Phones account for the majority of non-computer traffic. Mobile devices drive 4.4% of total digital traffic, tablets contribute 1.9%, and other non-computer devices send 0.5% of traffic.

The comScore data come from a recent report entitled Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits. The white paper is available for free (with registration) from comScore's website.

We reported earlier this year that worldwide mobile data traffic is expected to increase 26-fold to 75 exabytes per year (!) by 2015. That's 19 billion DVDs, just to give you a sense. To put it another way, that's 75 times the size of the entire Internet in the year 2000. The mobile revolution is underway, and it behooves those who make Web content to get onboard.

How do you split up your Web use between desktop/laptop, mobile and tablets? Tell us in the comments.

From the user's perspective, t.co links appear as the first 19 characters of the real URL, without the HTTP or HTTPS visible, and they trail off into ellipses. When everything's working properly - unlike several periods of time today - users won't see an obscured t.co shortlink but rather the actual linked domain. One problem this aims to solve is the concealing of malicious links behind external URL shorteners. Twitter checks all shortened links against their list of malicious sites. But t.co also solves another less visible problem: it reveals Twitter's true influence as a referring traffic source.

Since so many Twitter users use third-party clients or apps, Twitter.com gets short shrift as a referrer of traffic. Some client apps show up as referrers, but not all do, and even so, it's more trouble than it's worth to dig through Google Analytics counting Twitter clients. Consequently, Twitter has long been deemphasized as an important traffic source just because Twitter.com shows up low on the referrer list in analytics. But when every tweeted link gets passed through t.co, Twitter.com may not benefit in the referrer standings, but t.co certainly will.

T.co referrals will show how many clicks came from tweets read anywhere, not just on Twitter's website, and only then will we know the full extent of Twitter's reach as a way of sharing links. Twitter could, if it so desired, also launch its own analytics product using t.co, competing with leading link shorteners like Bit.ly. But while that would be a great idea, we can only speculate as to whether it will come to pass.

Just since last week, when Twitter turned on t.co for links longer than 19 characters, Twitter has leapt ahead of Facebook as a referrer to ReadWriteWeb. Our links tend to be considerably longer than 19 characters, so t.co probably hasn't missed anything.

Have you noticed the new wrapped links on Twitter? Do you like them, or do you prefer regular shortlinks? Let's discuss in the comments.

Facebook achieved this goal in April of 2010, but StumbleUpon was already well on its way. At that time, StumbleUpon already gave twice as many referrals as Twitter. StumbleUpon's user experience is fanciful and fun, but its traffic power for publishers is quite serious. While the other social networks make the headlines, StumbleUpon has been a quiet success story. In light of today's news, it won't be so quiet for long.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Social Media Market Share

It has been a good week for StumbleUpon. Earlier this week, it rolled out the Explore Box, which enables users to focus their stumbling by typing in topics, narrowing the scope of their discoveries without taking away the fun randomness.

Do you use StumbleUpon for browsing? For driving traffic to your content? Let us know in the comments.

When I first started at ReadWriteWeb, the updates to Facebook were automatically posted via a Facebook application. It was an easy way to make sure our fans got to see our posts, but it didn't foster community discussions so after I got my bearings around here, I stopped the app (or at least I thought I did).

I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of gal, so rather than stress about the accident, I decided to look at this as an opportunity to compare apples-to-apples and determine which was better, auto-posted or manually posted items on Facebook.

As you'd probably guess, I found that automated posts saw significantly less views on Facebook. An auto-posted story that received x views on Facebook would receive, on average, 2.5x views on Facebook when published manually. Because more people saw the manually posted stories, their engagement was roughly doubled (likes and comments).

This does compare apples-to-apples because these were the exact same stories. The auto-posted content was posted first, within minutes of posting to our blog. To make sure that the data was representative, I went back a month and looked at average views, likes and comments and the auto-posted content's stats during this period is almost exactly in line with previous months' performance.

My assumptive explanation for this behavior is EdgeRank. EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine where a post shows up in a user's stream. It seems to push content that gets reactions higher up the stream. I'm not sure if my manually posted entries got a better reaction because I worked hard to craft a pithy call-to-action on them (thereby moving them up in EdgeRank) or if some other secret sauce caused them to move up in EdgeRank, which in turn gave them more reactions.

Whatever the cause, the manually posted entries saw more than double the views and a little more than double the engagement. We did eventually get the app completely turned off and I posted the remainder of the month's stories to Facebook manually. This again showed a definite increase in traffic back to our site from Facebook (nearly double).

Manual posting is a chore. What takes the app seconds to post may take me 10 minutes. And, because I am not continually at the computer, some of our content isn't posted immediately after posting. There are definitely cons to manual posting, but the increase in engagement and page views back to our site is worth the additional labor.

Have you tested your Facebook posting methods? I'd be interested in learning if this obvious increase in performance was the same across other sectors.

In other words, it's your phone talking to your car.

Using the mobile app, owners of SYNC-enabled cars can plan out their trips in advance, and the locations entered into the app are immediately accessible through the SYNC services once in the vehicle, says Ford.

But the app doesn't just serve as an easier way to program your GPS - it also helps you determine when you should take that trip, too. Using traffic forecasting, the app can suggest the best time of day to head to your destination, using color-coded (red, yellow, green) bars on its Fastest Route bar chart to show you the varying traffic patterns. And it estimates when you'll arrive at your end point, too.

The provided traffic maps with real-time speed, accident and incident info are available for highways, interstates, arterials and city streets in 126 metro areas in North America. Traffic information comes from INRIX's Predictive Traffic, which, as mobile blog IntoMobile discovered, actually has its own mobile application in the App Store now.

Up to 25 "Saved Points" (aka destinations) can be accessed through the new app, so you could even plan a cross-country road trip with dozens of stops along the way, if you were so inclined.

An interesting side note about this app: although SYNC is a Microsoft technology, there's no mention of a Windows Phone 7 app from the company. Also, thanks to its partnership with INRIX, the maps displayed come from Google, not Bing.

Ford's Mobile-to-Car Efforts

As handy as this app may be, it's the not the only mobile application that will talk to your car. For example, Ford last week announced SYNC AppLink, a downloadable software upgrade that will connect SYNC-equipped vehicles with mobile applications. The first apps to receive this integration are Pandora's Internet radio, Stitcher (another radio app) and Orangatame's OpenBeak app for Twitter. More apps are coming, Ford said. At the time of the announcement, Ford only mentioned Android and BlackBerry integrations, but the auto maker has since confirmed Apple iPhones will also be compatible with AppLink. More information on this technology is expected to come out during January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The new SYNC Destinations app is available as a free download, but you must have a registered account on www.syncmyride.com in order to use it...and a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury SYNC-equipped vehicle, of course.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Digg vs Reddit Market Share

Standoff

What is clear, though, is that Digg's users are not backing down - and neither is Digg's management. User revolts are nothing new for Digg, but this time it looks like Digg's management is not prepared to back down. According to former Digg engineer Ian Eure, Digg may not even have the ability to roll its service back to the old version anyway. Digg's CEO Kevin Rose does promise, however, that many of the old features Digg's users are now clamoring for will come back in one form or another. The question now is if the site's most fervent users will come back once all the issues with Digg v4 have been resolved, or if they will simply move on to another site like Reddit.

As a blogger I routinely asked myself the same question, until I finally realized that I (as the CEO of Woopra, the Web analytics company) had access to all the data I needed to make an absolute determination about which areas deserve the most attention.

This meant looking beyond my own site's statistics and finding out what was broadly occurring across all domains. Only through a comparative analysis can we determine where our strengths and weaknesses lie as compared to the average.

The Methodology

Woopra monitors well over 100,000 websites, however, all of our client's data is kept separate for security and privacy reasons. This meant the first step was to set up a new specialized server that would poll all other servers in our network in order to aggregate the data.

After building this new platform, the Woopra team provided me with the raw information that I used to create the charts below. This report is based on hundreds of millions of data points collected during the month of June 2010.

Virtually every category of Website is represented in the dataset - education, news, government, SMB, Fortune 500, blogs, adult - and while it clearly doesn't reflect all of the sites on the Internet, my guess is that it is a statistically significant and representative sampling.

Top Referrers of Traffic

For the purposes of this analysis, referrers have been segmented into different categories in order to more easily compare traffic. For example, there is no use in comparing Google to Flickr since they are not categorically related. If we're making a determination which search engine to focus on, Flickr would not be in the mix - and if we're looking for a photo hosting site, Google would not be in the mix. The four main referral categories that drive virtually all traffic are: Search Engines, Media, Social Bookmarks and Social Networks.

Social Network Referrers

Perhaps the one result that was the most surprising is the Social Networking category. Although Twitter seem to be the talk of the town, Facebook is the 900 pound gorilla when it comes to actually driving website traffic, sending nearly 7 in 10 visitors from the Social Network category. LinkedIn comes in a distant yet still respectable third place.

There is one giant unknown in this area, however. Many Twitter users access the service through applications instead of via Twitter's website. These applications do not report http-referrer data to Web servers, which makes it impossible to tell where the clicks originate. The same can be said about traffic driven by mobile apps (including Facebook).

All of the other players in the Social Networking category cumulatively amount to less than 3% of inbound website traffic.

Social Bookmark Referrers

Social bookmarking sites are also extremely sought after sources of traffic, with the highest profile member of the group being Digg. Interestingly, this is another case where a smaller source seems to receive a disproportionate amount of attention, since StumbleUpon drives nearly double the traffic to websites.

Another surprising standout in the Social Bookmark category is YCombinator's Hacker News site, which drives 12% of the traffic in this category. Reddit and Del.icio.us drive 5% and 2%, respectively. Interestingly, SlashDot (the grandaddy of them all) drives close to 0% of traffic to the sites Woopra measures - although webmasters still call the rush of traffic that can take down a website a "Slashdotting".

Search Referrers

In the Search Engine space, perhaps the only surprise is the absolute dominance of Google when it comes to actually driving traffic to websites. For example, Experian's Hitwise published a press release setting Google's share of the search market at 72% in May 2010. However, Woopra is seeing 92% of search visitors originating from Google.

This begs the question: Where does the discrepancy lie?

• Is the Hitwise data set more representative of the whole?
• Are there more searches taking place on other search engines that don't result in click-throughs to websites?
• StatCounter's Global Stats seem to closely mirror Woopra's data.

Regardless of the reason, what we do know is that focusing attention on optimizing for Google search is absolutely the right thing to do. (Here's the official Google SEO starter guide.)

Media Referrers

The media referrer category is reserved for sites that focus on various forms of multimedia, including images, video and audio. These sites are often overlooked as a source of traffic because they are destination sites; however, media sites can also drive large volumes of traffic.

As an example, world-famous HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff posts travel photos on Flickr, and includes a simple link back to his site in the description of each image he posts.

This technique generated nearly 13,000 pageviews on StuckInCustoms.com in April alone.

What's more notable is that Flickr is not the dominant referrer in the Media category. YouTube drives 900% more traffic to websites than Flickr. This is accomplished the same way, via links in the description of the video.

Amazingly, 99% of referrer traffic in the Media category comes from only four providers: YouTube, Flickr, Last.FM and Vimeo.

Lessons Learned

The only question we are trying to answer with this analysis is where it makes sense to focus resources and attention in order to drive traffic. So here's what we know:

• Search engine optimization specifically targeting Google's index is key. Working hard to satisfy other search providers probably won't pay off as much as spending the time elsewhere - like Facebook and Twitter promotion.
• If multimedia isn't part of a site's strategy to drive traffic, it should be. Adding photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube will not only pay off in terms of adding content for your brand, but will also drive eyeballs to your site.
• Sites that are not seeing traffic from Facebook, Twitter, or both, are missing out on a major traffic-generation source. Additionally, if the balance is not in Facebook's favor, you are likely under-utilizing this channel.
• Don't waste time promoting your site on any Social Media network other than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Your time is better spent elsewhere (like YouTube or Flickr for example).
• By all means, submit articles to Digg in the hopes of making it to the homepage, but more importantly make sure articles work their way into StumbleUpon, which can bring a larger, more sustained and less server-crash-creating stream of traffic.
• For those looking to more accurately track Twitter click-throughs, some service providers such as Bit.ly enable tracking of short links. The bad news is that the tracking is not aggregated into existing Web analytics provider data.
• This analysis doesn't take into consideration back-links (which Web authors should pursue whenever possible) because on the aggregate they do not drive global traffic. However, links from related or high-traffic sites can not only dramatically increase site traffic, they can positively impact search result listings.

Questions, comments or alternative interpretations? Drop a comment below and let us know!

Top photo by Lars Sundstrom

The iPhone version was approved by Apple this afternoon, according to Waze community cartographer Di-Ann Eisnor.

"This updated version is fully optimized for the iPhone's new iOS 4, which allows apps to run in the background while giving users the ability to simultaneously conduct other important tasks, such as sending and receiving calls, all while still hearing turn-by-turn voice instructions. When Waze goes into the background, smart algorithms are applied to detect whether or not the device is in motion. Following a long standstill, Waze will automatically close itself when it determines that you are no longer using the app, avoiding needless data and battery consumption."

The Facebook integration will now allow users to see friends - with an "f" icon and an audio alert - when they are nearby. The Foursquare integration will allow users to users check in to locations as they pull up and to unlock "Road Warrior" badges by checking into Foursquare locations three times using Waze.

Chances are that we will see slightly more fragmentation in the iPhone market later this year, once Apple releases version 4 of the iPhone OS, which won't support the first generations of the iPhone and iPod touch. In total, however, these first-generation devices only account for a small slice of all iPhone traffic (about 5%) and won't impact the overall statistics too much.

In the U.S. the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream and Motorola CLIQ are the most popular Android phones, while the HTC Hero is the most popular Android handset in the UK, followed by the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic.

While the HTC Droid was responsible for about 32% of all the Android traffic on AdMob's network, the Google Nexus One only drove about 2% of visitors in March 2010.

Looking at the overall market, AdMob also notes that the Android platform has seen rapid growth over the last year, with a compounded growth rate of about 32% since March 2009. Traffic on AdMob's own network is also up 18% month over month.

It's important to point out that these statistics are based on traffic to sites that feature AdMob's mobile advertising. AdMob's network is big enough to function as a good proxy for general trends in the mobile space, but it's always worth taking the exact numbers with a grain of salt.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has weighed in on the subject, stating that the interaction between microblogging and what he's calling "megablogging" is hardly a zero-sum game. "It's not really a 'versus,' it's an 'and'," he wrote.

Here's a chart showing data similar to comScore's:

As you can see, Twitter.com's growth rate for unique site visitors is slowing, while WordPress.com's site stats continue to grow. Does this signal the supposed "death of blogging" trend is coming to an end? Mullenweg certainly doesn't think so.

He notes that because the question is more one of cooperation than competition, the folks at WordPress are actually trying to create more opportunities for overlap between various platforms. "Features like WP.me, post by email, Twitter publicize, RSS Cloud, P2, email subscriptions, and more stuff in the cooker is trying to tie these things together more because people who do one are highly likely to do another," he said.

Moreover, many readers would question the validity of data for Twitter.com, since the website is, for many users, a secondary or even tertiary method of accessing the service. Between mobile and desktop apps, stats for Twitter.com really don't reflect how many people are using the service.

Should comScore and other domain statistics analyses be thrown out of these conversations? 'I would say they probably are precise but not accurate," wrote Mullenweg. "For WordPress.com, they don't count the custom domains or RSS readers; and for Twitter they don't count API usage or desktop clients."

Ultimately, comScore data are one way to compare site traffic, but in the age of APIs, they're hardly useful for tracking the actual number of active users for a particular service.

So, we're curious to know, do you blog, tweet, or both? And are you more likely to use Twitter.com or a mobile or desktop application? Let us know, and give us your feedback in the comments.

Unlike other mobile navigation apps, Waze "crowdsources" its map-making process, reliant on its users to switch the app on when driving around town. Then, using the phone's built-in GPS capabilities, Waze uses the information sent back to create base maps and determine traffic patterns in order to warn other users of traffic jams ahead.

Making Maps is Just a Game

To encourage users to contribute to the map-building process, the company came up with an idea to make it more of a game. Originally, the Waze character would appear and munch dots on the screen when you ventured onto a road that didn't previously exist in the company's database.

Now, with Waze 2.0, the gaming elements have been enhanced even further. Users will now munch on other goodies like cherries, hammers, and small gift packages which generate bonus points. The extra goodies will be placed on locations where the map has issues with the higher-point items on maps with the most issues.

To kick off this new release, the company is also hosting a contest dubbed the "Holiday High Points Challenge" which runs from November 25th through December 9th. During this time, which includes the busy traveling period of the Thanksgiving holidays, Waze hopes to tap into the high number of drivers who will be trekking around town and across the country to visit relatives. The top three users who earn the most points during this period will win Amazon gift cards in the amounts of $500, $300 and $200, for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places respectively.

Crowdsourcing: Better Maps, Faster

The Waze application was one of the more innovative companies to appear at the most recent DEMO conference where they launched their turn-by-turn directions feature. Because they're not using map data from Tele Atlas or Navteq - the two big names that license map data to other companies for use in applications - Waze saves money while also being able to sell their own data to other companies at reduced rates. The company also claims that their crowdsourced method has dramatically shortened the months-long update cycle for maps.

While Waze may not be ready to replace your in-dash GPS just yet, it gets closer every day as more roads are mapped and more users join the service. Early adopters who want to contribute to the project can download the mobile application from the company's homepage here.

This data comes from a new report put out by Arbor Networks, who has just completed a two-year study of 256 exabytes of Internet traffic data, the largest study of global traffic since the start of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990's.

The biggest trend to come out of Arbor Networks' report is clearly that of the Internet's consolidation. Today's Internet is "flatter" and "more densely connected" than ever before, reveals Arbor Networks' Chief Research Officer Danny McPherson. Not only is Google the largest traffic source, there are only 30 large companies in addition to Google and including sites like Facebook, Microsoft and YouTube which now account for a disproportionate 30% of all Internet traffic.

According to Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, this shift represents the Internet's move into a second phase where it's no longer "all about contacting websites." Rather, "over the past two years larger organizations have been buying up the smaller websites and by July 2009, 30 per cent of the internet was owned by a few large sites." The acquisitions, the result of billions of dollars spent by large companies snapping up smaller ones, has created a new Internet core of "hyper giants," a coin termed by the report.

The other companies making the list of Internet giants include names like Akamai, Limelight, BitGravity, Highwinds, and Gravity - hardly household names, and certainly not big telco providers. Instead, these content delivery networks (CDNs), are the new Internet backbone that help move large amounts of data across the web.

So Long P2P, Hello Streaming Media

Consolidation is not the only trend revealed by the new findings, however. The report also discovered a sharp decline in peer-to-peer traffic, which only two years prior peaked at 40% of all traffic worldwide. Today, while still a hefty number, P2P traffic has dropped down to 18%. Why the change? For the most part, the file-sharing that took place on networks like Limewire and Napster back in the late 90's and early 2000's, has now been largely replaced by streaming video thanks to to sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix. Given easier and less technical ways of accessing media, consumers have begun to shift away from the headache of P2P to these new and often free or ad-supported sites. Today, as much as 20% of web traffic is video, Labovitz estimates.

As far as Internet traffic in general, more than half (52%) is web-based, up from 42% in 2007. The remaining traffic comes from email and private networks.

A "Dramatic" Shift?

"Saying the Internet has changed dramatically over the last five years is cliché - the Internet is always changing dramatically," notes Labovitz. "However, over the course of the last five years, we've witnessed the start of an equally dramatic shift in the fundamental business of the Internet." He adds, "as content is getting faster and better quality it will change the face of the internet."]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_accounts_for_6_of_all_internet_traffic.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_accounts_for_6_of_all_internet_traffic.php Google Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:38:11 -0800 Sarah Perez Waze is a free mobile navigation application which uses crowdsourcing to build its maps. Simply by having the application open and running, drivers using GPS-enabled smartphones can contribute map data to Waze where it then becomes part of the base map. Through passive tracking features which monitor speed, direction, and starts and stops, Waze can also identify traffic patterns to warn you of jams ahead. Drivers who want to take a more active roll in contributing content on hazards and accidents can do so from the app...although hopefully, not while driving.

What's most interesting about Waze is how it uses the power of the crowd to build its map database. Just by driving along with the application open, users are contributing data to Waze. Although this does make the service somewhat dependent on building critical mass in order to be successful, the company is confident they can do so. That's because Waze originally launched in Israel and in less than a year's time, they already have 91% of the country mapped. Here in the U.S., that process will obviously take longer, but Waze believes they'll have at least one metropolitan area completed in the next three months - the San Francisco Bay area, of course.

Since the application is designed to provide traffic alerts, one of its features allows users to contribute additional information like whether that's a speed trap ahead or just a fender bender slowing things down. Users can upload photos, too, so other Waze drivers can actually see what's causing the problem. This feature is a little disconcerting, though, since it does require the driver to interact with the phone while behind the wheel. However, Waze encourages the use of these features only when stopped, or even better, by having a passenger enter this info instead. (At least they disabled typing while the car is in motion. Whew!)

Also new to Waze is turn-by-turn directions, now available for free within the application. That feature alone should encourage more users to give it a shot, especially those who haven't purchased their own standalone GPS-based navigation device yet.

Early adopters can download the free mobile application from the company's homepage here. Just remember: this service only arrived in the U.S. this May so at this point, it may be more about helping build the map data than it is about using what's already there.

In the company's latest report (sample) "Mobile Broadband Traffic Across Regions 2009-2017," they've determined that this increase will account for nearly three quarters of all global traffic via mobile broadband portables. The top region for video consumption will be Asia Pacific which will account for over half (53%) of the traffic. That will be followed by Europe (26%) and then North America (14%).

The reason why Asia Pacific comes in so high is because, in many countries, mobile broadband is often the sole option for internet connectivity. Another forecast states that two-thirds of the global traffic will be via LTE (Long Term Evolution), a 4G wireless technology, where Asia Pacific will consume just under half (45%) of LTE traffic. In Europe, 80% of traffic will be LTE-based and in North America, 75%.

It Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better

According to Steve Smith, founder of Coda Research Consultancy, "the sheer amount of traffic people will consume worldwide will put pressure on operator revenues and network capacity, necessitating radical efficiency drives." He also notes that, in the short term, end user frustration with bandwidth and speed will increase. To illustrate this point, he mentions that today as many as three-quarters of Europeans are dissatisfied with the speeds they currently receive. That's an interesting comment, especially considering all the grumbling we hear about AT&T in the U.S. and their general failure to deliver on the promise of high-speed internet for iPhone users. (In many urban areas, they can't even consistently deliver a signal!) Although this report didn't focus specifically on smartphones, it's somewhat comforting to know that overseas users are experiencing the same struggles as we do here in the U.S.

However, once mobile broadband operators complete their build-outs and upgrades to this high-speed data network of the future, the resulting impact it will have on the internet as a whole will be mind-blowing. One could even argue that bandwidth speeds have accounted for many of the major revolutions the internet has seen over time - since the invention of the hypertext protocol and the web browser, that is.

The Next Revolution for the Net: Extremely Fast, Lots of Bandwidth

In the early days, slow dial-up speeds left us with simplistic, HTML-coded web pages where the most action to be had was an animated GIF. As bandwidth and speeds increased, pages became more robust, too. This change led to sites like Amazon and eBay, both of which launched in 1995, allowing people to shop from home using their PCs. By 2001, the usefulness of the net encouraged enough people to come online to make sites like the crowd-sourced Wikipedia possible. By 2003, the still-increasing speeds meant users could now download music from the newly launched iTunes store, customize (and overload!) their online profiles on MySpace, and play in online virtual worlds like Second Life. The following year, online photo-sharing prepared to go mainstream thanks to the launch of Flickr. Facebook, too, launched this year and eventually became the largest photo-sharing site in the world only three years later when they announced how they hosted over 10 billion photos on their site.

Also in 2005, the abundance of high-speed data connections made video-sharing site YouTube a hit among a new generation of user-generated content producers. By 2007, broadcasters banded together to launch Hulu, a video-streaming site for commercial content in an effort to compete with pirated peer-to-peer downloads as well as iTunes, which by now was serving up TV shows and full-length movies. In Europe, the BBC iPlayer was doing much of the same. In 2008, the launch of the 3G iPhone brought the high-speed internet to the handheld and revolutionized the mobile phone industry. This year, the handset's hardware was upgraded to record video, too.

As you can see, many of these changes were either directly or indirectly impacted by the increasing speeds and bandwidth provided by both mobile operators and ISPs. But currently, it's the mobile broadband networks which are having more of an impact on the latest trends. Even with all their struggles (cough AT&T cough), without the bandwidth provided, phones like the iPhone wouldn't even be possible and the smartphone revolution wouldn't be underway as it is now.

So what will the world look like by 2017? It's almost hard to imagine. But the promise of 4G could deliver things like live streaming HDTV, real-time updates from a variety of services, video chat, abundant use of MiFi, mobile cloud computing, streaming via iTunes instead of downloading (we like that!), and much more. In other words, the high-speed net that you use at home could go with you everywhere via your netbook, tablet, smartphone, or some other device in between. What will that mean for the world of online applications and cloud computing? Only that the next big shift for the internet as a whole is underway and we're privileged to be watching it happen now.

Update: We just heard back from Google - here is the official statement about which phones will be able to contribute traffic data to Google Maps:

Google Maps products that include location services will make use of this information for traffic. This includes the downloadable Google Maps for Mobile product for mobile phones as well as the Google Maps application for Android phones. One exception is the maps functionality that Google provides for the iPhone - the iPhone does not provide any location data that is used for traffic crowdsourcing at this time.

Google is obviously aware of the potential privacy issues involved here, but according to Dave Barth, the product manager for Google Maps, Google will "find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it." This way, nobody can find out where a car actually came from.

According to Google, enough users use these phones to make this project feasible. In my experience however, the data for these arterial roads isn't quite as trustworthy as the data for highways.

Overall, though, this is a great project and the more users are aware of it, the better the data will become. However, it is also worth noting that some GPS manufacturers have been using data from their users' GPS systems to crowdsource traffic data for years, though chances are that Google will be able to recruit more users and hence create a better experience for its users.