20 Interesting Facts About Digital Media

As digital media continues to revolutionize global communication, we share some little known interesting facts about Google, mobiles, email, search and blogging.

1. The “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google homepage is almost never used. But in research trials it was found that removing the button would somehow lessen the Google experience. Maybe people just want to see the button to feel comfortable with Google.

2. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

3. Google employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time on their own projects. Google News and Orkut were the result of such projects.

4. A new employee at Google is called a “Noogler.”

5. Google has over 4,50,000 servers located in data centers all over the world.

6. Google is actually a mathematical term that represents 1 followed by 1 followed by one hundred zeroes.

7. It takes 26 hours for the average person to report a lost wallet. It takes 68 minutes for them to report a lost phone. (Source: Unisys)

8. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone, but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. (Source: Mobile Marketing Association Asia)

9. It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. (Source: CTIA.org)

10. Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons. (Source: Borrell Associates)

11. There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs. (Source: Jupiter)

12. According to Dan Zarella’s research, content related to sex is the most sharable on Facebook (really??).

13. The first email to be sent with an “@” symbol was in 1971. It was sent by Ray Tomilinson and the “@” symbol meant that the message was sent to a person rather than a machine.

14. Spam followed soon after. The first spam message was sent in 1978 for DEC System 2020 (“world’s cheapest mainframe computer”) to 600 recipients. Even back then, spam was not well received.

15. First free email service started in 1996, with Hotmail. It was started for a mere $300,000 and was later sold to MSN for $400,00,000! That’s how, Sabeer Bhatia who co-founded Hotmail along with Jack Smith, as we know him, was born. Hotmail is still the leading global free email service provider.

16. “123456” is the most common email password!

17. According to Marketing Sherpa, the top three subject types that force people to open their emails are – discount offer, free product offer and familiar brand name. 67% of US internet users say that the top motivation to join an email mailing list, or subscriber list is to receive free gifts and discount offers and only 14% said that their motive was brand interaction. No surprises there. We love free stuff!

18. 89% of all emails sent are spam, majority of them from pharmaceutical companies (think penis enhancers and Viagra clones).

19. 70% of bloggers talk about brands organically on their blogs. 38% of bloggers post brand or product updates or reviews.

20. About 25% of people look at ads on the right side of the search results page.