So, are you wired?

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How did you score in John Griffiths’ quiz? Here are the correct answers, with commentary from John. Score one point for every correct answer. Don’t forget to let us know how you did.

1. The UK Facebook population is equivalent to the entire population of which country?

A: Peru. There are 29.6 million on Facebook in the UK, the third largest Facebook population in the world and greater than the entire population of Scandinavia – but still lagging far behind Indonesia; would you have guessed that? The global Facebook population as you probably know, is the third largest in the world, ahead of the USA and behind India. It’s so large that saying you are going to run a Facebook campaign is equivalent to saying you’re going to advertise to North America. Not very focused. So we need to think hard about how to break down this huge mass of people into something manageable. And to recognise that Facebook will mean different things in different places.

2. Roughly how much was MySpace sold for by News International?

A: $23 million. An interesting figure since Rupert bought it for $580 million only a few years before. One of the challenges for social media assets is that users don’t stay active and they don’t stay forever. Some players, including mobile phone networks, are trying to find ways to aggregate all the platforms together so it doesn’t matter where your friends are, you can still find them. Social media platforms are trying to make sure they keep their customers and all the data they attract to themselves – so you have to choose your favourite social platform. It’s a dangerous business and we can expect the failure of social media platforms which don’t scale well and don’t keep their users engaged.

3. How much of global web traffic is accounted for by iPads?

A: 1%, a stunning figure for a product which didn’t exist two years ago and whose format was considered to be odd – after Microsoft’s failed attempt years before to launch tablets to the business market, never imagining that anyone would tolerate a device with a smaller footprint than a laptop screen. It’s interesting to watch as smartphones improve – will smartphones increase iPad sales or kill them? – and to see if any tablets other than the iPad get any traction. I think the most impressive aspect of this statistic is that the iPad is a premium device owned by a minority but shows how the right form factor can drive up web usage.

4. By September 2011 which app store will sell more apps?

A: Android, which will overtake the Apple App Store in August or September of this year with around 425,000 apps. The simple different between the two operating systems is that Google’s Android OS is free, cheap at the price since Google are using it to harvest data from all their users (you did know that, didn’t you?). And, because unlike Apple there is no vetting of the apps before they are listed in the store, it is much easier and quicker for Android apps to be created and circulated. Get this: a year ago 100,000 Android phones were being activated every single day. Today it’s 400,000. Every. Single. Day. The significance of Android which is lost on most marketing people in the UK is that globally most smartphone users will have their first experience of using a mobile phone to access data on an Android phone, not an Apple device or a RIM device. Which means if you are developing for a global audience you should probably start with Android. And if you’re developing for a UK audience you should probably start with Android as well.

5. How soon on July 7^th 2005 was the terrorist attack on the London Underground first reported on Wikipedia?

A: Less an hour. 18 minutes actually. After 12 hours, 2500 users had created a 14-page account more comprehensive than any other news medium. I found this account in the book Wikonomics which details how collaboration is changing business models all over the world.

6. Who has just lost the right to access real time Twitter feeds?

A: It’s Google – at a disadvantage to its competitors who are still given access to the Twitter real time feed. Real time has become a battle ground. Google has only just launched Google+, its latest attempt to enter and dominate the social space. If Google can’t do this then can it hope to keep relevant as a search provider if the feeds are no longer real time?

7. Of Russia, Philippines, China, Korea and USA, which has the highest % penetration of:

most active bloggers? A: China
watch video clips? A: Philippines
people belonging to social networks? A: Russia
TV watched on mobile phones? A: Korea

The point about these statistics is that there are big variations: planet internet is not homogenous. And the USA, despite being a major internet player (and infrastructure supplier), is far from being a trend leader – even if they produce most of the tech reports. So beware of US- or Western-centric thinking – I see a lot of this in the tech reports.

8. Have you done the following this year yet with your mobile:

Updated your social networks?
Located a nearby store?
Bought a book?
Internet dating?

A: Give yourself a point for having done any of these. This is just a reminder of how fast mobile data usage has come. For many countries mobile phone penetration has passed 100% (though smartphones are a long way behind). From a research point of view the mobile is the single biggest research platform available, giving access to the entire population. So, how many of your surveys use mobiles? And if not, then why not?

9. If you were a typical global internet user, rank the order of your activities from most to least probably:

Visited a friend’s social media page A: 3^rd
Read a blog A: 2nd
Watched a video clip A: 1st
Visited a photo sharing website A: 4^th
Managed my social network profile A: 5th

2009 was the year that watching video clips took over as the most common activity on the internet. Social media access overtook email and Facebook has become the world’s biggest curator of photographs – sorry Kodak, I bet you never saw that one coming. The social network is fuelled by content, and photos are one of the most accessible fuels we have. Never mind those beautiful images on Flickr. The most common activities are passive – viewing other people’s content – but the levels of activity are huge and rising. Managing your online social profile is a daily occurrence for hundreds of millions of people.

10. What is the proportion of the UK population without home computer access to the internet?

A: The figure I found was 27%…Making it dangerous for us to run online surveys with internet users and then claim that the rest of the population think the same. It also means that the relevant figures for usage of the internet in the workplace and via smart phones is likely to be significant. If you don’t have a computer where you work or can’t use your mobile to surf the net (as most teenagers can’t), how restricted are you in what you can search for and buy? Think also about the implications of your customers doing for the first time something they could not have imagined doing only two or three years ago. These systemic changes will unsettle markets for years to come

John Griffiths is a member of The Marketing Society, and creative director at Spring Research. Read more from John on our blog.