This week I finally upgraded my Internet Explorer for test purposes and it prompted me to look into the web market share. The last time I did so was about two years ago and I reckon it might be interesting to investigate the latest browser war statistics, as it seems to me that more and more people are switching over to Chrome and Firefox (with the increase of Mac users – and subsequently Safari – also playing a role). SAbest also asked the following question on our Facebook page this week: “Browser wars! What’s your favourite browser – Firefox, Chrome, or Explorer?”. We should perhaps have added Safari, but no biggie. The overwhelming majority of people voted for Chrome (including me – I will briefly discuss at the end of this article what my reasons are).

So let’s take a look at the latest (February 2012) stats from W3Counter. (http://www.w3counter.com)

These stats reflect a different picture than the one that was prevalent about two or three years ago. I think it is safe to say that, unless Microsoft comes out with a totally fresh and usable product, both Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox will surpass it in the near future. Chrome is by far the fastest growing browser, having gone from nearly non-existent in early 2008 to the browser with the second biggest share in 2012. In that same time period Internet Explorer’s usage has nearly halved. It should be noted that these statistics represent all the versions of a given browser as a collective whole. For example: Internet Explorer 8 usage is at 14.71%, Chrome 17 at 14.4% and so on – with the total for all Internet Explorer versions making up 30.7%, Chrome 25.1%, Firefox 24.4% etc.

I am sure many web developers and designers would smile when looking at the latest Web Browser Market share statistics. It seems as if the days of endless struggle with older versions of Internet Explorer might be a thing of the past very soon.

Personally, I use and prefer Google Chrome. What first drew me towards it back in 2008 was the screen real estate. The bottom bar disappeared and the top and navigational bar minimalistic, allowing for an overall clean and visually pleasing browser. Secondly, I loved Chrome’s speed.

In the end however, the important thing is that the game has changed. Microsoft no longer has monopoly, competition is healthy.  Who knows – Microsoft might still come back and surprise, but at the moment the picture is different. The browser war has been fought again and again and it seems there just might be a new winner soon.

The Academy Awards 2012 gave the Social Media community a lot to talk about as the number of Tweets and Facebook updates about Hollywood’s biggest night more than tripled from last year. Bluefin Labs reported that there was 3.4 million Oscar-related comments on Facebook and Twitter this year, up from 966,00 for the 2011 Academy Awards. “It was pretty big and pretty healthy growth from last year,” said Tom Thai, vice president of marketing for the Massachusetts-based Bluefin Labs.

The Infografic below outlines the Social Media Buzz for the Oscars 2012.

Some interesting finding in this Infographic is that

• The Help generated the most likes on Facebook and Tweets on Twitter, but is did not top the list in terms of Award Nominations,
• Hugo received the highest number of Award Nominations but not much social media comments or tweets.
• Meryl Streep generated the largest global share of voice of all the actresses nominated for an Oscar.

Being part of the Social Media community is like being there at the Oscars.

I think I speak for many of us when I say that, apart from reading a lot of normal books I also enjoy spending time reading magazines on work related topics and hobbies. This means that we buy on average between 4 and 8 magazines a month. The biggest problem with this is where do you keep all of these magazines? You can only store so much before you need to start throwing them away. Most of the time I want to keep the magazines as I use them to reference back to – sometimes only a couple of months down the line.

When I just got my new iPad, I was enthralled by the notion of the newsstand app where you can subscribe to your favorite magazines, but then realized the magazine subscriptions are mainly for international publications and not the local South African ones I prefer to read.
It was then that I discovered mysubs and zinio, apps that allow you to download almost every local and international magazine. They even have the Afrikaans versions of these magazines available for certain editions.

This immediately solves magazine storage issue as I can subscribe to almost all the magazines I read as well as buy previous editions. My current storage stash can now be dissolved as I acquire my favourites, and I can now carry the whole collection around wherever I go – allowing for ease of access and reference.

You can find these apps and other similar apps on the Apple store or the Android store for your tablet. If you haven’t been able to justify spoiling yourself with a tablet, this just might be a good enough reason to go and get one.

YouTube has been gearing up to take on Television Networks with changes like releasing a new APP for Google TV & announcing some of the partnerships for the channels they’re preparing to add. Less publically, but as impactful, they’ve also made a few changes to their dealings with content owners.

YouTube will now be displaying content from Video Partners & Content Producers who share revenue with them on all platforms available.

Content owners had previously been able to opt out of their videos being displayed by YouTube on some devices, some in the hopes that they could make more money through other Video distributors such as Netflix. YouTube informed Partners at the end of January that they now plan to display their content everywhere & needed them to sign off on this deal so they may go on with the change.

Video Makers who are working with YouTube through its new Channels Programme have been signing up with Multi-Platform distribution agreed upon as a condition. Big Media Companies such as Vevo will continue to keep some of their content off certain platforms such as the YouTube app on the iPhone, because of technical issues like ad servers and branding, while other public video Creators (some of which have Millions of views & followers) will have to conform to the new rules.

As YouTube has such a wide reach, Video Makers who want to ensure their Videos get maximum reach will continue to share them on YouTube, though some may not be happy with what they may see as empowering a monopoly.

Reference:

http://allthingsd.com/20120213/youtubes-offer-video-makers-cant-refuse-were-putting-all-your-stuff-everywhere/

Although he delayed it as long as he could, on Wednesday 1st February 2012, Facebook Founder & CEO Mark Zuckerburg filed their S-1 Documents[1] disclosing the company’s plans to seek $5 Billion ahead of an I.P.O.(Initial Public Offering) which will beat Google’s 2004 offering to become the world’s largest initial public offering of an Internet company. Facebook stocks, & those of companies with even miniscule associations to Facebook went, “soaring in trading”[2].

The release of their S-1 Documents revealed interesting information about Facebook’s business operations. Most of the Social Network’s revenue is generated from advertising & associated fees, their payment infrastructure enables users to buy virtual and digital goods from their Platform developers. Of the $3.71 Billion[1] revenue generated in 2011, $445 million was made through virtual goods sold by Zynga Games who account for approximately 12% of Facebook’s revenue with Facebook taking 30% of all Virtual Goods sold by Zynga Games, such as FarmVille and CityVille.

Facebook’s public offering will make it a public company, enabling anyone to buy shares in the company. Though this means huge amounts of cashflow for the company to further their visions, it also means monetising the company which could compromise Mark Zucherburg’s idealistic & user based approach to running the pioneer social network. Just as Apple challenged Microsoft for Software supremacy, Facebook now challenges Google for Internet supremacy. To strengthen this challenge, they will have to begin to split focus as their users, who have always been at the fore of their business and who form the basis of the business value proposition will now become the product of their business, firstly, and secondly the shareholders will now also need to see returns on their investments.

The company is expected to be listed on New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq in a few months and investors from around the world will be watching eagerly to see how this long awaited listing performs. Internet advertisers will be looking to see what this does to the performance of their ads, especially in comparison to long dominant Google.

References:
[1]: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm
[2]: http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/facebook-ipo-tech-stocks/