The total global Internet audience surpassed 1 billion users in December 2008, based on data from comScore World Metrix.

The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the highest share of global Internet users at 41 percent, followed by Europe (28%), North America (18%), Latin America (7%), and the Middle East & Africa (5%).

“Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc.

“It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries.”

China had the largest online audience in the world in December 2008 with 180 million Internet users, making up nearly 18 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience, followed by the U.S. (16.2%), Japan (6%), Germany (3.7%) and the U.K. (3.6%).

The most popular property in the world in December was Google sites, with 777.9 million visitors, followed by Microsoft sites (647.9 million visitors, Yahoo sites (562.6 million visitors).

Facebook has seen significant growth in the past year climbing 127 percent to 222 million visitors, now ranks as the top social networking site globally and the seventh most popular property in the world.

Adults are much less likely than teens to have a profile on a social network site. About three in ten (35%) adult Internet users have a profile on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey.

Teenagers are roughly twice as likely as adults to use these sites: among teens 12 to 17 years old, 65 percent have a profile on an online social network. Despite comparatively lower levels of social network use, usage of social network sites by adults has increased significantly over the past four years.

Back in February of 2005, just 8 percent of adult Internet users had used a social network site. That percentage had risen to 16 percent by August 2006, and as of December 2008 it stands at 35 percent of online adults.

Among adults, MySpace is the most popular online social network. Half (50%) of adult social network users 18 and older are on MySpace, while 22 percent are on Facebook. Another 6 percent have an account on LinkedIn, 2 percent have an account on Yahoo, and 1 percent have accounts on YouTube and Classmates.com.

About two in five (43%) adult social network users have one profile online. Another quarter have two profiles online, 12 percent have three profiles online and 13 percent have four or more online profiles.

Men are more likely than women to have tow or more online profiles (54% vs. 47%). Social network users under the age of 45 are more likely to have multiple profiles than users 45 and older.

Online holiday spending outperformed offline spending in several key product categories according to comScore.

The top growing online product category for the season was sports & fitness, which grew 18 percent compared to a year ago. The category continues to benefit from consumers focus on health and fitness and consumers feeling more comfortable purchasing higher-price fit ness equipment, such as treadmills and elliptical machines, online.

The second fastest growing category was video games, consoles & accessories, which grew 14 percent on continued demand for popular consoles, such as the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Apparel & accessories, the only other product category with positive online growth, generated higher sales due to retailers heavy discounts and promotions, along with unfavorable weather across much of the country.

“For an online holiday shopping season that recorded a disappointing 3-percent decline in sales, a positive note is that e-commerce trends outperformed overall consumer spending in several product categories, which is to say that e-commerce continued to capture an increasing share of consumers’ wallet,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“Clearly, 2008 was an extremely challenging time for many retailers, and the beginning of 2009 may not be much better. But when the consumer economy eventually does rebound, e-commerce is poised to benefit from its emergence as an important consumer sales channel.”

MySpace has rolled out a new MySpace Toolbar that allows users to receive notifications and alerts in real time.

Once the toolbar is installed MySpace users will be able to see New Friends Request, Messages, Comments, and Friend Updates in their browser.

The MySpace Toolbar will run inside the browser at launch on a PC running Internet Explore 6.0 or higher or Firefox 2.0 or higher. MySpace will introduce a version for Mac users in the near future.

Toolbar features include:
Auto Login - Automatically link to MySpace without entering your email and password

Always On - No need to refresh the browser for updates

Alerts - New Messages, New Comments, New Friend Requests etc.

Friend Activity Updates

Update My Mood and Status

See Friends’ Mood and Status

MySpace Search Powered by Google - Search the Web, People, and MySpace

“We believe strongly in our core technical foundation at MySpace and we’re building internal products based on the same technology that we’re developing in concert with the community,” said Amit Kapur, COO of MySpace.

The MySpace Toolbar is now available to all users in the United Sates, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, and Ireland.

Online holiday shoppers are increasingly using reviews to help with their purchasing decisions, according to a new report from hosted social commerce applications firm Bazaarvoice.

Bazaarvoice said it served more than 1.2 billion user-generated product reviews over the course of Thanksgiving Week as consumers researched their holiday purchases. Review usage peaked at 9:45 pm EST on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, an indication that reviews again played a key role in purchasing decisions.

Review usage spiked again on Cyber Monday, December 1, when Bazaarvoice served more than 165 million reviews to shoppers around the globe. Total review impressions were up 132 percent from the 71 million reviews served on Cyber Monday last year and up 768 percent from the 19 million served on cyber Monday 2006. At the peak on Cyber Monday, Bazaarvoice was serving over 4,500 impressions per second, another record for the company.

“Research released by Forrester in October showed that the number of US adults who read product reviews has nearly doubled in the past year,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice.

“People have learned how to shop by reviews - and in a season where people are carefully considering each purchase, reviews are at the forefront of the online and offline shopping experience.”

“On Cyber Monday last year, we served 71 million review impressions,” said Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “This year, we served more than 165 million reviews, which means that online shoppers are benefiting from a 132% increase in readership of reviews.”

Nearly three-quarters (72%) of consumers are planning to research products online prior to purchasing (e-tailing group, October 2008). For every $1 spent in online sales, the Internet influences $3.45 of store sales according to eMarketer.

A new study by Microsoft researchers has revealed that users searching for medical information online can often lead to more anxiety, as they tend to misdiagnose themselves.

Ryen White and Eric Horvitz from Microsoft Research conducted the study by looking at the effect of medical information on Internet users. The found people tend to believe they are sicker than they actually are after reading information about symptoms.

“The web has the potential to increase the anxieties of people who have little or no medical training, especially when web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure,” the researchers wrote.

“We use the term ‘cyberchondria’ to refer to the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the web.”

Examples included people with headaches diagnosing themselves with brain tumors and chest pains as a heart attack.

The researchers focused on the results of searches on health related Web sites and also examined more than 500 Microsoft employees about the results of their health searches.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers has announced that Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007.

The Q3 2008 figures are 2 percent higher than the Q2 results. Set against economic challenges in the U.S. economy, Q3’s $5.9 billion represents the second highest quarter results ever, which is encouraging for online advertising.

For the first nine months of 2008, revenues totaled $17.3 billion, up from the $15.2 billion in the same period a year ago and surpassing the record set in the first nine months of 2007 by nearly 14 percent.

“The growth of interactive advertising that we’ve been experiencing over the past few years has stabilized due in large part to the difficult current economic climate,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.

“Interactive advertising continues to be the most measurable and cost-effective way to reach consumers, and we see more and more marketers seeking to harness its power.”

David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, added that, “a weakening economy will continue to be a challenge to all forms of advertising-supported media. However, the Internet should be better poised to withstand the storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.”

Online visits to U.K., French and German financial news sites in September during the height of the global financial crisis saw a significant increase in traffic, according to comScore World Metrix.

“Because of the immediacy in reporting real-time fluctuations in the financial markets, Europeans have become increasingly reliant on financial news Web sites for the most up-to-the minute information,” said Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director, comScore Europe.

“With European and world markets exhibiting such volatility, the Internet has proven itself to be the go-to resource for those with a vested interest in the markets, as well as concerned consumers generally.”

The financial news category grew 10 percent to 8.8 million visitors in September 2008 from the previous month. The fastest gaining site, Guardian Business, had a 141 percent increase to 374,000 visitors, followed by Sky Money (up 122%), CNN Money (up 103%) and Bloomberg.com (up 60%). BBC News, the largest site in the category, grew 51 percent to 2.5 million visitors, a net increase of 800,000 visitors compared to the previous month.

In France, the financial news category grew 9 percent to 6.4 million visitors in September versus August and is up 7 percent compared to a year ago. The fastest gaining site was Boursier.com, which had a 107 percent increase over August with 526,000 unique visitors, followed by Lexpansion.com (up 97%), Capital Magazin (up 96%) and Lemoneymag.fr (up 90%).

In Germany, the financial news category grew at a slightly slower rate of 3 percent to 4.9 million visitors in September. The fastest gaining site was Manager-Magazin.de, which saw its audience increase 39 percent to 471,000 visitors, followed by AOL Money & Finance (up35%), Finanztreff.de (up34%) and T-Online.de Finance (up 29%).

AOL has launched a new hyper-local online event guide called when.com that allows users to search and browse for a variety of activities in their local area, including kids and family events, community activities, live performances, sporting events and others.

Each event listing includes detailed information, reviews, maps and directions from MapQuest, along with links to purchase tickets when applicable. Users can also bookmark events or add them to Their AOL, Google, Outlook or Yahoo Calendar.

“Whether you’re looking for events that are suitable for the whole family, something to do on a Friday night or ways to entertain out of town guests, when.com makes it easy for users to find where to go and what to do in their community or places they are traveling to,” said Chris Spanos, General Manager of AOL Local and Search Verticals.

“When.com is also a powerful way for event organizers and advertisers to reach and connect with a targeted audience by providing them the ability to quickly and easily submit their events right from the when.com homepage.”

Events on when.com are searchable by time (today, tomorrow, next seven days), type (Arts & Crafts, Community) and by geographic area. Users can browse through events by using navigation tabs along the top and left-hand side of the page, or search for events by using the search box at the top of the page.

Event organizers can list their events for free when they create a when.com account.

AOL says in the coming weeks new features will be rolled out to when.com, including a widget that can be added to any social networking page. “MyWhen” feature will allow users to save events to their own when.com calendar and receive alerts and reminders about upcoming events.

U.S. online giving to nonprofit organizations will be more than $3 billion during the holiday season of 2008, according to a new survey from JupiterResearch commissioned by Convio.

There are about 175 million adults in the U.S. who are Internet users and 7 out of 10 people plan on giving the same amount or more, while the current state of the economy will lead 33 percent to give less to charity this holiday season.

“Consumers continue to go online in growing numbers to learn about, engage and support nonprofit organizations,” said Gene Austin, CEO of Convio.

“With consumer dollars being tight and the competition for donations growing, the efficiency and effectiveness of the Internet as an engagement, communication and giving platform continues to grow in importance for donors and organizations alike. While still smaller in total dollars raised, it is clear that online giving has joined traditional channels as mission-critical part of the giving mix.”

A charity’s Web site is the most useful tool among those who plan to donate online this holiday season (27%), followed by email appeals sent from family and friends (15%). Charity evaluator sites also play a role for 10 percent of online adults in their decision making process.

“More than 50 percent of online consumers say that they plan to donate via the Internet during the 2008 holiday season,” said Vinay Bhagat, Chief Strategy Officer and Founder of Convio.

“This level of online support shows that nonprofits of all sizes need to make sure that their web sites and other electronic communications meet consumer expectations. It is also important to make sure that traditional appeals such as direct mail, television and events provide people with the option to give online.”