Lucas Ng's tumblr blog

Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry In The U.S. And Taking Share

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:06:00 +1100

Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry In The U.S. And Taking Share:

Rhea Drysdale - Champion of the SEO industry

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:03:00 +1100

Calling out Aussie SEOs to donate to Rhea Drysdale (aka She-Ra) of Outspoken Media.

Why?

Because the industry owes her for opposing some random dude named Jason Gambert (henceforth Skeletor) who filed an application to trademark the term “SEO”.

Quoting Rhea:

On April 24, 2008 I filed my notice of opposition to Jason Gambert’s “SEO” trademark application. On March 11, 2010, I won.

It took two years, $17,004.33 and an untold amount of frustration and self-doubt to get through this. But, what does it all mean? Why did I commit to this? What would have happened had Gambert succeeded in registering the trademark?

Read the full story.

Read it? Good. Now please join the rest of the SEO community in thanking Rhea by donating $US100 to help cover her legal fees via paypal. Enter rhea_drysdale [at] yahoo [dot] com as the email address.

I’ve donated to what amounts to $113.58 AUD. For us Aussie SEOs, there should be no excuse with our dollar sitting at $US 0.91 ;)

Don’t be a douche.

Like Skeletor.

Update: Rhea follows up with a thank you and giant interweb wide group hug

More SEO trademark coverage:

Australian Mobile Page Views grew 85% over last 6 months

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:11:00 +1100

Some mobile statistics taken from across the Fairfax network, representing approximately 8 million monthly unique Australian visitors across dozens of sites in multiple verticals.

In the last 6 months from August 2009 to Jan 2010, mobile page views increased by 85%

Apple (iPhone and iTouch) mobile page views increased by 93%

Apple increased their share of mobile page views from 78% to 82%

These five smartphone manufacturers represented 98% of all mobile page views

NYTimes: The Paid vs. Free Content Debate #media2010

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:34:00 +1100

Pulled from NYTimes CTO Marc Fron’s slidedeck from his #media2010 presentation.

Four slides on the paid vs. free content debate that occurred at NYTimes.

1. Free vs. Paid: The Tradeoffs

2. Three Models for Online Paid Content that NYTimes considered:

3. Finding a Balance: Dual revenue stream model would be ideal

4. Details of the NYTimes Paid Model

How Many Aussies Use Twitter?

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:59:00 +1000

How many Aussies tweet?

The answer as always, is it depends on who you ask.

Comscore: 800,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009

Nielsen: 1,400,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009

What?

Well, different measurement systems = different methodologies = different numbers.

One can conclude though, that there are a LOT of Aussies visiting Twitter.com, certainly over half a million, which is amazing growth over the past few months.

Comscore released their July-09 report on Australian social media statistics and pegged the number of visitors to Twitter.com at 800,000, an impressive 6122% increase from 13,000 a year ago. According to comScore World Metrix, 6.5% of Australia’s Internet Audience visits Twitter.com

Meanwhile, Nielsen Netview reported 1,400,000 Australians visited Twitter.com in July 2009 (up from 60,000 in Jun-08), representing 8.3% of the total Australian Internet Audience.

Source: Nielsen Netview, July 2009

Interestingly, the Netview figures also add fuel to the fire that Teenagers Don’t Tweet:

92.5% of Australian Twitter users are over the age of 18
Within the age bracket for 12-17 year olds, the unique audience composition index is only 62*
Yet it is 122 for 18-24 year olds
And 167 for 25-34 year olds

(A value over 100 represents a higher concentration of unique visitors from that age group as compared to the age group’s concentration across the entire web)

Is it true that teens in Australia use SMS/text to share information rather than social media websites?

*Nielsen Netview reports that their sample size for 12-17 year olds does not meet their minimum standards so the composition index figure may be skewed.

Are Kyle and Jackie O Faking Their Twitter Followers?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:02:00 +1000

Are Sydney radio personalities Kyle and Jackie O from 2dayfm faking twitter followers to their account KyleandJackieO after accumulating more than 30,000 users in 18 hours? Are they, in fact, Twitter Wankers?

The answer is no.

Background to the story via this Courier Mail article:

“SYDNEY radio’s Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O have been branded “Twitter wankers” by a man who makes his living selling Twitter followers to would-be marketers. {my spidey senses are tingling!}

Jackie O has slammed the claims as “absolute bullshit” but uSocial.net chief Leon Hill says the pair artificially inflated their following on the social networking site, which soared by more than 30,000 in 18 hours.”

“Almost none have photos, little to no updates and the ones that were updating were doing so with either their name, or an illegible grouping of letters.” Hill continued.

This calling out generated significant press (for Hill) and made its way onto mainstream news websites like the Courier Mail and The Age.

Um, however, what Mr Hill has missed is Kyle and Jackie O’s twitter account is now a Twitter suggested user. That’s right, Twitter recommends @KyleandJackieO to all new Twitter users. These new Twitter users are the same frightened newbies most likely to have no idea who to follow and to not have uploaded a photo and to not have posted a single update.

Also, just because some users update with “an illegible grouping of letters or their name” does not imply all or even most of their followers are fake.

That’s like saying the lack of pirates is causing global warming… Correlation != Causality:

What’s more surprising to me is that a social media ‘expert’ isn’t aware that similar cases have already been in the news. As recently as Feb 2009, popular UK news site Guardian.co.uk was accused of similar fakery-shenanigans that were debunked by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams:

“The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren’t following anyone, so we’re trying to help get them started,”

To sum it up, Kyle and Jackie O’s massive boost in recent followers is legit.

In fact, you could almost say Twitter is endorsing them by recommending them to new users - that’s a far cry from ‘faking’ it.

edit: link to twitterholic stats which shows KyleandJackieO extraordinary growth since being given Suggested User status http://twitterholic.com/kyleandjackieo/

edit 2: updated grammar for clarity.

"Don’t Save Money To Escape Work. Save Money So You Can Work On What You Love."

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:36:00 +1000

“Don’t Save Money To Escape Work.
Save Money So You Can Work On What You Love.”

- Old vs. New world perspective on $aving.

Old School Cartoon Theme Battle: digdeep vs. lucasng

Fri, 22 May 2009 17:38:09 +1000

Friday afternoon, rainy day, with beers in hand towards the end of the working week, @digdeep and I decided to engage in an old school cartoon theme battle. On Twitter.

This is how the rounds went:

digdeep 1st, lucasng 2nd

SuperTed vs. Denver the Last Dinosaur
Ulysses 31 vs. >Mysterious Cities of Gold
Teknoman vs. Roger Ramjet
Samurai Pizza Cats vs. SpeedRacer
C.O.P.S vs. M.A.S.K
Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers vs. Defenders of the Earth
Legend of Zelda vs. X-Men
Voltron @lucasng concedes

Of course, others were welcome to join and we got suggestions from @bigboytony He-Man, @joshua_hay Thundercats, @sodsa Pinky and the Brain

Themes were arbitrarily judged by our esteemed Twitter followers on obscurity and theme catchiness.

I conceded on Voltron but of course @digdeep had to rub it in with this gem.

How Many Australian Twitter Users Are There? And What Clients Do They Use?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:04:00 +1000

The TLDR summary:

There are 679,000 Australians on Twitter.com
Twitter.com market share has grown over 1000% since the start of the year
Only 44% of Tweets originate from Twitter.com

Last month, I guessed that there were around 300,000 Aussie Twitter accounts.

I was wrong.

March’s results are in, and Hitwise announced Twitter.com had 1000% growth since January 2009 (market share of daily visits):

Meanwhile, Nielsen Netview reported that 679,000 Australians visited Twitter.com in March 2009.

source: Nielsen Netview, March 2009, Twitter.com unique audience

Now, what do these two reports mean?

Are there 679,000 Australians on Twitter?

The short answer is yes. The long answer, no.

Let me explain.

Methodology of Hitwise and Nielsen

Hitwise reports on the market share of daily visits to Twitter.com, compared to all other websites. It’s not reporting the number of Twitter accounts, or even the number of unique visitors to Twitter.com. This is because Hitwise data is collected from the weblogs of some, but not all Australian ISPs.

Meanwhile, Nielsen’s Netview reports on the ‘unique audience’ to Twitter.com over March. It also uses a survey panel, which is then used to represent all of Australia.

This leads to an important point: these reports only measure visits and users of Twitter.com, disregarding Twitter clients like Tweetdeck or Tweetie.

How Many Twitter Users Use A Twitter Client?

The Jan-09 client stats from tweetstats creator Damon Cortesi showed 56% of tweets do not come via the web interface:

Jan-09 Twitter Client Stats (based on +50 million tweets):

So now it should be a breeze to calculate how many Aussie Twitter users there are right? We know how many Aussies visited Twitter.com and how many tweets are posted outside of the twitter.com interface.

Nope.

What about the people who use more than one Twitter client? For example, if you tweet via twitter.com, tweetdeck and a mobile client, you’d be counted three as three users even though you are using the same username. How do you filter out the duplication?

After pondering this for a while, I came to the conclusion that the most accurate method would be to ask Damon of Tweetstats to calculate from his tweet sample the average number of clients used per user!

I also came to the conclusion that the lazy method is to assume the vast majority of Twitter users _would_ visit the Twitter.com site at least once a month - to update their profile, use search.twitter.com or to vanity check their profile etc.

The best answer is of course, ask @twitter, except they are notoriously secretive on the subject of just how many twitter users there really are. (For example, Twitter IDs are no longer sequentially generated and @biz went on to tell @jkottke:

“However, the way we number Twitter updates has switched back and forth a few times which pretty much screws up the exactness of your analysis.”)

Therefore, if anyone asks you how many Australians are on Twitter, just say 679,000!

2008 Internet Security Trends Report Released By Symantec

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:00:00 +1000

Symantec recently released their free 2008 report on Global Internet Security trends.

It’s bursting with interesting nuggets of Internet security research, heck, it’s practically a gold mine - check out three of the highlights:

1. Did You Know You Can Buy Compromised Credit Cards for $0.06 Each?

Credit card information was the most popular item for sale, comprising 32% of all ‘underground economy’ goods and services? And did you know obtaining said credit card information started from just $US0.06 each (like all good economies, there was a discount for buying in bulk).

2. China - The Most Infected Country, Buenos Aires- The Most Infected City

China had the most bot-infected computers in 2008, accounting for 13 percent of the worldwide total
Buenos Aires was the city with the most bot-infected computers in 2008, accounting for 4 percent of the worldwide total.

China and Brazil have some of the highest software piracy rates in the world. Because pirate software is typically unable to use automated security patches, it is likely many computers in these two countries have not been patched against virulent worms like the Conficker W32.Downadup infection.

Above Chart: Top 10 countries ranked by W32.Downadup infections

Source: Symantec

3. Mozilla Browsers Take Gold in War Against Vulnerabilities

Mozilla browsers had a window of exposure to a sample set of 83 vulnerabilities of less than one day in 2008 before being patched, just in front of Opera (1 day) but well ahead of Chrome (3 days) and Internet Explorer (7 days).

“Of all the browser vendors examined, Mozilla browsers maintained the shortest window of exposure while patching more vulnerabilities than other vendors. This may be indicative of their efforts to marshal the security community to responsibly report vulnerabilities through initiatives such as their Bug Bounty program.

The result of this effort is that more vulnerabilities are announced by the vendor at the time they are fixed, instead of being publicly reported by security researchers independently of the vendor. It is also worth noting that independent browser vendors, such as Opera and the Mozilla Foundation, had a shorter window of exposure in 2008 than the major operating system vendors, such as Apple and Microsoft.”

That’s just 3 highlights from this insightful 110 page report. I highly recommend the PDF download. Of course, Symantec’s ulterior goal is to scare the crap out of you and attract more customers, and damned if this report doesn’t do the job.

Download the PDF here.

How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy - Lucas Ng, SMX Sydney 2009

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:57:00 +1100

How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy by Lucas Ng

This is the slidedeck I used to present on the topic “How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy” at SMX Sydney 2009.

In the presentation I used some great case studies from the folks over at Komarketing Associates, PPC Hero and Marketing Experiments.

I was damn nervous but got some great positive feedback. Definitely hoping to speak again next year ;)

Download the powerpoint version for notes to each slide (requires slideshare login).

How Many Australian Twitter Users Are There?

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:31:00 +1100

Laurel Papworth tweeted: “oh noes! @lucasng we have to make a number up then. Quick Quick, someone give me a guesstimate of NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS ON TWITTER!”

My guesstimate: 300,000 Australian Twitter accounts*.

Why?

Nielsen Netview, which uses research panels to sample the Australian population, reports there were 149,000 Australian Twitter.com users in Jan-09:

Meanwhile, Hitwise reckons Twitter.com was the 100th most visited website (measured by Australian daily visits) in March.

Hitwise also reports that from January 2009 to March 2009, Twitter’s market share of visits has more than tripled.

Using the Nielsen figures of 150K as a starting point and looking at the January to March growth rate in Hitwise, I guesstimate that there are probably ~300K Australian Twitter accounts as of March 2009. Note that the Hitwise figures don’t account for Twitter API access.

So that’s pretty darn impressive but let’s compare Twitter with Facebook and Mysapce, the big two social networks:

Facebook: 4,821,580 active users (source: FaceBook Advertising - as of 23rd March 2009)
Myspace: 2,362,000 unique browsers (source: Nielsen Netratings, Jan-09)
Twitter : ~300,000 accounts

Twitter is in the media everywhere and has a high awareness (then again, so did Second Life, ugh). However, it has not quite reached mainstream usage.

Do you agree or disagree with my back-of-the-napkin calculations? Will Twitter become a mainstream social network and/or medium for communication?

Note: Standard measurement disclaimers apply. We’re comparing apples to oranges to pears with regards to users, browsers and accounts.

*edit: made some adjustments after @problogger got an updated chart from Hitwise, showing Twitter.com has gone from 100th to 85th most popular Aussie site.

Australia Unemployment Heat Maps - Identifying Job Loss Risk

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:21:00 +1100

Today’s most popular Sydney Morning Herald news story focuses on Australia’s jobless hotspots. The article explains how research from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) on job loss risk has led to the developement of an Employment Vulnerability Index. This EVI has then been applied to all of Australia’s cities, generating the following heatmaps which can be used to identify suburbs that are at the highest risk of job loss.

Sydney (click for full size)

Melbourne

Brisbane

Adelaide

Perth

Hobart

Canberra

Darwin

source for images: CofFEE/URP Employment Vulnerability Index

The red alert suburbs contain many of the typical Aussie Battler suburbs that have been stereotyped for years - outer suburbs, often associated with old economy manufacturing and high levels of unemployment.

The authors of the report conclude that these Battlers that are already socio-economically disadvantaged will be impacted more in downturn and even in the recovery phase;

“For the unemployed, concentration effects are likely to occur in terms of a lack of employed role models or a lack of information about jobs through social networks.

So there is a double whammy; people in poorly performing spatially-based labour markets are likely to be disadvantaged because of inefficiencies in the operation of the market, but are also disadvantaged because they may lack information about job possibilities.”

The methodology and full PDF report can be downloaded at the CofFEE website here.

Ad:Tech Sydney Speaker Twitter Usernames

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:15:00 +1100

Get the full ad:tech Sydney Tweetstream here

Follow the speakers that Tweet and give them feedback after (or during) their session. Tell them what you liked about their presentations and what you didn’t like. Make’em better presenters!

37 ad:tech Sydney Speakers Are On Twitter (updated 12/03)

Ben Cooper: @benhamin (Partner & Senior Digital Strategist, The Population)
Carl Moggridge: @carlmoggy (Lead Digital Strategist, Amnesia Razorfish)
Kate Curruthers: @kcarruthers (Digital Strategist)
Iain McDonald: @eunmac (Creative Director, Co-Managing Director, Amnesia Razorfish)
Fionn Hyndman: @FionnHyndman (CEO, dgmAsia Pacific)
Ross Dawson: @rossdawson (Chairman, Future Exploration Network)
Jye Smith: @jyesmith (Social Media Strategist, Switched On Media)
Laurel Papworth: @silkcharm (CEO, Twitter Agency)
Mike Hickinbotham: @M_Hickinbotham Senior Advisor, Social Media, Telstra/BigPond
Gavin Heaton: @servantofchaos (Author, servantofchaos.com)
Kylie Flavell: @KylieFlavell (Editor, Marketing Magazine)
Fi Bendall: @FiBendall (Founder at Digital and Interactive Consortium)
Kate Chatfield: @katiechatfield (Strategy Director, The White Agency)
Lesley White: @lesleywhite (Head of Digital, Network Communications)
Stephen Collins: @trib (Founder, acidlabs)
Jenny Williams: @ideagarden (ad:tech Conference Chair & Managing Director, Idea Garden)
Julian Cole: @juliancole (Digital Strategist, The Population)
Monty Hamilton: @montyhamilton (Head of Online, UBank)
Mike Zeederberg: @mikezed (Managing Director, Profero Australia)
Chris Saad: @chrissaad (Co-Founder at DataPortability Project)
Charis Palmer: @charispalmer (Managing Editor, Online Banking Review)
Phil Morle: @philmorle (Co-Founder, Pollenizer)
Jennie Bewes: @jbewes (Head of Online, Vodafone)
Michael Buckley: @mbuckley (Digital Director, Amnesia Razorfish)
Steven Noble: @steven_noble (Senior Analyst, Forrester Research)
Paul Fisher: @PaulFisher_IAB (CEO, IAB Australia)
Erik Ingvoldstad: @ingvoldSTAR (Executive Creative Director, McCann Worldgroup)
Adam Good: @adamgood (Executive Director of Digital Innovation, Clemenger Communications Group)
Nick Bolton: @nickybee99 (Head of Sales and Marketing, Viocorp)
Ben Shepherd: @shepherd (National Director - Digital, Maxus)
Benjamin Christie: @chefben (Founder & Managing Director, Gourmet Ads)
David Lee: @digitalee (Community Manager, Nuffnang)
Oliver Weidlich: @oliverw (Mobile Customer Experience Specialist, Ideal Interfaces)
Jennifer Wilson: @JenWilsonSyd (Director, The Project Factory)
Drew Parkes: @kraftykid (Digital Marketing Manager, Xbox)
Tarnya Baohm: @TarnyaBaohm (Digital Marketing Manager, RaboPlus)
Sean Jenner: @seanjenner (Brand Manager, Nike Australia)

82 Twitterless Speakers (tweet @lucasng if you Twitter)

Adam Franklin: Managing Director, BlueWire Media
Alex Littlejohn, Managing Director, Adconion
Andrew Larkin: BDM, Adobe
Angelo De Silva: Customer Engagement Manager, Fuji Xerox
Anna Luong: Customer Engagement Consultant, Fuji Xerox
Anne Massey, Vice President, Global Sales Support, Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Anthony Goldman, Director of Marketing & Development, Next Digital & CommQuest Ltd
Anton Sher, Director, Front Foot
Benjamin Mangold, Analytics Director, Mangold Sengers
Brian Fine: Chairman, STW Insights
Brian Neal, Regional Sales Manager, Massive Incorporated
Con Frantzeskos: Practice Head, Edelman Digital Australia
Damian Byrne: Managing Director, Traction
Danny Housseas, Community Manager, The DataPortability Organisation
David Ketchum, Chairman, Asia Digital Marketing Association\
David Smerdon: Head of Strategy, Vision 6
David Whittle: Managing Director, Mark
Des Odell: Director, Bruce Clay Inc. Australia
Dicken Doe: Managing Director, Beyond Analysis Australia
Dominic Elfer, Managing Director, Max Interactive
Ed Harrison: Commercial Director – Media, Fairfax Digital
Emily Freeman, Director, Mobilist
Foad Fadaghi: Director of Research, Friendster
Francisco Cordero: General Manager, Australia/NZ
Gareth Llewellyn, Corporate Communications Manager, Oracle Australia
Gary Hayes: Director, Laboratory for Advanced Media Production
Geoffrey Handley, Co-Founder, The Hyperfactory
Grace Chu: Managing Director, FirstClick Consulting
Jackie Maxted, CEO, beautyheaven.com.au
James Currah, General Manger of Marketing, Boost Mobile Australia
Jason Juma-Ross, Managing Director, ANZ, Accenture Marketing Sciences
Jeff Brookes: Regional Director - Asia Pacific, Sulake Corporation (habbo.com.au)
Jeff Carruthers, Managing Director, Resonate Solutions
Jennifer Reddington: Consumer Insights Manager, Yahoo!7
Jeremy Glass: Managing Director, Permission Communications
Jules Hall, Managing Director, The Hallway
Julian Peterson, Marketing Director, Time Out Sydney
Justin Baird, Senior Product Specialist, Google
Kate Carruthers: Digital Strategist,
Kate Tee: Communications and Capability Manager Digital, Diageo Australia
Katie Chatfield: Strategy Director, The White Agency
Kerry Field, Partner Innovation, Mindshare
Kevin Tan, Senior Vice President, International, Adify
Kylie O’Brien, Head of Product and Operations, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Kym Niblock: Managing Director, BBC.com
Lee Stephens: CEO, Aegis Media Pacific
Leigh Terry: Managing Partner, OMD Australia
Louise McCann, Chair, Research International
Luke Hilton: Web Manager, Dick Smith Electronics
Mandeep Grover, Marketing Manager ANZ, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care
Mark Allison, Territory Manager, Australasia, WebTrends
Mark Henning, Director Digital Solutions, Dynamic Logic
Mark Ritchie, Director, Newmarket Livestock
Matt Macfarlane, CFO, Vibe Capital
Matt Tallentire, Marketing Manager, Pernod Ricard Australia
Matthew Raumer: Senior Project Marketing Manager, Stockland
Michael Hauser, eMarketing Manager, Tourism Victoria
Michael Walmsley, General Manager - Competitive Intelligence and Search Marketing Services, Hitwise
Mike Morrison, Managing Director, Pitch To Win
Mike Zimmerman, LinkedIn
Mitch Olson: Co-Founder, SmallWorlds
Nick Brien: CEO, Mediabrands
Nick Love: Director, MySpace.com Australia
Nicole Still: Digital Strategy Consultant, Johnson & Johnson Pacific
Paul Borrud: Regional Vice President of Sales, Facebook
Pete Urmson: General Manager, Returnity
Peter Hunter: Managing Director, iProspect
Peter Noble, CEO, Citrus
Peter Vogel, Senior Director of Marketing, Memolink
Phil Duffield, Managing Director, AD2ONE
Piers Halleen, Brand Manager, Tooheys Extra Dry
Rashmi Sinha, CEO, SlideShare
Robert Tomkinson: Managing Director, Shopping.com Australia
Ryf Quail, Head of Digital, Razor Companies
Sharyn Smith, CEO & Founder, Soup
Silvia Pfeiffer: CEO, Vquence
Stephan Gervois: Head of Digital, NRMA
Stephen Green: Regional Managing Director, Asia Pacific Region
Thomas Arthur, General Manager, Sensis Digital & Vertical Markets
Tony Marlow, Research Director, Asia Pacific, Nielsen Online
Vicki Miller, General Manager, First Direct Solutions, Australia Post
Vivek Wagle, Site Editor, Lonely Planet
Yuri Narciss: Head of Technology Markets, Google

Folks Tweeting Ad:Tech Sydney 2009:

@katekendall (big kudos for inspiration behind this list)
@neerav
@eskimo_sparky
@likeomg
@iggypintado
@henryshelley
@acatinatree
@valeriekhoo
@stewartheys
@kimota
@joshstraw84
@bethetling
@jay_ro

Despite the rather impressive Twitter list, the majority of speakers are not on Twitter. In fact, the Tweeting speakers are outnumbered 82-37. As @benhamin mentions in the comments, it will be interesting to see how many of the non-tweeters pick up Twitter after ad:tech Sydney.

Bonus for those that like to play around with data, here’s the Google Spreadsheet of all the speakers at ad:tech Sydney.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter and follow me @lucasng!

America's Top University Endowments: Harvard's Financial Meltdown

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:08:21 +1100

There’s a story over at Forbes on Harvard University’s Financial Meltdown. Harvard University has over 10,000 endowments, totalling $US36.9 billion, the world’s largest higher education endowment.

Managed by Harvard U subsidiary the Harvard Management Company, the endowment fund is deep trouble, with an estimated 30% drop in value ($US11 billion) come June 30, 2009.

Risky big bets on derivatives and exotic holdings (wait, why does that sound so familiar) have come back to haunt Harvard Management Co. resulting in five CEOs in four years and major staff cuts.

Googlebot Decrease In Number of Pages Crawled Per Day?

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:15:26 +1100

Seeing this across our network (dozens of sites, millions of users), this is a more extreme example of one of our sites:

I wonder if it has anything to do with the custom crawl rate feature that Google introduced in December.

Australian Search Engine Share - January 2009 [Hitwise]

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:56:00 +1100

source: data is based on 4 week rolling periods ending Jan. 31, 2009 and Feb. 02, 2008 from the Hitwise sample of 2.95 million Internet users in Australia.

According to Hitwise, Google continues to dominate the Australian search landscape. Total Australian Google share of searches is 92.4%, up year-on-year from 89.0% (total calculated from sum of Australian searches on Google AU, Google and Google UK). By comparison, Hitwise US showed Google had 72% market share in the same period, up from 66%.

Why the substantial difference? Probably because Yahoo never received the exposure or support that it enjoys in the US…

Search Queries Are Getting Longer [US + AU]

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:05:00 +1100

Matt McGee over at Search Engine Land linked to a Hitwise report showing “1- and 2-word queries are becoming less common, while 4-, 5-, and all the way up to 8+ word queries are becoming more common.”

US Hitwise Data:

In Australia, Hitwise data correlates with the US report - Aussies are also using more keywords per query year-on-year:

How to Present While People are Twittering | Pistachio

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:56:23 +1100

How to Present While People are Twittering | Pistachio:

The next time you present at a conference, instead of being confronted by a sea of faces looking at you, you may be phased by a sea of heads looking down at their laptops. Now when you say something…

Make Better Presentations - The Anatomy of a Good Speech | chrisbrogan.com

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:56:22 +1100

Make Better Presentations - The Anatomy of a Good Speech | chrisbrogan.com:

The first and most important thing to talk about first is explaining what’s in it for me, the listener, the audience. “What’s in it for me?” Answer that early. You might start by saying, “You’ve got…