An interesting infographic on GIZMODO reveals some interesting information.

1.4 billion internet users worldwide.
1.5 billion televisions worldwide.
4 billion mobile phones worldwide.

600 million IM users.
1.3 billion email users.
3.05 billion SMS users.

Top visited mobile website: Mocospace. (?)

Lots of fascinating facts to impress your co-workers at lunchtime. A handful of impossible to read colour combinations. And one mistake.

The size of the Mobile market

On March 13th, YouTube are stopping support for older browsers.

The following browsers will be impacted by the change:

Any browser older than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0
Any browser older than Mozilla Firefox 3.0
Any browser older than Google Chrome 4.0
Any browser older than Safari 3.0+

Note that users of these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but some new features may not be supported.

Quiz time.

Question: What’s the only thing you do in YouTube?

(a) Watch videos
(b) Other

The bigger question: Will Google have the power to move these people to a new technology?

(a) No
(b) Probably not

The biggest question: How many people (1) use these old browsers (2) use YouTube and (3) know how to install a new web browser?

(a) Less than five
(b) Less than ten

Many thanks to Dirk Paessler for sending this my way:

“Google has perhaps more than any other company become “The Internet Company.” It’s grown hand in hand with the internet and its entire business model has from the start been totally focused on the internet as a delivery platform.

And let’s face it, Google is a pretty interesting company. In fact, we think it’s so interesting that we put together this infographic with a ton of facts and figures about Google. We’ve been digging through Google’s SEC filings, news articles and the trusty old Wikipedia to get plenty of interesting data to include. We hope you like it!”

Google facts and figures (massive infographic)

Remember Pirate Bay?

Peter Sunde was one of the ‘innovators’ behind Pirate Bay – a venture that resulted in his one year prison sentence and a fine of over three million US dollars.

Mr. Sunde and his other pirate friends are requesting a retrial, and it appears that his sentence may be affecting his outlook of the world.

Flattr is Sunde’s latest venture:

“We aim to revolutionize how people pay and get paid for content on the internet. Come, join and show the world that good content is worth some coins out of your pocket.”

To go from assisting theft to assisting revenue is an interesting U-turn, to put it mildly.

But will it work? The system will involve users setting up an account, entering credit card details and deciding an amount to be paid each month. When they don’t have to.

At risk of sounding cynical, it doesn’t have a hope of success.

I’m all for helping content providers make money, but I don’t think this will be the answer. And coming from an individual charged with assisting copyright infringement, the irony is bewildering.

What’s next – identity thieves pushing online security? Mercenaries for peace?

Google have announced the launch of Google Buzz: “a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting.”

I know what you’re thinking. Google Wave?

No. “Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.”

And Google Talk, in case you’re wondering, is a tool to “Chat with friends and family on the internet“.

So Buzz is about conversations. Wave is about real-time communication. Talk is about chatting.

Got it?

Next stop: Google Hype. “A newer, even-more real-time tool to convey thoughts“.

The pictures say it all. Note that today’s Google logo is commemorating Norman Rockwell’s birthday.

And I don’t know whether to be amused or scared by this one:

Google Reader is one of those tools that I like, understand, but don’t really use. At least not until now.

I’ve been using FeedDemon longer than I can remember; certainly long before most normal people had ever heard of RSS feeds. And that’s the root of the problem with RSS: Most people have never heard of it, many of those who have don’t want to use it, and many of those who do find it more than a little frustrating.

The result of this is that until yesterday, the ‘average person’ had little or no use of Google Reader, but their new killer feature will most likely start to change that:

“Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today we’re rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.”

In other words you can receive alerts when any web page has been updated. So whether you’re interested in new drivers for your graphics card, whether your local Pizza Hut will finally deliver to your address, what your competition might be up to or even want to make sure that your website hasn’t been tampered with, Google Reader might prove to be a very useful tool.

And the more you use it, the more you’ll rely on it. The more you rely on it, the more you’ll use it. It’s an inspired move by the Goooooogle folk.

Follow changes to any website

Ever since Google settled onto their throne as the undisputed King of the search engines, people have been predicting their demise. History has taught us that no King will rule forever, and at some point, even the mighty Google will fall from grace.

Yet a pattern appears to have emerged in the online world. Interesting new services and products emerge, and as soon as they gain any sort of traction, pundits around the world start to wonder whether Google are finally about to meet their match.

Twitter, Bing, the increased use of mobile phone browsing, Yahoo!, Microsoft, SoftwarePromotions and more have all been hailed as the potential new Google, or a serious threat to Google.

Yet to date, while all of these examples have proven to be interesting, none of them have given Google anything to worry about. And like all Kings fortunate enough to sit on their thrown for any length of time, Google are by no means oblivious to the threats they face. In fact Google’s unprecedented access to a mind-boggling amount of data places them in a uniquely powerful position to see precisely what everyone is doing. What’s new, what trends are emerging, who’s rising and falling from grace and more.

Nevertheless, I believe that Google are only now facing a threat to their existence. For the first time, there finally appears to be an enemy vast and powerful enough to inflict damage. With time, perhaps even powerful enough to maim or even destroy the mighty Google empire.

It’s not Twitter, it’s not Bing and it isn’t Microsoft’s AdCenter. The biggest threat that Google face today is Google. Not through any lack of innovation, flair or expansion. But from the most basic threat of all – their complacency.

Before dismissing this as yet another “Google is about to die” harbinger of doom, let’s take a quick step back. Almost all of Google’s income is derived from their AdWords system; through ads displayed on their search engines around the world, partner sites, the content network, TV ads, radio ads and more. And as a direct result of the program’s reach, precision and power, many businesses rely heavily on AdWords. Ironically, in time, this very dependency may prove to be the beginning of the wound in Google’s side.

As the scope and complexity of the AdWords system have grown, so too have the volume of complaints by the advertisers.

Read the rest of this article – Google vs. Google.

Last year we redesigned our company’s main website to use a new logo, a new look and a completely different layout.

Unlike many companies redesigning their websites, our planning process began by taking a look at the data we already had – through analysing our server log files.

We then took this data and applied it to information gained both from clients and companies who decided not to use our services.

One of the most useful points that we learnt was that our name and reputation were critical factors. Some of our clients decided to try our services based on what they read about our company, and a few specifically recalled one item: “We have been working with software on the internet since 1997, and have had more than 400 clients in over 42 different countries. Many of them have been with us for several years.”

Of the companies who decided not to engage our services, a disturbing number mentioned needing more reassurance about who we are, and none of them recalled reading the very information that our clients mentioned.

As a result, our About Us page is the second item in the top nav, and is now in the top five most popular pages.

Has it affected the number of clients who sign up for our services?

Absolutely.

Steering your site visitors to the information they need is quick to implement, easy to apply and extremely lucrative.

What are you waiting for?

Pulling-in targeted visitors to your website is relatively easy. There’s Google AdWords, AdCenter, press releases, twitter, blogs and hundreds of other opportunities for jumping in front of the right people and waving your arms around so they don’t forget you.

Getting them to stay, however, is more difficult.

Many small and medium-sized companies make the mistake of too many assumptions.

They assume their visitors understand their terminology. Everyone with a slow windows system understands the need for Registry Optimisation and Defragging.

They assume their visitors know the difference between free download and free trial. Then wonder why their download to sales conversion ratios are low, while their AdWords conversion rates are ten times higher.

They assume their visitors have already researched their competition. When their comparison matrix has the highest exit rate on their website, they don’t understand why.

And they assume they understand what their visitors want and how they go about getting it. This, perhaps, is the greatest mistake of all.

My first tip for 2010: stop guessing what your visitors want and start listening to them.

My second tip for 2010: your server logs contain everything you need to do so and more.