Instagram reported a few usage stats today, marking the first time it has talked about numbers on its own site since the kerfuffle raised over its terms of service change following the Facebook buy-out. The internal stats show strong engagement, and user growth, rather than a decline in active Instagram members, as first reported by AllThingsD. Part of the discrepancy between the these numbers and third-party doom and gloom reports may have to do with the fact that Instagram is tracking monthly active users, of which it has 90 million, versus the less stable daily active users stat often cited by others.

Other stats listed by the mobile photo sharing app tackle the specific ways users engage with Instagram. 40 million photos are posted daily to the service, for instance, and its users manage to rack up 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments per second. That’s a strong indicator that whatever the reaction to Instagram’s proposed TOS changes, plenty of them are still interacting with the service at a breakneck pace. Mike Isaac at AllThingsD also points out that while the 90 million figure being reported today may look weak compared to the 100 million users it reported last September, these are specifically active accounts, where previously the company only shared data on straightforward registrations, which means total registered users is probably much higher at this point.

For perspective, Facebook itself has 37,037 combined Likes and comments per second, according to stats released by the company in August when you break down the daily average they reported at the time. Instagram’s 9,500 similar actions per second definitely trail, but are nonetheless impressive given that Instagram is mobile-only and a much younger service. Facebook also reported in October that it had crossed the 1 billion monthly active user mark (based on users who log into the service at least once a month), which means that its MAUs on average engage more with the service in terms of likes and comments than Instagram’s, but that’s also not very surprising given Instagram’s emphasis on passive enjoyment of a stream of images.

Instagram is reporting these just two days before its revised privacy and user policies go into effect, which are the result of the feedback it received after changing its terms the first time around.

You would be forgiven if you thought jailbreaking was dead. There hadn’t been a good, untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 running the current version of the iOS operating system for some time. But this week’s launch of the new “evasi0n” jailbreak demonstrates the pent-up demand in the jailbreak community for a new release. Immediately upon its debut, traffic to evasi0n.com flared, and the jailbreak app store Cydia became nearly unusable due to the huge influx of users.

By some early reports, the jailbreak had sent Cydia usage to 1.7 million times the day after its release. Now that number is much higher – over 4 million jailbreakers have used Cydia since evasi0n’s launch, according to Jay Freeman, the jailbreak app store’s creator.

That’s impressive, but still short of the 22.8 million total unique devices running Cydia during the two months prior to evasi0n’s launch. Of course, all these numbers also include many older iOS devices, such as iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch devices and Apple TVs, not all of which are capable of running iOS 6 or using the new evasi0n jailbreak. (Evasi0n doesn’t support the current Apple TV, for example).

But that’s not to say that the jailbreak hasn’t hit. And hit hard.

Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at CloudFlare, the content delivery network (CDN) and security service tasked with managing evasi0n.com’s load, said that CloudFlare delivered 2.9 million pageviews at its peak, per hour for evasi0n.com. Traffic had been building up all week and topped off around 8:15 AM PST Monday. CloudFlare also saw 27,952,010 requests to the site, and approximately 960,000 Megabits of traffic per hour during its peak period.

Prince said that there were 121,191,058 requests to evasi0n.com over the last week, and CloudFlare handled 81 percent of them, saving the site a total of 98 percent of the 1.2 terabytes of bandwidth it would have otherwise had to have served itself. “The net effect was that evasi0n.com could survive a very large surge in traffic without having to build up its own expensive infrastructure,” he explains, touting the CloudFlare service.

It’s interesting that CloudFlare had even been watching evasi0n – the company doesn’t typically notice all the sites that come under its watch, given that it now sees 3,000 sign-ups per day. But evasi0n was one of the few that jumped out at them due to the denial-of-service attacks it faced. The first actually began before the jailbreak’s release. On January 31st, afternoon PT, news of evasi0n’s forthcoming launch started making the rounds on Twitter, sending a large number of users to the site at once, effectively putting it under attack.

The second, larger denial-of-service attack, came courtesy of actual attackers, not enthusiastic jailbreakers, and it took place in the middle of evasi0n’s peak traffic period. This type of attack is known as a SYN-flood, and it’s meant to overwhelm the network resources of unprotected websites. “This is becoming an increasing pattern that we see where, when a site starts to get popular, attackers will launch attacks to knock it offline when the sites’ servers are already struggling,” Prince explains.

Cydia Crashes During Day One

Cydia, however, didn’t fare quite as well under the onslaught of new users. On the day of the release, Freeman began sharing charts of the traffic spike, which saw 14,000 hits per second during the first afternoon of evasi0n’s release.

Given that Cydia was mostly down during the jailbreak’s launch, using app sales data to get a window into the impact of the jailbreak doesn’t make sense in this case. (Freeman even told us that one developer had joked that he hadn’t expected the new jailbreak to cause his paid app sales to go down!)

Instead of sales, Freeman offered data from Google Analytics. The date range on the below charts is February 4 through 6, but the data reflects the 4th only. (The charts don’t update that often, he says). Here you can see the spike, and the 2.3 million uniques it sent during day one.

But Freeman isn’t entirely sold on the Google Analytics data, saying that he’s not certain of the 2+ million uniques because of the way Google measures things, as well as its general slowness to update. He is, however, confident that there were over 4 million unique devices using Cydia as of 11 PM last night.

That number, remember, includes devices not associated with the evasi0n jailbreak, though. And it also includes devices running the earlier popular jailbreak redsn0w, who are now “converting” to evasi0n. Freeman also explained that due to Cydia’s downtime during the launch, some devices may not have been counted.

Still, 4 million is a solid figure. “That is many more than I normally have been seeing recently, but not as many as I would have expected,” says Freeman. “That said, again, that number is a failure, as I was pretty much just offline for most of the initial wave on the 4th.”

Earlier this morning, official evasi0n.com stats came out, saying that the site had seen 5 million uniques, and 40 million pageviews.

One of the jailbreakers, @Pod2G, even later broke figures down by country after getting a lot of requests for region-specific data. China beat out the U.S. by a few hundred thousand visitors, the chart shows – this, despite reports that jailbreaking in China was on the downturn. Perhaps the Chinese, like the rest of the world, was just in need of a decent jailbreak.

Repos Break Records

Another way to gain insight into how big of a deal this current jailbreak is, is to look at the repositories (repos) that host the jailbreak applications users find while browsing Cydia. Some of the most popular of these include BigBoss, ModMyi, ZodTTD, and MacCiti, for example.

ZodTTD, which offers video game emulators, themes, and other apps ported to iOS, had seen steadily decreasing traffic due to a lack of a current, untethered jailbreak before evasi0n’s release. “On the day of the evasi0n jailbreak release, traffic increased over 1,000 percent,” the operator, who asked to just go by ZodTTD, tells us. “While I don’t have specific download counts sorted out just yet, terabytes of packages were downloaded from my repo on launch day.

“This was a significant showing for a jailbreak release,” he adds.

Kyle Matthews of ModMyi, the largest jailbreaking community on the Internet, meanwhile, just had a record-breaking day. Matthews says his repo saw triple the average number of visitors, and quintuple its average number of pageviews, following evasi0n’s release.

“Yesterday, specifically, we hit a traffic record for us, over 685,000 visits. Our previous record was 645,000,” he says. ModMyi also set a record for online simultaneous users specifically on its website (that is, not the repo, just the forums and news sections) of 20,073. The previous record was 15,002.

Below, you can see evasi0n’s impact in a tale of two charts. The first shows average traffic for a Sunday through Tuesday in January, pre-evasi0n. That one shows 475,000 visits, 338,000 uniques, and 1.5 million pageviews over those days.

The second is after evasi0n, again Sunday through Tuesday (noon ET). Now it has climbed to 1.7 million visits, around 900,000 uniques, and 7 million pageviews.

Michael Babiy runs the theme-heavy MacCiti repo, which currently hosts around 3,500 themes and other pieces of artwork from hundreds of artists. The second day after the jailbreak release (around 17 hours into day two), MacCiti saw 950,446 pageviews, which tops the last significant traffic increase the site saw back in May 2012, when Absinthe 2.0 debuted. That time, pageviews peaked at 680,000 per day. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see our daily visits double from the previous release,” says Babiy, of evasi0n’s impact.

Numbers are still rolling in, of course, but the reports here are enough to put the argument to bed that no one cares about jailbreaking their iOS devices any more. There’s still a core crowd of users who obviously do care, and who will jailbreak the minute the software becomes available.

Image credit, top: iPhoneinCanada

Kickstarter published its first quarter report yesterday – a tongue-in-cheek but data-filled blog post – about its project statistics. According to CEO Yancey Strickler, the company funded 4,497 projects with pledges of $1,244,868 per day which adds up to a solid $112,038,158 total pledged in a single four month period. And they say crowdfunding is just for desperate singer-songwriters.

Strickler noted that Veronica Mars saw a massive number of backers – 91,585 in all – while the site has funded 7 Oscar-nominated films and two Grammy-winning music projects.

“We’re thrilled at what backers and creators have achieved in the first three months of the year. We’re looking forward to the rest of 2014!”, he said in an email.

The popular site recently passed the $1 billion mark in pledges and is still competing mightily with other services like Crowdtilt and Indiegogo. However, these very visible and very public numbers definitely puts Kickstarter in with the big boys.

via CrowdfundInsider

Figures out this morning from eMarketer estimate Twitter’s growth to continue in the double-digits through 2018, with the Asia-Pacific region playing a large part in that growth trend. Today, Twitter users in Asia-Pacific already outnumber those in North America and Western Europe, accounting for 32.8% of all Twitter users, compared with just 23.7% in North America, the report says. By 2018, the Asia-Pacific region will account for over a 40% share of Twitter’s user base, while the North American region drops to just 19%.

Also notable is that eMarketer’s report doesn’t include China in its estimates, because the network is currently blocked there, even though many users still access it by way of virtual private networks. If that situation changes, the report notes somewhat obviously, the growth in the Asia-Pacific region would be “significantly higher.”

Instead, the forecast estimates that Indonesia and India will end up impacting Twitter’s user base growth most heavily going forward, with both countries experiencing increases of over 50% in 2014 – the former with 61.7% user growth and the latter with 56.9% growth. More importantly, perhaps, is that while large growth numbers tend to indicate a relatively small installed base, that’s not the case with these two countries – India and Indonesia will become the third and fourth-largest regional Twitter user bases this year, at 18.1 million and 15.3 million users, respectively.

That means this year they will both also surpass the U.K. for the first time, in terms of user numbers.

Meanwhile, in Twitter’s home base in the U.S., the market is more mature, with growth tapering off into the single digits in 2015 and beyond. It will, however, remain the largest country in terms of user accounts throughout the forecasting period. In addition, the U.S. user base is today where most of Twitter’s revenue comes from – in fact, the U.S. accounted for nearly three-quarters of Twitter’s total ad dollars last year.

But this (fairly bullish) report indicates that Twitter still has room to grow its ad business outside the U.S. where the service takes hold in these expanding, emerging markets.

In 2018, eMarketer says it estimates that Twitter will growth 10.7% to reach close to 400 million users worldwide.

One big caveat: this estimate and the forecast itself relies on different data sources than Twitter’s own reported figures (255 million monthly actives, currently) because eMarketer uses instead some 90-plus data sources including Twitter press releases, survey and traffic data from other research firms and regulatory agencies, historical trends, internet and mobile adoption trends, country-specific demographic and socioeconomic factors in its analysis.

From this collection of roughly 400 data points, the firm leans heavily on consumer survey data to eliminate business accounts, multiple accounts for individual users and other sources for double-counting to reach its numbers. This is also eMarketer’s first-ever forecast of Twitter users worldwide, so the company still needs to prove that its estimates on this particular subject do well.

Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game streaming site, has been growing in popularity as more of today’s younger users look to online video instead of traditional television for entertainment. Today, the company released figures that paint of picture of its user base and how deeply they engage with Twitch’s content. Though the company didn’t disclose how many total users it has, it did note that it averages over half a million concurrent viewers who tune in to watch videos from its 1.7 million monthly broadcasters. And those users are heavily engaged with the site, watching more minutes of video every month than the average YouTube user.

The company had previously announced having over 100 million users, we should point out, but chose not to update that figure at this time. However, it would say that it has 8.5 million daily active users – up 20 percent since 2015.

Twitch also says that its users watch 421.6 minutes of programming per month, which is far higher than YouTube’s 291 monthly minutes. (Twitch cites this figure using comScore data). And, more recently, that includes non-gaming content as well, given that the network has been experimenting with expansions into “creative” videos adjacent to the gaming space, including things like painting, illustrations, songs, costumes and even glass blowing.

Many of Twitch’s broadcasters were throwing this sort of content into their channels, but it had been harder to discover until the launch of Twitch’s “creative” vertical last fall.

In addition, the company decided to keep videos from “Joy of Painting’s” Bob Ross on the air after a special event drew in 5.6 million viewers.

Still, the bread-and-butter for Twitch is its gaming videos, which are most popular in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden, Poland and Taiwan, the company says.

At times, viewers from around the world are tuning in to watch events on the network, which led to peak usage on August 23, 2015 where 2 million-plus viewers came to watch ESL One: Cologne 2015 and Legends NA LCS Finals in one weekend.

In November, thanks in part to the launch of Twitch Creative and the ExtraLife Charity event, Twitch saw its peak number of concurrent broadcasters with 35,610 streaming programs. (Twitch regularly hosts charity events – in 2015, its community raised $17.4 million for over 55 charities.)

Viewers aren’t just watching programs, however – they’re also interacting. The company says that its users sent 9.2 billion messages in 2015, and shared as many as 3.8 million KappaRoss “emotes” during its “Joy of Painting” marathon.

KappaRoss was the 10th most popular emote on the site, following Kappa, :D, <3, :), PogChamp, DansGame, BibleThump, Kreygasm, and 4Head.

Emotes are like Twitch’s secret language – these custom emoji-like pictorial glyphs let users jazz up their conversations, while also allowing broadcasters to generate revenue by selling their own packs to fans. (If you don’t know what all these emotes mean, a site called TwitchEmotes can help you understand).

Also worth noting is that Twitch is making headway on mobile, which now accounts for 35 percent of its monthly viewership. But the majority (56 percent) still watch via the web, while 7 percent watch on consoles.

These details and more, including those about which games were popular in 2015, were published today on Twitch.tv’s website. 

The news follows Amazon’s earlier announcement this week of its new game engine, Lumberyard, which also includes Twitch integration. In Lumberyard, new “Twitch Chatplay” feature lets gamers interact with viewers in real-time (such as via voting on a game’s outcome or sending gifts), which could lead to more “Twitch Plays…” content. There’s also a Twitch “JoinIn” feature for multiplayer games where broadcasters invite viewers to play along. If more games were built to take advantage of these features, Twitch would also benefit as a result, and the above numbers could grow even further.

Pokémon Go has quickly become one of the most viral mobile applications of all time. The game is now the biggest ever in the U.S.; it has now topped Twitter’s daily users, and it sees people spending more time in its app than in Facebook, according to reports from various tracking firms.

An earlier report from SimilarWeb had pegged Pokémon Go as having surpassed dating app Tinder, in terms of installs, while it was closing in on Twitter’s daily active users. By Thursday, July 7th, the app had been installed on more Android smartphones than the dating app, the firm had said.

Today, SimilarWeb tells us that Pokémon Go did manage to surpass Twitter in terms of daily active users on Monday, and now sees 5.92 percent of the U.S. Android population engaging with the app on a daily basis.

The app is even seeing notable numbers of active users in countries where it hasn’t even been released yet, the company pointed out. (See chart below.) This is thanks to users locating then installing the Android APK file (the Android app, which can then be sideloaded onto your device).

While the industry has seen the rapid rise of several other mobile games in recent years – including hits like Candy Crush, Clash Royale, Minecraft, and Slither.io, for example – a new report from SurveyMonkey Intelligence indicates that Pokémon Go has claimed the title of “biggest mobile game in U.S. history.”

This is based on Pokémon Go’s peak daily active users, the firm says.

On Monday, Pokémon Go saw just under 21 million daily active users in the U.S., topping Candy Crush’s rumored peak audience in 2013 as well as other top games like Draw Something, Clash Royale, and Slither.io, which hit their own peaks in various years.

The report also noted that Pokémon Go is now closing in on Snapchat on Android, and the Pokémon Go Android application could even pass Google Maps on Android.

Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

But active users is only one metric of gauging a game’s success. Thanks to the competitive nature of today’s app stores, it’s also important to track how long users actually engage with an application.

On this front, Pokémon Go is also breaking records. According to app store intelligence firm SensorTower, mobile users are now spending more time playing Pokémon Go than they are spending time in Facebook.

Facebook, of course, still counts far more mobile users – its corporate site claims 1.51 billion monthly active users, for example, versus Pokémon Go’s roughly 15 million mobile installs. (Not an apples-to-apples comparison, of course, but it gives you an idea.)

Also remarkable: tracking firm SimilarWeb says the game is installed on over 10 percent of Android devices in the U.S., and over 15 percent in its other markets, Australia and New Zealand. (See below chart.)

Meanwhile, on iOS, the average iPhone user spent 33 minutes in Pokémon Go on Monday, according to SensorTower’s data. That’s more than any other apps it analyzed, including Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and Slither.io.

Facebook saw the second-most average usage, at 22 minutes, 8 seconds, the firm reported, and Snapchat saw 18 minutes. Twitter, Instagram, then Slither.io followed.

However, while SurveyMonkey’s data pointed to Pokémon Go being the biggest game in terms of active users, SensorTower noted that Pokémon Go is still beaten by others when it comes to time spent in games.

For instance, Game of War sees nearly 2 hours of total daily usage for the average user, while Candy Crush Saga, sees daily usage of about 43 minutes.

All this being said, the mobile gaming industry historically hasn’t always been kind to titles with tremendous hype, SurveyMonkey notes. Nintendo’s first mobile game, Miitomo, quickly turned into a ghost town, after early success that sent it to the top of the App Store.

Pokémon Go may be different, however. In addition to capitalizing on the Pokémon brand, the app has introduced brilliant gaming mechanics, in terms of keeping players active, engaged, returning and spending.

The only issue for the game in the foreseeable future is continuing to balance the needs of the hardcore gamers with the more casual ones. You can already see an issue in some denser markets, where the Pokémon gyms (where the Pokémon battle) are dominated by the game’s top players, making it difficult for casuals to engage. ButPokémon Go can easily overcome this challenge by implementing one-on-one battles and trading, which it is likely to do.

Still fascinated by the viral spread of Pokémon Go? So are we. The app on Monday topped Twitter’s daily users, and has people spending more minutes per day playing the game than browsing Facebook, reports have indicated. Now comes word that game has also topped Pandora, Netflix, Google Hangouts, and Spotify, in terms of daily active users, and is installed on more devices than many popular apps, like Candy Crush, Viber, LinkedIn, Clash of Clans, Tinder and others.

The figures are based on tracking company SimilarWeb’s analysis of U.S. Android users.

On Monday, July 11th, 5.9 percent of all U.S. Android owners played Pokémon Go, which was 46 percent more than the 4.1 percent who launched Twitter that day, the firm also reported. However, a handful of other apps are still beating Pokémon on this front, including Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.

Despite users’ heavy engagement with the mobile game, it’s still not one of the most installed apps to date. Pandora, Netflix, Google Hangouts and Spotify have more traction on that front, though the gap is narrowing in some cases.

At present, Pokémon Go is installed on 10.8 percent of U.S. Android phones. Spotify is installed on 17 percent of devices, and Twitter on 20 percent, for comparison’s sake.

However, though it’s only been live in the U.S. for around a week, the app has been installed on more devices than Candy Crush, Viber, LinkedIn, Clash of Clans, ESPN, iFunny, Lyft, musical.ly, and Tinder.

Keep in mind that this data is only for the U.S. But in its other markets, Australia and New Zealand, Pokémon Go has been soaring as well. There, the app is installed on 15.1 percent and 16 percent of Android devices, respectively.

Not surprisingly, traffic to the developer’s website, Niantic Labs, has been high as well. On Monday, it saw its most-visited day in history, with 1,171,000 visits on desktop and mobile web.

New data released this morning on the mobile phenomenon Pokémon Go shows that the popular game isn’t only the biggest in U.S. history – it’s also breaking records when it comes to its ability to monetize and retain its users, as well. According to a report from SurveyMonkey, Pokémon Go is seeing retention rates at more than double the industry average, and is pulling in revenues at twice the average rate for casual games.

The news follows earlier reports this week from a number of tracking and analytics firms which painted a picture of the app’s viral spread and significant traction. According to SimilarWeb, for example, the app passed Twitter in terms of daily active users on Android as of Monday, while another report from SensorTower said that users were spending more minutes per day in the Pokémon Go app than they were in Facebook.

What the latest figures indicate is that Pokémon Go users aren’t just testing the waters – they’re addicted.

SurveyMonkey estimates that just under 26 million U.S. users played the app on iOS and Android on Thursday, which is “unprecedented” for a mobile game, it says. Plus, more people are using the maps in Pokémon Go, which are powered by Google Maps, than they use the Google Maps app itself, says SurveyMonkey.

Right now, Pokémon Go is rapidly finding its way onto new devices at a rate of 4 to 5 million installs per day, but this pace can’t continue forever, of course. That’s why looking at the app’s ability to retain its users is also important. So far, Pokémon Go is succeeding on this front as well, though it’s still early days.

It seems that even the mildly curious are finding themselves immediately addicted. Around 7 out of 10 people who download the app return to it the next day, the report says. That’s extremely high for the industry – typically, games see 3 out of 10 people returning after the first day.

In other words, Pokémon Go is seeing more than double the industry average retention rate for the time being.

In addition, the app is raking in revenue at twice the average of casual games, the firm also found. Its average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) – a figure that represents what people are spending in the game, averaged – is around $0.25.

That’s more than the massively profitable hit Candy Crush, to give you an idea.

Casual games tend to earn less than puzzle, board and racing games, but Pokémon Go is even doing well when pitted up against those gaming genres. Puzzle games’ ARPDAU tops out at $0.15, for example. Board and racing games can earn more, however, but not by much. (See chart below; via.)

Of course, what everyone is wondering now is when will the Pokémon Go hype wear off? Even hit titles tend to fade in popularity over time. For Pokémon Go, however, these new figures indicate that – for now, at least – it’s not having trouble keeping its players active, engaged, returning, and spending.

Social media usage spiked on election night in America, but overall, internet traffic was down – likely the result of people tuning in to watch election coverage on television, instead of online. In addition, Facebook saw an increase of almost 30% on Tuesday night, while Twitter traffic more than doubled, according to new data published by broadband network company Sandvine this morning, which tracked the impact the election had on internet usage.

Meanwhile, Netflix – which is typically the largest source of internet traffic in North America – saw a huge decline. Its traffic levels dropped by 25% compared with the previous day. However, Sandvine believes that those levels will return to normal tonight.

The findings are based on a sample of U.S. fixed access network on the East Coast that has been fairly representative of national traffic in the past, notes Sandvine. But these figures are still preliminary for the time being, and may be updated later in the day.

Also during election night, total peak internet traffic was down by roughly 15% as people watched the results, instead of surfing the web, as usual.

This figure also speaks to the fact that when it comes to following breaking news across the U.S., many are still turning to television over web news sources, live streams, and online TV services.

That being said, even when web surfing is down, people were using their “second screens,” like tablets and smartphones, to engage with the news they were watching. The spikes in social media usage came from people reading and sharing their thoughts and feelings about the election across sites like Facebook and Twitter.

These metrics indicate the larger role that social media platforms have on today’s web: they are increasingly the portals where users are getting their information when they’re online. They are places where news – and fake, viral, clickbait masquerading as news – also spreads.

In fact, almost half of adults get news on Facebook, a report from earlier this year said.

This has led to some questioning whether or not these networks have a responsibility to act more like media organizations, in terms of cutting down on the spread of disinformation. Given the amount of fake news stories that circulated on Facebook during this election cycle, it’s hard to ignore the impact Facebook’s decision on the matter had on American politics.

Smartphone users are spending more time in apps than in years past, and now access over 30 apps on a monthly basis, according to a new report from App Annie out this week. These 30 apps work out to being roughly one-third to one-half of the apps users have installed on their smartphones. And using those apps is a daily habit, as people now launch an average of at least 9 apps per day, the report found.

The countries leading this app usage on a monthly basis include India, Brazil, China, South Korea, the U.S., France, the U.K., Japan, and Mexico. (see below)

iPhone users tended to use slightly more apps than Android users, the report also noted, but Android users used over 30 percent more games.

At first, news that users are accessing nearly 10 apps daily sounds like a notable increase from a report from a couple of years ago, which had painted a different picture of app usage. According to a Forrester Research study from 2015, the majority of users’ time was spent using just five non-native apps they’ve installed from the App Store. (By non-native, they mean the apps that didn’t ship with your phone, like Email, Calendar, Messaging, etc.)

However, Forrester was excluding pre-installed apps from its analysis, while App Annie is not. In fact, it said that utilities on iPhone and tools on Android accounted for the heaviest monthly usage, and this was largely due to pre-installed apps like Safari on iOS and Google on Android.

In other words, it’s likely that when you remove the pre-installed apps from App Annie’s measurements, you’d come up with around the same number of apps being used as Forrester had.

In addition, App Annie’s new numbers back up a prior Nielsen report which claimed there was an upper limit as to how many apps consumers can manage on a monthly basis. Also back in 2015, Nielsen said the consumers used 26 to 27 apps per month. App Annie is noting that trend largely continues, with an average of 30 apps being used monthly.

This trend also has a name, by the way – it’s the 30:10 rule (meaning roughly 30 apps per month, 10 per day).

Beyond utilities and tools, the other popular app categories by usage included social networking (iOS), communication (Android), productivity (iOS & Android) and social (Android). Dating and productivity apps were launched the most, with the highest number of sessions per day at four.

Time spent in apps has also increased over the past two years, App Annie noted. Today, users in the U.S. spend an average of over 2 hours and 15 minutes in apps every day, which amounts to over one month out of the year. In South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Japan, that number is even higher, with users averaging around 3 hours daily.

In Brazil and Mexico, half user time was in social and communication apps categories, while in South Korea and Japan, games accounted for 25 percent of usage.

Also of note is that in most countries analyzed, over 80 percent of app usage was taking place in apps that were outside of the top app in that country – meaning even though apps like WhatsApp and Facebook dominate, there’s still user time to go around, says App Annie.

As you know, the devastation of Hurricane Sandy has hit millions. Many turned to Twitter to discuss what they were going through. Today, the company shared some interesting facts and numbers having to do with Hurricane-related activity on the site.

What does this tell you? Twitter was a fine replacement for cell phones and landlines that weren't working. The interesting thing about these numbers is that the company dug deep down to see exactly what people were talking about.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Instagram reported a few usage stats today, marking the first time it has talked about numbers on its own site since the kerfuffle raised over its terms of service change following the Facebook buy-out. The internal stats show strong engagement, and user growth, rather than a decline in active Instagram members. Part of the discrepancy between the these numbers and third-party doom and gloom reports may have to do with the fact that Instagram is tracking monthly active users, of which it has 90 million, versus the less stable daily active users stat often cited by others.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

You would be forgiven if you thought jailbreaking was dead. There hadn't been a good, untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 running the current version of the iOS operating system for some time. But this week's launch of the new "evasi0n" jailbreak demonstrates the pent up demand in the jailbreak community for a new release. Immediately upon its debut, traffic to evasi0n.com flared, and the jailbreak app store Cydia became nearly unusable due to the huge influx of users.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kickstarter published its first quarter report yesterday - a tongue-in-cheek but data-filled blog post - about its project statistics. According to CEO Yancey Strickler, the company funded 4,497 projects with pledges of $1,244,868 per day which adds up to a solid $112,038,158 total pledged in a single four month period. And they say crowdfunding is just for desperate singer-songwriters.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Figures out this morning from eMarketer estimate Twitter’s growth to continue in the double-digits through 2018, with the Asia-Pacific region playing a large part in that growth trend. Today, Twitter users in Asia-Pacific already outnumber those in North America and Western Europe, accounting for 32.8% of all Twitter users, compared with just 23.7% in North […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game streaming site, has been growing in popularity as more of today's younger users look to online video instead of traditional television for entertainment. Today, the company released figures that paint of picture of its user base and how deeply they engage with Twitch's content. Though the company didn't disclose how many total users it has, it did note that it averages over half a million concurrent viewers who tune in to watch videos from its 1.7 million monthly broadcasters. And those users are heavily engaged with the site, watching more minutes of video every month than the average YouTube user.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pokémon Go has quickly become one of the most viral mobile applications of all time. The game is now the biggest ever in the U.S.; it has now topped Twitter's daily users, and it sees people spending more time in its app than in Facebook, according to reports from various tracking firms.

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Still fascinated by the viral spread of Pokémon Go? So are we. The app on Monday topped Twitter’s daily users, and has people spending more minutes per day playing the game than browsing Facebook, reports have indicated. Now comes word that game has also topped Pandora, Netflix, Google Hangouts, and Spotify, in terms of daily active users, and is installed on […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

New data released this morning on the mobile phenomenon Pokémon Go shows that the popular game isn’t only the biggest in U.S. history – it’s also breaking records when it comes to its ability to monetize and retain its users, as well. According to a report from SurveyMonkey, Pokémon Go is seeing retention rates at more than double […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Social media usage spiked on election night in America, but overall, internet traffic was down – likely the result of people tuning in to watch election coverage on television, instead of online. In addition, Facebook saw an increase of almost 30% on Tuesday night, while Twitter traffic more than doubled, according to new data published by broadband […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.