. Estimates place Android sales for the quarter within the 60-65 million range.
The fact of the matter is that there will be money to be made by some smart entrepreneurs looking to make some great apps in the near future. Developers, it is time to cast your net. Working across both iOS and Android, there is a decent living to be made writing mobile applications.
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Nearly 1 Million People Jailbroke Their iPhone or iPad Over the Weekend
Jan 24th
People sure do love jailbreaking their iOS devices. In fact, after Friday’s launch of the Absinthe A5 tool, jailbreaking iOS 5 on A5-powered devices was almost as popular as the iPhone 4S itself when it first launched.
Nearly 1 million people jailbroke their iPhone 4S or iPad 2 between Friday and Monday, according a blog post from the Chronic-Dev Team, who took the lead in developing the untethered solution for jailbreaking iOS 5 on Apple’s newest gadgets.
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News of Friday’s launch of Absinthe A5 temporarily crashed the greenpois0n site, as it evidently gave hundreds of thousands of users a fun weekend mini-project. The initial tool was only released for Mac OS X, but a Windows version quickly followed over the weekend.
Not surprisingly, the iPhone 4S was the most-jailbroken device with over 491,325 phones broken free from the restrictions of the iTunes App Store. Since iOS 5 came pre-installed on the iPhone 4S, this is the first time its owners could jailbreak the device without tethering it to a computer, which is too cumbersome a process to be considered by most users. The iPad 2 saw n 308,967 new jailbreaks, on top of the 152,940 second generation iPads running iOS 4 that were re-jailbroken. Those users were likely waiting to upgrade to iOS 5 until this solution was available, which is one of the drawbacks of jailbreaking.
Why People Jailbreak
For devotees of the jailbreaking process, the drawbacks are vastly overshadowed by the benefits. Rather than be able to cite a single “killer app” that makes it worth it, most just prefer the general freedom and customizability it offers. That includes the ability to tweak the visual appearance of the device’s UI and run any number of unauthorized apps.
Cydia, the repository of apps for jailbroken iPhones and iPads, contains many applications that would never meet Apple’s approval requirements for inclusion in the official App Store. For some, it’s because of trademark or copyright issues, such as video game emulators or controversial music services like Grooveshark.
Quite often, the apps don’t adhere to Apple’s agreements with the carriers, who would obviously never approve of an app that lets users tether their phone to their laptop and use its data connection without paying extra. With the iPhone 4S, the feature that offers perhaps the most new potential for jailbreakers is Siri, which developers have wasted no time hacking and tinkering with.
As controversial and officially frowned-upon as the whole thing is, many of the experimental features available on jailbroken iOS devices actually end up being included in the next release of the OS. This was true of recording video, which was technically possible on a jailbroken iPhone 3G. Similarly, the overhauled Notification Center found in iOS 5 bears a striking resemblance to the notification system available on jailbroken devices running iOS 4.
Jailbreaking May Not Be Mainstream, But Its Popularity is Growing
As Apple’s gadgets continue to burn through sales records, there also appears to be a growing interest among users in doing more with their phones, much like Android device owners are already accustomed to.
Truth be told, jailbreaking probably isn’t something the average user is going to get into, given the nature of the process, its risks and the tools involved. It’s really something more geared toward tinkerers and those who want more control over what their device can do.
Given the massive number of iOS devices out in the wild, several hundred thousand new jailbreaks doesn’t come anywhere close to a constituting majority of of users. Rather, it’s the pace of the growth that’s interesting to see.
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Online SEO Idol Contest Winner Rakes In Over 100 Million IDR – Daily Markets (press release)
Jan 23rd
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Online SEO Idol Contest Winner Rakes In Over 100 Million IDR
Daily Markets (press release) With Google.com accounting for over 45% of global internet users, according to the latest Alexa.com statistics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists and experienced affiliate marketers have become vital to any organic online marketing strategy, … |
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Search In Pics: Google Boxers, 90+ Million Google+ & Gundotra Google+ Cadbury Bar
Jan 20th
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Google Boxers: Google+ Circles T-Shirt: Google Camera Google Graffiti: Vic…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
[UPDATED] Google+ Has 54 Million Daily Active Users, 90 Million Total
Jan 20th
Google just announced its Q4 earnings, and CEO Larry Page is “super excited.” Revenue for the full year was up 29%. The quarter missed Wall Street’s expectations, but Page has no reservations. It was a big quarter for Google+, and Page says that’s a key to the company’s strategy. “By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+,” he says, “we will create amazing experiences across our services.”
Page says Google+ “now has 90 million users globally,” which is more than double what he announced three months ago. This quarter, Google integrated Google+ into search, so now it’s a part of life for anyone who uses Google (unless they opt out). Page says that 60% of Google+ users “engage daily,” and 80% are active weekly. That either means Google+ has 54 million daily active users, or, as Forbes points out, it might be sleight of hand, saying only that 54 Google+ users use Google services daily. But since Google+ is built into most of Google now, including search, that distinction is pretty moot.
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One of Page’s priorities as CEO is to increase “velocity of execution,” and he touts Google+ as an example of that strategy paying off. Page says Google+ has shipped “a new feature every day since we launched in June.” That’s more than 200 updates in total. “Understanding who people are, what they care about, and the other people who matter to them is crucial if we’re going to give users what they need when they need it,” Page says.
Page says Google is trying to “double down on the really big bets we have made.” It closed many existing products last year to make space for Google+, Android, Gmail and Chrome, the projects Page focused on in today’s earnings announcement. With 65% of Web searches, 90 million Google+ users, 350 million Gmail users, 250 million Android devices and the #2 desktop browser in the world, Google has an abundance of opportunities to display its ads. What Page didn’t say in the earnings call is that the returns on those ads are in decline. Google’s average revenue per click declined by 8%, and with all these fancy new features Google is building, its costs for gaining new traffic rose by 18%.
The average Google was paid for each click dropped 8%, while the company’s “traffic acquisition cost” rose by 18%.
— Horace Dediu (@asymco) January 19, 2012
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When Does 500 Million Equal A Lot Less Than 500 Million? When Twitter Hits Its Next Milestone
Jan 19th
Much is being made out of projections by Twitter tracking service Twopcharts’s projections that Twitter will activate its 500 millionth account next month, but a closer look at the microblogging service’s growth shows anything but a steady rise.
Twitter passed the 200 million mark last February and then, on May 18, it reached 300 million accounts. That’s 50 percent growth in roughly 90 days and the milestone gave Twitter stock as one of the Big Two (at the time) social networks.
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But something happened on the way to 400 million accounts. It would be 162 days before Twitter reached the 400 million account mark on Oct. 28. Depending on what day in February Twitter reaches 500 million users, it will have taken the company 95 to 124 days to add 100 million users: better than the climb from 300 million to 400 million, but still not as fast as growth 200 million to 300 million.
Milestones like this tend to be arbitrary, but they’re especially so in Twitter’s case. The company only counts accounts that have been opened and does not factor in accounts that have been closed by Twitter or the user. By Twopchart’s estimates, about 12% of all Twitter accounts ever opened have been closed, meaning that by the time the 500 million number is reached, there may only be about 440 million existing Twitter accounts.
Facebook is expected to surpass a billion users in August, which is all the more staggering because of the company’s strict policy requiring people to register under their real names. Twitter, on the other hand, lets users open multiple accounts, and even spoof accounts or accounts for services.
There are other layers of complexity in figuring out Twitter’s reach: by its own estimates, the service has 100 million “active” users, but it’s safe to say the majority of accounts are inactive or rarely used. Twopchart has an interesting blog post full of data, including an analysis of what has happened to the 400 millionth account.
@AdenMo has tweeted just once since becoming the account number 400 million, has just three followers and is only following one account. That’s a fairly typical account, based on Twostory’s analysis and their estimate that only about 20% to 25% of new Twitter accounts convert into active Twitter accounts.
“The vast majority of new accounts only has a limited amount of followers and following, and based on the amount of tweets sent, and the submission date of last tweets, probably only a maximum of 20%-25% convert to active new twitter users, with only about 10% accounts that actively send tweets,” Twopchart said in the blog post.
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