Joi Ito, an early Twitter user and an investor who helped launch the service's Japanese version, said in April that the wireless theory doesn't apply. Early on, Japanese users were 30 percent of the service's base, a percentage that has fallen as it has grown in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they used the site despite its flaws. Though Japan has long been text-message crazy, Twitter didn't have a Japanese SMS service at first. Even entering a message in Japanese characters required a workaround.

Ito thinks that Twitter's simplicity struck an emotional chord in the famously minimalist country:

It got crazy early adoption in Japan from the beginning. One of my theories is that a lot of services in Japan to be either closed or over-featured portals and simple services with good open APIs are not as common as in the US and it attracts developers and users who are sort of sick of a lot of the bloaty Japanese services.

Here's another theory on why Twitter spread: Ito himself. Though he's too modest to say it, the globetrotting venture capitalist is a key bridge between San Francisco and Tokyo. Could it be that Twitter spread in Japan in part because Ito, Web 2.0's trans-Pacific import-export specialist, took note of it, and others followed the trendspotter? We are talking about a social network, after all. People may stay because of their features, but they join because of their friends.

As late as last year, Ito was hedging his bets, favoring Twitter rival Jaiku in April 2007: "I've been helping the Jaiku guys out a bit as an advisor and I'm also a friend of Ev's." (That's Ev Williams, Twitter's founder.) Less than a year later, Jaiku had been sold to Google, and Ito announced he was investing in Twitter. It's not an explanation that coders will like, but Twitter's spread in Japan suggests success really does come down to who you know.

(Chart by Pingdom)

The suits, it turns out. Without Lodwick at the helm, Vimeo's gone from a flatlining also-ran to a fast-growing alternative to YouTube. NewTeeVee reports that Vimeo traffic more than doubled from February to May. Guess Lodwick just wasn't cut out to be a Killer Diller, after all.

That Google may just have landed more search traffic — but that those queries are made by searchers who spend less money online and aren't worth as much to advertisers. You know, people who set their browser homepages back in 1997 and consider Google newfangled — the ever-diminishing crew of hardcore Yahoo searchers.

Think your friends are hot? Let them know by adding them to your 10 Hottest Friends List! Get friends to add you to boost your own Ranking!

• Bebo ranked 4th among a custom category of 55 social networks, after MySpace, Facebook and MyYearbook for Feb-08 receiving 1.15% of all U.S. visits to the category.
• MySpace's share of U.S. Internet visits was 67 times larger compared with Bebo and Facebook's share of US Internet visits (among all categories) was 11x that of Bebo in Feb-08.
• Bebo's share of U.S. Internet visits is down year on year. Share of U.S. Internet visits (among All Categories) to Bebo were down 23% last week and down 22% in Feb-08.
• The average time spent on Bebo in Feb-08, was 30 minutes and 26 seconds, more than both MySpace (30m7s) and Facebook (21m0s). The average time spent on the site is flat year-over-year, MySpace is slightly down and Facebook is up 69%.
• 22.15% of U.S. visits to Bebo last week came from MySpace last week.

(Numbers by Thomson Financial)

This chart from search-engine marketer Efficient Frontier shows, outside the U.S., Yahoo is a financial nonentity. Japan, the exception, does not count: Yahoo Japan is separately traded, and not part of Microsoft's offer. $44.6 billion for a company which will not substantively improve Microsoft's market share in search advertising. This is an Excel bug I have yet to hear about.

Here's HealthCentral.com and its other sites.
And now, versus WebMD.
Looks pretty bad for HealthCentral, but it's early yet. The site only changed its name to HealthCentral in 2006.

Turns out Blodget, the disgraced stock analyst turned blogger, has a point. And if MySpace parent-company News Corp. shares this view — that Fox Interactive is in trouble because of MySpace's slow-growing worldwide traffic — perhaps its no wonder Rupert Murdoch was seen hanging around Bebo, the social network which is officially "looking for funding" and unofficially looking for a buyer. Here's a look at Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all together on the world stage.

(Photo by jonrawlinson)

As the chart shows, three of the top threats to the old-school Internet porn world are XTube, AEBN, and YouPorn. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, XTube earns "millions" from DVD and streaming video sales. AEBN, despite its lower traffic numbers, annually pulls in around a hundred million dollars from advertising. YouPorn, which faces a copyright infringement suit from Vivid, earns about $120,000 in revenues per month, according to Portfolio.

Pownce, despite being a shitty service, gives us some insight into the Web 2.0 world. I have described this before, but it is best done with imagery:

• Useless service X is released after 2 months of MySQL/CSS development.
• Arrington covers it, thousands of users sign up. Mike takes his ad revenue.
• People either stop giving a shit or realize your service does not solve any problems for them.
• Fail.