The usage of online gaming sites has grown 27 percent during the past year to 86 million visitors in December 2008, while the total time spent playing online games increased 42 percent, according to comScore.American’s total amount of Internet time spent playing online games grew from 3.7 percent in December to 4.9 percent in December 2008.
Google Earth Gets 3D Model Of Vancouver
Remember how, in the months, weeks, and finally days before the 2008 Summer Olympics, companies were churning out all sorts of interesting little products that no one had time to use? Google is starting to gear up for the 2010 Winter Olympics much sooner with a 3D model of Vancouver.
UK Search Trends Reflect Economic Fears
Even if news programs offer almost nothing other than economic information these days, it seems that a lot of people are still seeking out more of the stuff on their own. Fresh search data from the UK reveals that people are studying some rather depressing terms.
Top Newspaper Sites Get Boost In Visitors
There was a 16 percent year-over-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008, according to Nielsen Online.NYTimes.com was the top online newspaper in December 2008, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com took the number two spot with 11.4 million and washingpost.com landed in the three spot with 9.5 million unique visitors.
Yahoo Q4 2008 Financial Results Turn Out All Right
Does Carol Bartz have the magic touch? It’s either that or she inherited something less than a complete mess from Jerry Yang, anyway, because as Yahoo’s new CEO presided over her first earnings report, many of the numbers weren’t at all bad.
Click Fraud Reaches Record Level
Click Forensics has released its latest figures on click fraud for the fourth quarter and says it has jumped to the highest level since 2006.The overall industry average click fraud rate grew 17.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2008. That’s up from 16.0 percent in Q3 2008 and from 16.6 percent for Q4 2007.The average click fraud rate of PPC ads appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2 percent. That’s up from 27.1 percent rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from 28.3 percent for Q4 2007.
MySpace Parent Company Laying Off 100 Jobs
In a move that won’t surprise as many people as it would have this time last year, Fox Interactive Media has announced it will be cutting its workforce by as many as 100 jobs. Fox is the parent company of social network site MySpace as well as Photobucket and various mobile sites.
Arrington To Take Break After Spitting Incident
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington had an unfortunate encounter at the Digital, Life, Design Conference he was attending in Munich, Germany yesterday.He describes the incident in post titled "Some Things Need To Change" where an anonymous person walked up to him and spat in his face.
Gmail Goes Offline (In A Good Way)
As frequent travelers, folks with bad ISPs, and laptop lovers can agree, it’s not always easy to connect to the Internet, and being cut off from the world is a real nuisance. But now Google’s solving one aspect of the problem by making Gmail accessible to people who are offline.
Chrome Ads Hit YouTube, Facebook
The main competitors in the browser war may still be Internet Explorer and Firefox, but it looks like Google’s found another way or two in which to give Chrome an advantage. YouTube and Facebook users have started to notice promotions for Chrome pop up left and right.