Five Friday Facts #22

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Happy Easter everyone! Here’s a quick Five Friday Facts to start off the long Easter weekend.

Instagram’s Android version has (finally) been released
Instagram’s Android version has been a long time coming, and as soon as it was released on the Google Play marketplace, Instagram for Android reached 1 million downloads in less than 24 hours. Before the launch, Instagram for Android had already amassed 430,000 pre-registration sign-ups from March 24th onwards.

Majority of Chinese gamers pay for online gaming content every month
In China, the free-to-play business model for game publishers to reach a larger audience of gamers while players keep purchasing new content to further their interactive experiences has been largely successful. According to a survey by research firm Niko Partners, 64% of Chinese gamers spend money on online games each month. The hardcore gaming community has also expanded from playing primarily massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and advanced casual games to a set of gamers who spend more than 22 hours per week on casual and social games. Casual and social games will increasingly become platforms that even brands can capitalise on. There will be an estimated 266 million gamers playing at least 2 hours per month in China by 2015.

F-commerce still thriving for small, mid-sized businesses
Although large retailers such as Gap, JC Penney, and Nordstrom shuttered their storefronts on Facebook, F-commerce is still thriving among small and mid-sized businesses. According to Ecwid, a shopping cart system that can be integrated on Facebook, a study of its 140,000 worldwide stores shows that businesses with both website and Facebook stores average 15% of overall revenue from F-commerce, while the average revenue of each Ecwid-powered Facebook store rose 40% in 2011.

More Americans read e-books on PCs than e-book readers or tablet devices
According to a research survey by Pew Research Center, 20% of Americans read an e-book in the past year, of which 42% said they read an e-book on a computer, which is a rather surprising discovery, considering that PCs are not as optimised for e-reading as are e-book readers. 41% of respondents used e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, 29% used their cellphones and 23% used tablets. However popular e-books are becoming, it’s reassuring that print will not be obsolete anytime soon; in fact, 88% said they read print as well as e-books last year.

How Facebook advertisers use the platform
Social Fresh has released a report detailing how Facebook advertisers use the platform. 70% of ads keep users on Facebook, instead of re-directing them to a brand’s website. Surprisingly, 55% of advertisers do not use sponsored stories, which are social ads that you should supposedly be more inclined to click on because it reflects the interactions your own friends have had with the advertised brand. As in traditional advertising, advertisers on Facebook are still most concerned about targeting specific demographics, as 55% of those surveyed select “age” as the most important ad criteria.