China has had a significant drop in the amount of spam originating from that country, falling out of the top twelve and coming in at 15th place for relaying just 1.9 percent of the world’s spam.

The top twelve spam relaying countries for January to March 2010

"All eyes aren’t so much on which countries are on the list, but the one which isn’t. China has earned itself a bad reputation in many countries’ eyes for being the launch pad of targeted attacks against foreign companies and government networks, but at least in the last 12 months they have demonstrated that the proportion of spam relayed by their computers has steadily declined," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"South Korea, Brazil, India and the United States account for more than 30% of all the spam relayed by hacked computers around the globe."

Spam accounts for a 97% of all email received by business email servers, putting both a strain on resources and accounting for a huge amount of time to lost productivity.

People in the US have been unable to use the service so far. There has been talk that this may soon change upon the launch of Google’s Nexus One phone, but this may not happen. There was rumored to be a US Spotify app for Google’s Android ready just in time for the launch of the phone. Michael Arrington reports:

The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build [sic] into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much-needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it.

Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service.

Those in the US waiting to get their hands on Spotify may have to wait though. Arrington says his sources indicate that the deal has likely "gone cold," but he says there is a chance Spotify could still be part of Google’s Nexus One announcement, slated for Tuesday, January 5.

Such a deal could mean big things for sales of Android devices and really give the iPhone a run for its money. It’s going to be quite interesting to see how the smartphone competition plays out over the course of 2010. This is only the beginning. Even if a deal is not made, Google is clearly interested in the musical side of mobile, and will likely pursue other options.
 

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According to MessageLabs, Idaho is the spam capital of the US with 93.8% spam, far exceeding the global spam rate for September of 86.4%. MessageLabs says Idaho has jumped 43 spots since 2008, when it was ranked the 44th most spammed state. According to the security firm, the jump can be attributed to "the resilient and aggressive" botnet market, as well as a higher volume of global spam since he beginning of the credit crisis in late 2008.

Here’s a look at the top ten:

1. Idaho
2. Kentucky
3. New Jersey
4. Alabama
5. Illinois
6. Indiana
7. Massachusetts
8. Pennsylvania
9. Arizona
10. Maryland.

I have to say that based on the incredible amount of spam I receive in my inbox on a daily basis, I am not entirely surprised that our state of Kentucky is high on the list.

"Some of the high spam levels seen across the US can be attributed to the economic challenges experienced globally since the end of 2008 as well as Internet advancement including the high adoption of social networking," said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Symantec. "Spammers have taken full advantage of both the economic uncertainty of some and the trustworthiness of others for their own rewards. Automated tools, resilient botnets and targeted spam campaigns are all part of the spammers’ toolkit and they are constantly evolving these techniques to outsmart any effort to stop them. No state is immune to the affects of spam."

MessageLabs says there currently between 4 and 6 million computers across the globe that have been compromised to form botnets, which send the majority of spam. These are used by cybercriminals to send out over 87% of all spam, which equates to about 151 billion emails every day.

So who’s not getting very much spam?

States mentioned as having the least amount of spam include Montana, Alaska, Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Florida. Puerto Rico gets below the average global spam level.

"BBC News ranked as the 21st most visited News and Media website in US during August, while the Daily Mail was 47th and the BBC Homepage 65th," says Hitwise’s Robin Goad. Other British sites in the US News and Media top 200 last month included: the Telegraph (71st), the FT (115th), The Sun (117th), Times Online (131st) and the Guardian (134th)."

Goad names sites like Digg and the Drudge Report as being key for driving US audiences to UK news sites. Google is the biggest driver of US traffic to British News sites, accounting for 13.5% of visits in August, and Drudge follows this, accounting for 10.6%. In third place is Google News, accounting for 5.3%.

According to Goad, email also plays a major role in driving US traffic to UK news sites – Yahoo! Mail (2.5%), Gmail (1.6%) and Hotmail (1.4%) all appeared in the top 10.

On a state-by-state basis, Californians are driving the most traffic to British news sites, followed by New Yorkers. "Slightly more surprising is the list of states that over index most as visitors to UK-based news sites, with Arizona and New Mexico ranking second and third after California," says Goad. "Residents of Wyoming are the least likely to visit."

I’d be curious to know what kind of traffic social networks like Twitter and Facebook have driven to these sites.

In his post announcing the milestones, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that they’d hoped to reach cash positive sometime next year—but, happily, they made enough to cover their operating expenses starting last quarter.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard financial news from Facebook—and the last reports weren’t so good. Almost a year ago, many were speculating whether Facebook was headed for financial ruin, and their ad rates had fallen. And less than six months ago, there were some reports that Facebook was snubbing a $4B valuation despite needing the cash the sale would have given them. (A far cry from $15B, eh?)

Up to this point, it seemed that Facebook was struggling to monetize itself enough to cover its costs. But according to Zuckerberg, their finances are better than fine. One recent effort that may have helped (but, let’s be honest, is so new that it probably hasn’t made a whole lot of money yet) was opening the gift shop to developers. Inside Facebook notes a few other potentially contributing efforts:

What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? A combination of revenue streams: Facebook’s self-service ad business has been very strong lately, it continues to invest heavily in brand advertising efforts, and it also continues to release many experimental expansions to its virtual goods and virtual currency business, Facebook Credits. The company is also still deriving revenue from its advertising deal with Microsoft, signed when Microsoft invested in Facebook in 2007.

If Facebook is a microcosm of the Internet, and they make money off serving ads that lead to other parts of their site (driving up time onsite and possible ad rates), perhaps this is a good sign for the Internet at large.

What do you think? Is Facebook’s cash positive status a sign of a turn around? Or are clever new monetization strategies keeping Facebook ahead of the curve?

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TechCrunch points out that over 30% of click fraud is via automated bots—another all-time high. This is a 14% increase over last quarter. I’m surprised the search engines aren’t doing a better job at keeping the bots down. This clearly continues to be a problem and needs to be addressed. I think the search engines need to release a state of the industry report on how they plan to cut these rates now ASAP.

Outside of the U.S., Canada is the largest driver of click fraud (7.1%), followed by Germany (3%) and China (2.3%).

TechCrunch also calls out that Click Forensics believes this may be a result of the economic state of the U.S., as old tricks like link farms are being used again. I think it is a direct result of a lack of focus, and perhaps effort, on the search engines’ side of things. What do you think?

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AllFacebook reports that both the CPM and the minimum spend for some Facebook have dropped 50% since October of last year:

At the time Facebook homepage advertisements attracted a $10 CPM and required a $50,000 minimum investment. Since then it appears that Facebook’s ad rates have dropped significantly and the minimum ad spend has also dropped to $10,000.

Now, how could 32% growth in the US cause this? Of course, it’s entirely possible that it didn’t. But let’s take a look at the numbers to understand just how good—or bad—that growth rate is.

How can more than doubling your worldwide user base be a bad thing? Well, when you don’t have a solid plan to monetize some or even most of those users, when advertisers simply aren’t spending as much to reach those audiences—when the growth of your most potentially profitable audiences is outpaced by the growth of the audiences that are marginally or just plain not profitable.

The US is not the most profitable audience in terms of online advertiser spend per Internet user, as TechCrunch calculated earlier this year, but it’s among the top 5. So, because of sheer size and advertising spend per user, the US audience is an important monetary base for Facebook.

And yes, year over year, the US Facebook audience (in monthly unique visitors) increased by 10 million, from 31M to 41M, or 32%. The worldwide audience, on the other hand, more than doubled from 74M to 161M, or 118%.

This means that over that year, the proportion of Facebook users in the US went from 41.9% to 25.5%—a drop of 16.4 percentage points, or a drop of 39% percent in one of their most profitable markets.

So 32% growth isn’t always something to envy.

What can Facebook do to reverse this trend? I think the best route would be to work to increase their user bases and advertising revenue in other profitable markets at a rate proportionate with worldwide growth. The UK, Denmark and Australia actually have a higher average online advertising spend per Internet user, so increasing their user bases could help to offset costs by less profitable user bases. US growth and advertising, of course, would be good, too, as well as worldwide advertising.

What route do you think Facebook should take?

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Spurred by national pride and massive growth in Internet adoption in China, CCTV.com, the site run by national broadcaster China Central TV, drew more than 100 million unique visitors during the 2008 Olympic Games. WebTrends Analytics documented an average of more than 6 million unique visitors each day. In comparison, NBC, which maintained broadcast rights to the Games in the United States, reported an average of 4.3 million unique users a day on its Olympics web site. Yahoo!, which also featured extensive online video from the Olympics, averaged 4.7 million, according to media accounts.

“The Beijing Olympics marked the coming of age for the Internet in China,” said Alex Yoder, CEO of WebTrends, a leading provider of web analytics and online marketing solutions. “CCTV.com attracted more than 100 million online visitors for the Olympic Games by providing the right content at the right time for a large and ever-growing online audience.”

• An increase of more than 2.5 minutes in the average time each visitor remained on CCTV.com, to nearly 11.5 minutes during the Olympics.
• The opening ceremonies and other activities on Aug. 8 generated the most traffic on any single day, nearly 8.5 million visits. Aug. 9 and Aug. 18, the day Chinese athlete Liu Xiang was scheduled to race in the 110 meter hurdles, attracted the second and third highest visitor counts, respectively.
• The busiest hour of online traffic was from 11 a.m. to noon on Aug. 18. Nearly 900,000 visits were tallied during the hour in which Xiang was scheduled to race. The second busiest hour was during the opening ceremonies.

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