While 34% of the data we’re creating is useful, only 1% of it is now being analyzed in some form, according to the latest research from renowned Morgan Stanley internet analyst Mary Meeker.
Every year, Meeker’s State of the Internet presentation is used as an industry touchstone for how much digital technology has influenced media and marketing trends.
Meeker, a current partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, delivered her annual at the Code conference in California.
The talk covered changes in media consumption, education, healthcare, commerce and security.
Among the more startling statistics she revealed was that more than 1.8 billion photos are shared every day and the dating app Tinder, which allows conversation only after both people have “liked” each other, now registers 800 million swipes per day and 11 million matches.
However, Meeker highlighted one trend as the “biggest reimagination of all”: the way we’re creating oceans of new data with the mobile devices and other sensors we carry around with us.
Companies can use this “big data” to solve big problems. Ms Meeker points to innovations in sleep patterns, fuel efficiency, speech recognition software and media personalisation, arising from millions of data points collected on mobile devices.
The new Samsung Galaxy S5, for example, features 10 separate sensors including barometer, fingerprints, accelerometer and heart rate monitor.
While 34% of the data we’re creating is useful, only 1% of it is now being analyzed in some form.
As that changes, Meeker predicted we’ll see a host of “pattern-based solutions” to complicated problems like energy consumption, traffic and healthcare — as well as new threats to privacy and individual rights.
Some key findings from the report are below:
• Internet advertising continues to outpace the rest: Global internet advertising grew 16 per cent this year, and mobile advertising grew by 47 per cent. The average revenue per user for Google, Facebook and Twitter remained stable.
• Apps replacing channels : Applications are moving away from being catch-all toward stand-alone, such as Facebook’s Messenger and Twitter’s Vine. Apps are now the dominant organizational mode for video as consumers, led by millennials, watch ever more of their video on mobile devices and internet-connected TVs.
• The growth of the visual web: The fast-growing popularity of services like Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat.
• Dual-screening: 84 per cent of American mobile users use their device while watching TV. We are seeing more content than ever, but it allows us to avoid commercials.
• Data mining: We’re only meaningfully analysing a tiny fraction (1 per cent) of available data. Tech start-ups are leading the way in both expanding and understanding data.
• The proliferation of screens in consumers’ lives: Allowing them to consume more content in the same number of hours.
• The shift of ad dollars from print to mobile. Print still gobbles up a share of ad spending out of proportion to how much time people spend with it, a fact that has been an annual hobbyhorse of Meeker’s. While the internet is finally getting its due as an ad medium, mobile remains considerably underindexed.
• The rise of China on the internet. In 2013, nine of the ten biggest web properties by traffic were owned by U.S. companies. In just one year, that fell to six of ten, with Baidu , Alibaba and Sohu joining Tencent on the list.
• Selectivity: We are sharing more content with a narrower group of people, rather than broadcasting a little bit of information to all. Think Snapchat, which now accounts for 700 million daily photo shares.
• Mobile growth: Mobile usage now accounts for 25 per cent of all web traffic in 2014, up from 14 per cent a year ago. Asia and Africa represent a significant portion of that – developing nations “leap-frogged” the PC and laptop era, moving straight to smartphones.
• The growth of messaging apps: WhatsApp and WeChat reflects a preference for communicating with smaller groups of contacts more frequently, in contrast with the one-to-many mode of communication popularized by social networks like Facebookand Twitter.
• No sign of a bubble burst…yet. On a variety of measures, including total value of tech IPOs and venture funding, 2014 doesn’t look very much like 2000, the year the dotcom bubble popped. But it does look very much like 1998.
View the full slide presentation below: