The Mother Lode of Data on the Mobile Internet

Browsing the Internet this morning, I found this Morgan Stanley report on the Mobile Internet. Depending on which version you look at, you'll find hundreds of slides packed with data and insights on mobile internet usage. I recommend you at least flip through the this short 92-slide version.

Here are some of the highlights - this is the data I found most interesting.

iPhone Growth

The growth of iPhone + iTouch outpaces that of Netscape, i-mode, and AOL. It's more explosive than anything we've seen so far.



iPhone and iPod Touch are growing at the same rate This slide was meant to demonstrate the explosiveness of the iPhone platform, but another thing it demonstrates is how iPhone and iPod Touch sell around the same number of units, and have done so consistently even through the introduction of the 3G and 3GS.

Web Usage

Unproductive sites are increasing their addiction levels. Online global time spent is trending heavily toward Facebook and YouTube. MSN and Yahoo are shrinking away while Google (probably the most work-related of all these sites) is holding steady. I wonder about the effect of all this on global GDP.



Google now makes $20 per user per year in ads. I still remember when my friends were asking "Who clicks on all those ads anyway?" Somebody does. Google's annualized revenues per user have increased from $10.22 / year in 2005 to $20.06 in 2009. That's a large chunk of the total ad revenue per user on the Internet, which is $46.41. Wow.



PS: Morgan Stanley has done an outstanding job in assembling all this data. I just wish they'd hired a graphic designer for their slides - they do look a bit busy, especially pasted at small sizes.

Dear Facebook, Please Let Me Reply to Your Message Notifications

Do you know this problem? Someone sends you a Facebook message. You want to reply, but instead of being able to just hit reply on the message, you have to perform a multi-step choreographed dance:

1. Click on the link in the email
2. Log into Facebook
3. Navigate Facebook's messaging interface to reply
4. Repeat this procedure when new messages roll in

This is hugely annoying. Instead of sending emails with a nonsensical address such as notification+pd=edfz@facebookmail.com and a Reply-To of noreply@facebookmail.com, can't Facebook just implement an email-reply-to-Facebook-message bridge? This is pretty simple to do - many Support systems (e.g. Kayako) already do this.

I've written (well, sketched) about Facebook vs. email before. When I have some time, I need to sit down and write my rant about how closed (Facebook, Twitter, Skype) and proprietary (Google Wave) systems are replacing email when they shouldn't. I think the underlying reason is that email's systems and protocols (SMTP, IMAP, MIME/RFC822, MS Exchange) are so hugely sucky, outdated, insecure, spammy, bug-prone, and stupidly designed. We need to engineer ourselves out of this mess.

Update: Wow, this post was just in time for Facebook's Message API, which makes the whole problem worse, not better: From the TC article: "The biggest addition — the Mailbox API — is also disappointing because it only lets users receive messages, not send them."

Facebook: Email me Instead

Does this look familiar?



AN-NOYING! Why should you need to go to Facebook to read Matt's message?

Matt and Bryan (and to a smaller extent, yours truly) spent a weekend hacking up "Email me Instead", a Facebook application that lets people, well, email you instead.



Get it here.

Obviously, this isn't Xobni's long-awaited killer product. You'll have to wait just a little bit longer.