Ajax Girl

A Wall Street Journal article called “The Wizards of Buzz” focuses on the power of the top users on Digg, Netscape and other “social bookmarking” sites. The article highlights 16 or so of these users, along with their real name, screen name, areas of interest and other information. The point of the article, I think, is to show how much power these individuals have, and how they are dealing with offers to take payment for promotion, etc. Sample quotes:

For 17-year-old Henry Wang, the job of finding compelling information for Digg’s 20 million monthly users starts when tennis practice ends. Mr. Wang, a senior at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Ill., says he spends three hours a day doing his Digg work, and highlighted his success on the site — at one point, he was ranked the No. 2 user — on his college applications.

and

On Reddit, one of the most influential users is 12-year-old Adam Fuhrer…When Microsoft launched its Vista operating system this year, he submitted stories that discussed its security flaws and price tag, which attracted approving votes from more than 500 users…In spite of a content filter his parents use to block him from viewing certain sites (including YouTube), he has managed to consistently make it onto the list of Reddit’s highest performers. “I watch my son’s page while I’m at work,” says his father, Gerald Fuhrer, and “gush about his achievements to my co-workers.”

For readers familiar with Digg and the others, the article won’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. For those unfamiliar, they may be left somewhat confused by the whole crazy ecosystem, and the fact that twelve year olds are now helping to define what “news” is. Interesting times we live in.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/89125922/

Second Life has done a good job being transparent with their statistics. Key metrics are available on the home page, and additional information was released last December. Today the company got even more granular, releasing detailed information on the Second Life population, demographics, usage time and land supply in an excel spreadsheet.

All of the important ways of measuring Second Life are way up and to the right. Total registered users now number 3.1 million, up from 124,000 a year ago. A more conservative measurement of users that removes duplicate credit card and email information shows 2 million users, up from 95,000 a year ago. At any given time, ten to thirty thousand of those users are online and logged in to the world.

The total size of Second Life is growing briskly as well. The company reports a two week backlog in getting land up and running (this is effectively a hosting business, land=servers). There are 258 islands generating between $200-$300 per month each in revenue for the company, as well as another 103 square kilometers of mainland real estate, which costs $3-$10 per square meter. Based on straightline averages, this implies about $670,000/month in hosting revenue for the company.

There’s lots of other ways to slice this data up as well. The excel notebook is here for download. And it’s no wonder that Second Life is disclosing this information. The company is rolling. The only point of weakness is online users at any given time. If that number doesn’t rise, the other stats will eventually collapse.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/88856860/