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Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report: Messaging Apps Could Rival Home Screen (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the growing-trend dept.

Mary Meeker, a former Morgan Stanley internet analyst and now partner at venture-capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, has delivered her annual report that offers critical stats and trends about how technology is evolving. TechCrunch has highlighted the takeaways from the report: 1) The global internet adoption rate was flat year-over-year at 9%, reaching 3 billion users or 42% of the world's population.
2) Smartphone adoption's growth is slowing, while Android increases marketshare despite a shrinking average selling price.
3) Video viewership is exploding, with Snapchat and Facebook Live showing the way, though video ads aren't always effective.
4) Messaging is dominated by Facebook and WeChat, it's growing rapidly, and evolving from simple text communication to become our new home screen with options for vivid self-expression and commerce.
5) US advertising is growing, with Google and Facebook controlling 76% of the market and rising, but advertisers still spend too much on legacy media rather than new media where the audience has shifted.
6) Meeker predicts the rise of voice interfaces because they're fast, easy, personalized, hands-free, and cheap, with Google on Android now seeing 20% of searches from voice, and Amazon Echo sales growing as iPhone sales slow.

17 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. And we thought it would never happen.... by johnsmithperson123 · · Score: 2

    Computer? Computer? A keyboard. How quaint. -Scotty, Star Trek IV

  2. Vivid self-expression and commerce? by H3lldr0p · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I guess I'm finally there. I'm on my lawn and yelling at the kids, because I have no idea what the fuck that statement is supposed to mean.

    Yes, I'm facebook. Yes, I use it to chat with friends. But never once would I have ever used "vivid" to describe those conversations. Maybe the report means the use of emoji and "stickers". In my experience those get in the way of meaning more than they add to it. Yes I can eventually understand what is meant, but it takes more time than simply typing out the meaning(s) in the first place. Maybe if you've used them for a long time you can translate faster, but that doesn't begin to explain why you'd want to begin using them in the first place.

    Using chat to buy things strikes me as an idiot's way of losing money hand over fist.

    1. Re:Vivid self-expression and commerce? by melted · · Score: 3, Informative

      When you get paid as much as Mary, there's a natural tendency to embellish the language. :-) Extra points if you're so weird no one understands you.

  3. Obvious... by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 1

    Points 4 and 6 are rather obvious to me at this point, and I hardly pay attention to this particular market. The voice search capability on a two-year-old Google phone makes #6 relatively easy to predict. The degree to which Facebook messenger is the primary means for a lot of social communication among young people, even young professionals, makes #4 obvious.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
    1. Re:Obvious... by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      I know 1 person who uses Facebook at all. He doesn't use messenger, because no one else he knows does. If you think Facebook controls this market, you have to be all of 14 years old. I work at a technology company with the adults who would be most likely to use that crap ... and NONE OF THEM DO.

      20% of search traffic via voice? Bullshit. I work at a mobile phone company. I have never in my past 2 years at this organization, and no where other than when I'm driving down the road and want to send a long message to my wife, have I seen anyone use voice recognition for anything other than a test. Its shit. And you know why I know this isn't happening anywhere else? BECAUSE YOU NEVER HEAR SOMEONE ELSE USING VOICE ACTIVATED FEATURES ON THEIR DEVICES IN PUBLIC.

      Anyone who thinks Alexa is awesome has just read the Amazon hype and doesn't actually own one.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:Obvious... by hey! · · Score: 2

      If you think Facebook controls this market, you have to be all of 14 years old.

      But you and your coworkers are less valuable than 14 year-olds

      There are, however, things you can do to become temporarily more valuable. You can get a new job. You can move to a new city. You can have your first baby. These things make you interesting, because life-disrupting events are opportunities to disrupt existing habits and establish new ones. First-time parents who've never darkened the doorstep of a Target store will be lured in with deals on baby equipment, then kept coming in with diaper coupons until going to Target becomes a mindless habit.

      And in the list of life-disrupting events, adolescence is one of the largest and longest-running. Not only is there the direct buying power of the 14 year-olds themselves, there's their influence on others' behavior ("Mom, will you drive me to Target?"). What's more when they're finally and definitively out of adolesence they emerge as newly fledged independent adults with incomes and autonomy and literally no stuff in their lives. They have to buy everything: pots and pans for the kitchen, grown-up clothes for work, sporting goods to rot away in their closets. The value to a vendor of having a foothold at the start of that orgy of acquisition that is young adulthood is immense.

      So it's a fair bet that neither you nor your colleagues will never enjoy the consumer-economy prominence of a 14 year-old ever again.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. Ordering a pizza. by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 1

    Using chat to buy things strikes me as an idiot's way of losing money hand over fist.

    Not necessarily--any means of communication can work for low-value purchases. Ordering a pizza, for example.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
  5. Yes advertisers! by n3r0.m4dski11z · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "advertisers still spend too much on legacy media rather than new media where the audience has shifted."

    Please listen! Move to new media and leave us luddites who dont use facebook or smartphones to rot in our land of no advertising! Pitty us! for we shall soon be as forgotten as a "Target Market" just like those poor usenet souls!

    I'll just have to find some way to carry on without advertising, somehow....

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    1. Re:Yes advertisers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Of course, the flip side is that you'll have increasing amounts of trouble finding products you find appealing, not because you didn't know about them, but because they aren't made anymore. This isn't really due to advertising but due to manufacturers moving away from traits you find valuable. For example, today's cars are marketed for their dashboard gimmicks rather than their performance as cars.

    2. Re:Yes advertisers! by hey! · · Score: 1

      Apparently you've never read the classical economists like Ricardo, who were very cogent about things like rent -- which is the business advertising venue providers are in: renting access to your attention.

      They won't stop selling access to you, they'll sell it at lower prices to advertisers who can't afford premium venues. Think of it this way: Social media be the Superbowl, and the stuff *you* enjoy will be a 3am re-runs of M*A*S*H* on a low-power UHF station. As long as there are any eyeball to be sold, someone will be hawking them.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. So Al..... by zawarski · · Score: 1

    .....still glad you invented The Internet?

  7. Cause and effect? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

    2) Smartphone adoption's growth is slowing, while Android increases marketshare despite a shrinking average selling price.

    Wouldn't one expect market share to increase because of, note despite, a shrinking average selling price?

    (I know, correlation does not equal causation, but to assume the inverse seems ridiculous.)

    1. Re: Cause and effect? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      But that's not how market share works. It's just a measure of what percentage of the market you have. It doesn't matter what the value of the market is. If there are 1,000,000 smart phones out there and your platform is running on 500,000, you have 50% market share. It doesn't matter if the devices running your platform cost more or less than the other platforms' devices.

  8. Re:What the hell is a WeChat? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

    Apparently you are predominantly ignorant, and you prefer to remain that way. Good for you.

  9. Re:What the hell is a WeChat? by whoozwah · · Score: 1

    It's ok AC. I've never heard of wechat either. I use Signal for my messages.

  10. Re:What the hell is a WeChat? by hey! · · Score: 1

    Somebody must know. You know what would be cool? If we got those millions of people out there that have these odd bits of information to pool their personal knowledge into, I dunno, some kind of Internet-based encyclopedia. Then you wouldn't need to rail impotently about your lack of knowledge about anything.

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  11. Despite? by StormReaver · · Score: 1

    ...Android increases marketshare despite a shrinking average selling price.

    Despite? I think she meant to say, "Android increases marketshare, due in part to a shrinking average selling price."