Instagram has 13m users and 7 employees

"The popular photo app that’s responsible for flooding the internet with fuzzy, low-contrast, retro images of cats, hipsters and urban street scenes shows no sign of slowing down.
Of course we’re talking about Instagram and its iPhone-only app for sharing stylized photos. The startup attracted 12 million users in just over a year on the App Store. By early November, the small company — and we mean small; Instagram has just seven employees — grabbed another million and now boasts well over 13 million application users, co-founder Kevin Systrom shared with VentureBeat."

Source:  VentureBeat, 18th November 2011

Earlier - 10m users announced in September

Paypal's global mobile payments were 516% higher Y-o-Y on Black Friday 2011

"By using their mobile devices, shoppers have access to a “mall” in the palm of their hand, complete with millions of products and simple, secure payments, to find and buy the hottest holiday deals. An increasing number of shoppers turned to their mobile devices on Black Friday to shop wherever, whenever.
- eBay Mobile announced that shoppers in the U.S. purchased nearly two and a half times as many items via eBay Mobile this Black Friday when compared to 2010
- PayPal Mobile announced a six-fold (516%) increase in global mobile payment volume compared to 2010
- GSI Commerce announced a three-fold (254%) increase in U.S. mobile sales this Black Friday compared to 2010.
“Shoppers are increasingly choosing the convenience of mobile to find the best deals from wherever they are while avoiding big crowds and long lines,” said Steve Yankovich, vice president, Mobile, for eBay Inc. “The ability to simply pick up your phone or tablet and purchase what you want, when you want it, has become an attractive alternative to shoppers in record numbers this holiday season.”"
Source:  Press release from eBay, 26th November 2011

40% of mobile users in Canada have a smartphone

"8 million people in Canada owned smartphones in September 2011, representing 40 percent of the mobile market in Canada, a gain of 7 percentage points in the past six months. RIM ranked as the top platform with 35.8 percent of the smartphone market, followed by Apple at 30.1 percent. Google Android gained ground among the competition by doubling its market share to 25.0 over the past six months. Symbian ranked fourth with 4.2 percent share, followed by Microsoft with 3.2 percent."
Source:  Data from comScore, reported in a press release, 30th November 2011

The top 20 most-followed people on Google+

Rank, name, followers
"#1 Britney Spears 807,743
#2 Larry Page 780,994
#3 Snoop Dogg 681,127
#4 Mark Zuckerberg 612,321
#5 Tyra Banks 571,843
#6 Paris Hilton 525,609
#7 Richard Branson 515,344
#8 Jessi June 512,775
#9 Sergey Brin 502,636
#10 Vic Gundotra 495,516
#11 Tom Anderson 482,796
#12 Dane Cook 473,356
#13 will.i.am 432,883
#14 Trey Ratcliff 403,858
#15 Thomas Hawk 399,687
#16 Felicia Day 388,210
#17 Dalai Lama 378,951
#18 Hugh Jackman 374,329
#19 Guy Kawasaki 368,127
#20 Ron Garan 366,370"
Source:  SocialStatisics.com, retrieved 1st December 2011
Notes:
Jesse June is a glamour model (!)
Vic Gundotra is a techie at Google
Trey Radcliff & Thomas Cook are both photo bloggers
Dane Cook is a comedian & actor
Felicia Day is an actress
Ron Garan is a NASA Astronaut
Tom Anderson is 'Tom from MySpace'
Mark Zuckerberg has seemingly never added anything - people just think it's amusing to add him
Compare to the Twitter top 10 - 7 of those are women, only 4 of the G+ top 10 are; Britney Spears is the only person to appear on both lists.  The other striking things are that it's still comparatively 'techie' and photography is popular.

Spotify is the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe

"Artists can — and do — receive very substantial revenues from Spotify, and as Spotify grows, these revenue streams will naturally continue to grow. Spotify is now the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe (IFPI, April 2011) and we’ve driven more than $150 million of revenue to rights holders (ie whoever owns the music, be it artists, publishers or labels) since our launch three years ago.”"

Source:  Statement from Spotify, quoted in Wired, 18th November 2011

Twitter has 2,400 advertisers

"Twitter makes money three ways, says Bain. Twitter sells promoted tweets, promoted trends, and ads. Many brands, for example, want to know how to increase their followers. "We've scaled from next to no advertisers to more than 2,400,' says Bain.  "We have about 100 folks working directly with advertisers and agencies all over.  We thought were going to have to answer the question, 'Why Twitter?' But no advertiser has that question.""

Source:  Twitter Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain, quoted in SFGate, 30th November 2011

Earlier - 1,600 advertisers announced in early October

Internet advertising revenue in the US rose 22% Y-o-Y in Q3 2011

"Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $7.88 billion for the third quarter of 2011, representing a 22 percent increase over the same period in 2010, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US. These figures also show a 2.7 percent uptick from the record-setting revenues of the second quarter of 2011. Results for Q3 2011 further mark the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth."

Source:  Press release from the IAB, 30th November 2011

Social, Digital & Mobile in Asia

We Are Social's Guide to Social, Digital & Mobile in Asia (Overview, Nov 2011)

View more presentations from We Are Social Singapore

The Guardian receives 1m page views a day from its Facebook app

"Facebook has released some intersting stats on its Open Graph features for media partners, which include Yahoo! News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Daily,  that it announced at f8. We already know that Facebook is a major driver of news traffic with twice as many getting their news via Facebook than any of social network, but the amount of traffic it is driving on a daily basis is striking.
The Guardian is picking up around one million pageviews a day while the Washington Post is getting 3.5 million monthly readers for its social reader app. The Independent has in excess of one million monthly active users are connecting their Facebook accounts and Yahoo News has seen a 600% increase in traffic.
That provides traffic that papers like the Guardian can sell ads against and it is also sending younger readers their way.
[...]
The Guardian: Built an app for Facebook.com and has been installed by nearly four million people, generating, on average, almost a million extra page impressions every day. Additionally, over half of the app’s users are 24 and under, “traditionally a very hard-to-reach demographic for news organizations,” said Andrew Miller, chief executive officer of Guardian Media Group."

Source:  The Wall Blog, 30th November 2011