Thanks to Lou Kerner at Wedbush for the permission to blog the excellent report he and Michael Silverstein put together.
The latest Second Internet Research Report from Wedbush came out this past week and while the public markets were crashy some might have overlooked the critical data and analysis relating to the social web and the internet in general.
Some key takeaways…
Google+ Slows After a Monster Launch
Multiple data sources suggest that Google+ ($GOOG) posts per day have decreased by a third. (Figure 4 on page 3 of the Wedbush research embedded below is striking in this regard and a must view.)
The followers added of the most popular Google+ accounts is also decelerating substantially.
In my opinion, it is too early to tell whether these posts per day and follower metrics are ominous. It seems natural that there would be a lull following the surge associated with such a huge release as social network consumers settle back into habitual usage patterns and only more slowly develop new ones. Nevertheless, the research does identify these critical variables which require close observation over time for signs of stabilization or further deterioration.
The +1 button is “scaling rapidly” and is now available on more than 1 million websites. (+1 launched June 1 of this year.)
Nielsen Data and Time Spent Online: Facebook Dominates
The report confirms Facebook’s ($FBOOK) increasing dominance of time spent online. The numbers here are astonishing with more than 40% share among top ten internet brands.
Yahoo! ($YHOO), despite its considerable and chronic organizational problems, still maintains second place on this metric, which, from my perspective, hints at the potential given improved leadership and more effective monetization strategies. (I am long $YHOO stock and you can find my rationale here).
Social networks now account for 22.5% of time spent online up 42% from 2 years ago.
Twitter’s Growth
Twitter is growing fast across metrics which supports “more aggressive” monetization efforts.
Tweet volume has more than tripled from a year ago to 230m per day.
More than 50 million log in to Twitter daily.
Read the full Wedbush report below: