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The ultimate Blu-ray database: Blu-ray Statistics

The number of people into Blu-ray may still be small, and the number of people who care about whether their favorite movie uses the AVC or MPEG-2 video codec may be even smaller, but if you are one of those nerdy videophiles, Blu-ray Statistics is a wish come true.

The site hosts a huge database containing all released Blu-ray titles, and includes detailed information like what codec was used, whether it's on a 50GB or 25GB Blu-ray disc, what kind of soundtrack is included, etc. Clicking on a title reveals even more information, like video bit rate, running time--even video and audio quality ratings by review sites such as High-Def Digest, Hi-Def Preview and High Def Disc News. Sure, maybe you already knew that 3:10 to Yuma features a 1080p VC-1 encode--but I bet you'd didn't know the average bit rate was 23.94 Mbps, or that it used 47.94GB of the Blu-ray disc.

Alright, so there might not be much of a practical application for some of the data--and we can't guarantee the accuracy of it, either--but it's still a great tool to pick out a new Blu-ray disc, as it includes ratings from IMDB and links to retailers like Amazon and Deep Discount DVD. If we were making a wishlist of features the site could add, we'd love to be able to select our own filters from the database, so, for example, we could rank movies by the highest video quality score at High-Def Digest.… Read more

Facebook changes how it measures application activity

A sharp-eyed tipster told Nick O'Neill at All Facebook that the social network has modified the metrics it uses to track user activity on developer applications.

Instead of reporting how many daily active users an application has, Facebook now reports its monthly active users. The reason, company representatives said, is that while there's no universal metric that applies to all applications, monthly generally works better than daily: education applications might peak during the week, movie-related apps could have higher traffic on weekends, and some games might see their peak during boring afternoons at the office. Plenty of "… Read more

In online ad space, blank-faced hipsters in panties prove powerful

It's no surprise to anyone who reads blogs about celebrity gossip, nightlife, indie music, or pretty much any other niche of pop culture: American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based retailer infamous for bringing back the '80s aerobics look, has been named by ComScore as the top apparel outlet in the online ad world.

In other words, that means their ads, many of which feature nubile young models clad in just about nothing, are freaking everywhere on the Web.

A total of 483,389,000 American Apparel ad impressions were seen across the Web in April, reaching a whopping 48,887,… Read more

ComScore: Facebook is beating MySpace worldwide

New numbers from metrics firm ComScore show that in May, the battle of the social-networking sites may have gained a new front-runner: Facebook appears to have surpassed longtime rival MySpace in worldwide unique visitors for the first time. ComScore representatives said that this began in April when Facebook passed MySpace by a hair, and widened in May.

Facebook, according to ComScore, pulled in 123.9 million unique visitors in the month of May, beating MySpace's 114.6, and 50.6 billion page views compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion. It's been a slow but steady upward climb … Read more

Facebook in France: Bonne chance

There's good news for Facebook in France. According to new numbers released Thursday by ComScore, the social network grew a staggering 2,877 percent from April 2007 to April 2008 in terms of unique visitors.

That number took a big jump when Facebook rolled out a French-language edition early this spring--ComScore noted an increase of 600,000 visitors.

But there's a flip side: Facebook's still a long-shot second place in French social networking, according to the metrics. Skyrock, a site almost completely unknown in the U.S., pulled in 11.5 million unique visitors in April 2008 … Read more

Standalone OSS revenue to reach $4.83 billion by 2012

Matt Lawton, director of Open Source Software Business Strategies at IDC, sent me over some details from its latest report on Open Source. I have a few of the details below, and Matt really wanted me to remind everyone that open-source software is being used in so many more ways than straight standalone commercial product deployments and that the standalone $1.73 billion for 2007 is just one component.

The market for standalone open-source software (OSS) continues to be in a significant growth stage. This IDC study outlines the evolution of worldwide revenue from standalone OSS and presents IDC's … Read more

ComScore scores M:Metrics for $44.3 million

Online number-crunching firm ComScore announced Wednesday that it has acquired M:Metrics, a mobile usage statistics company, for $44.3 million in cash and a handful of common stock options.

The reason for the purchase is pretty obvious: as mobile phones make up a bigger and bigger chunk of digital consumption, ComScore wants to be able to provide the relevant statistics to businesses and advertisers. M:Metrics operates mobile phone usage survey MobiLens, mobile ad statistic tabulator M:Ad, and mobile Web monitoring product MeterDirect. ComScore currently has about 950 clients, the company said, and M:Metrics has more than … Read more

Nielsen: MySpace, Club Penguin growth static, LinkedIn soaring

The April 2008 iteration of those numbers that Nielsen releases each month about social-networking site activity indicate that growth on News Corp.'s MySpace continues to slow, and that kiddie virtual world Club Penguin--acquired by Disney last year for $350 million--is just about static.

The Nielsen numbers, which track monthly unique visitors to social-networking sites, found that MySpace's growth from April 2007 to April 2008 was just 3 percent, and that Club Penguin's traffic shrank 7 percent. If Nielsen's numbers are accurate (which is always debatable with online metrics), that's not good for News … Read more

Exploring beyond the toolbar, Alexa overhauls rankings

Did your site's Alexa ranking change overnight? That's because on Thursday, the chart-friendly Web analytics company announced an overhaul of its rankings system.

Alexa, according to a company announcement, now "aggregate(s) data from multiple sources" rather than just the surfing habits of those who'd installed its browser toolbar.

"Alexa toolbar users' interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our Web site," the announcement explained.

TechCrunch's Duncan Riley, for example, pointed out that … Read more