Web economy in G20 set to double by 2016, Google says - BBC News

BBC released a story this week covering a study Google supported that shows the value of the web economy will double in G20 countries over the next four years. The next four years. That is the web economy going from $2.3tn to $4.2tn in the time it takes a student to get through high school.

Beyond the title figure, the study found a lot of insightful stats that you can use to plan for the coming years:

• “Right now, every year about 200 million people are going online for the very first time.”
• “The rapid fall in the cost of smartphones - with cheap versions now costing about $100 - means that by 2016 about 80% of all internet users will access the web using a mobile phone.”
• “In 2010, the internet economy in the G20 group of leading nations was worth $2.3tn - larger than the economies of Italy or Brazil, but a mere 4.1% of the total size of all G20 economies.”
• This impacts offline consumption too: “every household already researches about $3,000 worth of goods online before buying them in traditional stores.”

Personal Data’s Value? Facebook Is Set to Find Out - NYTimes.com

I know, we’re tired of talking about it. But for anyone who missed out, there has been a lot of hullabaloo this week surrounding Facebook and the biggest IPO in history. How is Facebook worth $75 to $100 billion? The New York Times does a great job of explaining in this article that they aren’t just a social network, they’re a social network with 800 million users who freely give up loads of personal data every day, appropriately calling it a “fast-churning data machine”. So what does this mean for you as a company? Well, going public means that Mark Zuckerberg has been forced to make a lot more information public. Check out the best tidbits on Facebook’s IPO here.

p.s. Did you know hullabaloo is a legitimate word that is in the dictionary? I expected at least some red squiggles when I typed it..

Each week the BringShare team compiles a short list of particularly relevant articles in the Digital Marketing and Web space and posts them here for your viewing pleasure.   Sign up for a free trial of BringShare to get started with your SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Paid Search and Website Performance Dashboards. We make it easy to track all of your digital marketing in one place.