London Riots: Twitter Traffic Surges in the UK [STATS]

 by Ben Parr

Traffic is surging to Twitter and major media websites in the UK as theLondon riots enter their fourth night.

Twitter has been the biggest beneficiary of the unrest, according to web analytics firm Experian Hitwise. The social information network accounted for 1 in every 170 UK Internet visits on August 8. Hitwise also reports that approximately 3.4 million people from the UK visited Twitter’s homepage yesterday, easily surpassing the traffic Twitter garnered during the super-injunction scandal.

The social media impact of the London Riots seems to be limited to Twitter, though. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, didn’t receive a similar traffic spike. Hitwise attributes this anomaly to the fact that Twitter’s most prolific users are located in London postal codes, while Facebook is more dominant in the northern UK.

News and media websites also gained traffic as a result of the London riots. Traffic to UK news and media sites increased by 14% between Monday and Tuesday. The BBC was the biggest benefactor, garnering a third of all Internet visits to UK news and media websites. Sky News was also a big winner, thanks to a surge in searches related to the riots.

Social media and mobile technology have been playing a major role in the riots. Rioters have been usingBlackBerry Messenger to organize their activities, while other citizens have utilized Twitter and Facebook to organize riot cleanups.

Android Now Owns 39% of Smartphone Market [STATS]

 by Christina Warren

Android retains its crown as the top smartphone operating system in the U.S., while RIM continues to falter, according to the most recent data from Nielsen.

In assessing the latest data from June, Nielsen found that 39% of the smartphone market belongs to Google’s Android operating system. Apple has 28% of the market, while RIM and the BlackBerry OS are down to 20%.

When we compare those figures with the data Nielsen released for February through May, Android is up 3%, Apple is up 2% and RIM is down 3%.

When it comes to top phone manufacturers, however, Apple is the clear winner. Like RIM, Apple has the advantage of controlling the software and the hardware for its smartphone platform. Unlike RIM, Apple sells only three smartphones in the U.S.: the iPhone 4 (AT&T), the iPhone 4 (Verizon) and the iPhone 3GS (AT&T).

HTC is the biggest Android manufacturer, according to Nielsen, with 14% of the Android market. Motorola and Samsung have 11% and 8% respectively.

Google+: The Numbers Driving Its Growth [STATS]

New data from Experian Hitwise shows that Google+ is growing fast, thanks to a young demographic and lots of traffic from other Google properties.

The web analytics firm has released its first set of data regarding Google’s new social network. While its data only extends to July 16, it provides a detailed picture into the numbers that are driving Google+’s growth.

Here are some of the most interesting stats from Experian Hitwise’s report:

• As of July 16, Google+ is the 42nd most-visited social networking site in the US and the 638th most-visited site on the web. We suspect that Google+ is even more popular now, and will gain steam when it opens to the public.
• According to Hitwise, Google+ had 1.8 million total visits last week, an increase of 283% from the previous week. Google+ has grown by a whopping 821% from the week ending on July 2, the first week Google+ was made available.
• 56% of Google+’s upstream traffic came from other Google properties last week, with 34% of that traffic coming from Google.com. And 37% of its upstream traffic came from search engines, while 21% of its traffic was driven by email.
• Google+ may not be as much of a sausagefest as some early estimates claimed. According to Hitwise, 57% of visits to Google+ were from males for the four weeks ending on July 16. That doesn’t mean that 57% of its users are male, but it’s a sign that previous estimates were off the mark.
• Google+ is dominated by young adults. Its biggest age group for the four weeks ending July 14 was the 25-34 age bracket, which accounted for 38.37% of all visits. The week before, the entire 18-34 age bracket made up just 38.11% of total visitors.
• Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco are the most dominant metropolitan areas driving traffic to Google+. Other areas with a higher proportion of visitors to Google+ than the general online population include Bowling Green, KY, Portland, OR and Bend, OR.

The truth of the matter is that none of these stats are official and Google+ is still very new, so it’s anybody’s guess as to how accurate Experian Hitwise’s actually are. Still, we think the company’s numbers make sense. While Google+ is gaining in popularity, it is still minuscule compared to Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Tagged or even MySpace.

Google’s Facebook competitor may have 18 million users, but it still has a lot of room for growth.