14.5% of all online time is spent on MSN Live Messenger - 14.5% of 27 billion total hours. The next biggest service is Facebook at at 5.2% with YouTube coming in third at 4.4% (Google's biggest slice of the online pie.) Facebook climbs 200% in usage since the same time last year.
ALT-J, Volume 17, Issue 1 March 2009, 33-47. This case study describes the use of a synchronous communication application (MSN Messenger) in a large academic computing environment. (peer support c.f. Twitter)
Soocial is a free web service that provides a central location for all of your contacts' phone numbers, email addresses, and other information. If that's all Soocial provided, it wouldn't be that interesting. But Soocial goes a few steps further and allows you to synchronize your contacts across multiple platforms, including your cellphone, Mac, PC, and Gmail.
The low cost and ease of use of open source software, combined with low funding for education means that commercial software giants like Microsoft will see a continually declining share of the educational technology market.
Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in Facebook that values the site at $15bn (£7.3bn). Facebook spurned an offer from Google which was also keen to invest the site.
A few years ago I wrote to Microsoft’s leadership and asked them why they weren’t involved in the new Web 2.0 space. I got an answer back that was about 2,000 words long and included the words “business value” 13 times.