Changes Is Good

(Pontificate 1999)
Two reports have come out this month that are worth taking a look at. The first is from the phoenix of Wall Street, Mary Meeker, who has survived greed and scandals to once again reign as one of the leading Internet pundits. The second is David Sifry’s quarterly report on the “State of the Blogosphere”, which unfortunately continues to use a linear ranking of the Blogosphere rather then adopting my Caste system. If you’er up for a PowerPoint and some good reading then you’d be well served to take a look at both of these reports in detail, but if your happy with the talking points, I’ve summarized them below for you to use when pontificating.
At this years Web 2.0 conference Mary Meeker gave part 3 of her epic presentation trilogy entitled “State of the Internet”. In this wide ranging presentation everything from key metrics of Internet growth (with mandatory projections) to pervasive Internet mythologies, is addressed or debunked using a slick chart on a dark slide. The The key take-aways from the report are:

• Video, partnerships and design are key for the big boys
• Search, classifieds and video are under monetized
• Community, UGC, personalization are critical
• Internet traffic is mostly P2P (60%)
• Half of P2P traffic is BitTorrent
• Broadband penetration will be >50% by 2011
• International is gonna be big

If you’ve read the paper (or this blog) and know anything about the net then most of this isnt particularly new, but its always good to have it confirmed by someone who gets paid millions of dollars to put it on a slide with charts and numbers next to it. The one line summary of the presentation is: There is lots of room in both ads and audience for the big boys to grow and grow they should just remember little guys dont exist and everything is monitizable. If you need presentation fodder or are writing a biz plan this report is an excellent resource for almost any Internet business you want to launch. Jokes aside it really is good info go get it.

David Sifry takes a quarterly look at the Blogoshere through the lens of the stats generated by Technorati, which is tracking some 57 million blogs. David’s report differs somewhat from Pew’s more authoritative findings, but he post more frequently and has much better graphics so his information is clearly more valid. His report covers everything you might want to know about the Blogosphere and being the helpful Internet veteran that he is, he also provides a summary at the end which you can use to sound like you speak WebGeek without actually reading his post.

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati’s filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.