Surpassing Facebook to become the first Chinese stock to to enter the top six global listed stocks with a market capitalisation of over 500 billion. On 20 November, Tencent (SEHK: 700) attained a valuation of USD 522 billion. Founded in 1998, Tencent released the WeChat mobile app in January 2011. WeChat is now almost ubiquitous in China, used by nearly a billion people to connect, message and make payments via their smartphones. Increasingly brands are using WeChat to promote products and services. Over the past five years, Tencent’s market capitalisation has increased nearly 900%. Of the top ten stocks by market capitalisation, seven are tech stocks, eight are American, five are less than 25 years old, two are from the nineteenth century and only one (JPMorgan Chase) was founded in the eighteenth century. Two of the top ten are Chinese, with Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) rapidly approaching entry into the exclusive $500 Billion Club. top ten stocks by market capitalisation (PDF 37 Kb) The massive evolutions in the stock market, correlate the impact of Internet technology to the dramatic changes wrought by the mechanical revolution of railroads and John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil, a century earlier. Blue-chip stocks include many banking, finance, oil & gas, beverage, and telecom brands, but the dominance and scale of tech stocks is indisputable. With zero resemblance to a tech 'bubble, these top seven brands have extraordinary consumer market penetration. After the current digital revolution, the next wave is most likely to be Artificial intelligence (AI). In 2016, the AI market was worth just $644 million, according to Tractica. This year, that amount will nearly double and continue to grow exponentially To encapsulate this constant evolution, we can go way beyond 1965 and Gordon Moore's practical formula (Moore's Law), to a statement by the Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 500 BCE), who wrote "the only constant in life, is change".   For more on the digital revolution, read Twenty years of change (1996-2016) Digital Tsunami was founded in Hong Kong in 1996. The company name and brandline 'Communications Evolution' were selected (unapologetically confrontingly), to convey the immense and comprehensive impact which digital technology was expected to deliver. For over twenty years, Digital Tsunami has consulted to global brands, MNCs and SMEs on digital strategy and content solutions. Sources: Statista Dogs of the Dow The Motley Fool Tractica

We all understand the critical importance of maintaining an online presence. The image above displays a live uptime report relating to sites hosted by Digital Tsunami. On private clouds and dedicated web servers in the USA, China, Hong Kong and Australia, Digital Tsunami has been hosting websites since, well .. last century! Over the last quarter, uptime has been 99.988% Digital Tsunami uptime monitoring is implemented for all our hosted client sites. It is scheduled to ping the domains for an online file every 120 seconds. Immediate notification of any outages is received via an online dashboard (monitored on multiple devices by a Digital Tsunami support team member) and email. It will detect the briefest of outages, which may be for as little as two seconds. No credible web host offers 100% uptime, even with the significant investment of co-location (a domain having multiple redundancies in multiple locations). Hardware can fail. Comprehensive redundancy ensures that most components are duplicated to mitigate against individual failure having any impact. Should a small component (which is not duplicated) fail, emergency action is taken and replacement occurs usually within minutes. Several years ago, an outage occurred when a big Australian telco technician managed to simultaneously crash all the connections to the datacentre AND the failover connections. Despite intense activity by our data centre support techs, this issue took several hours to resolve. Infrequently (possibly once every two or three years), hardware must be upgraded. When this is necessary and downtime is absolutely unavoidable, a server may have to be down for a short time, in order to physically insert and reconnect new hardware. This is notified well in advance and conducted at a time which will result in minimal inconvenience to clients and their online customers. However, in one year, even 99.9% uptime implies a potential 87 hours of downtime! Digital Tsunami has implemented; and continues to review and research; every possible measure to minimise downtime, from all the physical and electronic security applied to the data centre, to all the hardware, firmware, software and procedural measures on our private clouds, to minimise exposure to risk. DDoS attacks can also cause outages. While all major data centres have extreme redundancy to limit the effect of a DDoS attack, even massive online brands have suffered from these malicious targeted onslaughts. However, monitoring tracks all outages, so also enables us to remind clients when they have forgotten to renew their own domain name registration! (Many clients entrust their host to manage their domain name registration and renewals to avoid responsibility for this issue). While no host can guarantee 100% uptime, Digital Tsunami is constantly striving to maintain the highest possible percentage of uptime. Read about Digital Tsunami web hosting and WordPress web hosting. Read more about heartbeat monitoring. Read more items related to security.

WhatsApp has announced that it will no longer charge users an annual subscription fee. The messenger app, particularly popular in Europe, parts of Asia (including Hong Kong), and South America, has seen massive growth in recent years and is close to attaining a billion users. WhatsApp used to charge US$0.99 per year (after a free 12 month trial period). The announcement, made official in a blog post on Monday 18 January 2016, means that WhatsApp, (or its parent company Facebook), is potentially forfeiting hundreds of millions in annual revenue. WhatsApp stated that it will not seek revenue from third-party ads to supplement this drop in revenue.   Source: Statista

Digital Tsunami has launched the 2015 online Annual Review, Financial Report and Property Portfolio of the Investa Office Fund (ASX:IOF). This site is the second which Digital Tsunami has developed to the instructions of Sydney creative shop Design Davey. Managed by Investa Property Group, the IOF is one of the largest office real estate companies in Australia and a leading residential and industrial land developer with properties across Australia and in Europe. WIth a bold and interactive geometric structure, the responsive design site displays appropriately on any device from smartphones, phablets, tablets and laptops to the largest desktop computer screen. Infographics, sliders, and videos add dynamism to the mass of data and imagery presented in the site. Despite the relatively short time window available, between the date of information confirmation and the ASX compliance date, the Digital Tsunami team, headed by Technical Director Amir Mostofi, delivered a powerful and effective presence. Contact Digital Tsunami today to discuss the 'Communications Evolution' of your brand.

The screenshot above displays a segment of a dynamic statistics report relating to a client hosted one of Digital Tsunami's private clouds. It shows that there has been NO downtime for over 37 days, and 99.703% uptime over the last year. Over the last quarter, uptime has been 99.988% This is the uptime monitoring which we run for all our hosted client sites. It is scheduled to ping the domains for an online file every 120 seconds. We are immediately notified of any outages via an online dashboard (monitored on multiple devices by a Digital Tsunami support team member) and email. It will detect the briefest of outages, many of which are for as little as two seconds. Read about heartbeat monitoring. We completely understand the critical importance of maintaining an online presence. Digital Tsunami has been hosting client sites and our own sites, since last century! No credible web host offers 100% uptime (or at least not without the significant investment of co-location: a domain having multiple redundancies in multiple locations). Hardware can fail. Comprehensive redundancy ensures that most components are duplicated to mitigate against individual failure having any impact. Should a small component (which is not duplicated) fail, emergency action is taken and replacement occurs usually within minutes. Infrequently (possibly once every two or three years), hardware must be upgraded. When this is necessary and downtime is absolutely unavoidable, a server may have to be down for a short time, in order to physically insert and reconnect new hardware. This is notified well in advance and conducted at a time which will result in minimal inconvenience to clients and their online customers. However, in one year, 99.9% uptime reflects a potentially aggregate 87.6 hours of downtime! We have implemented, and continue to review and research, every possible measure to minimise downtime, from all the physical and electronic security applied to the data centre, to all the hardware, firmware, software and procedural measures on our private clouds, to minimise exposure to risk. The most recent outage on one of our private clouds occurred when a big Australian telco technician managed to simultaneously crash all the connections to the datacentre AND the failover connections. Despite intense activity by our data centre support techs, this issue took several hours to resolve. No clients on our private clouds were affected by the recently detected Heartbleed vulnerability. It was recently announced that 63% of Australian corporations have been the target of a DDoS attack. The last detected DDoS attack on our data centre (13 months ago), received rapid response. Review the initial incident report on the DDoS attack. Read more items related to security. ​This information places into context the realities of ​maintaining an online service for Digital Tsunami hosted clients. We can't guarantee 100% uptime. But we are unceasing in our dedication to getting as close to it as possible. Let the good times roll !

The image sharing site Pinterest, has become second only to Facebook in terms of importance for referral links. In the first quarter of 2014, Pinterest drove 48.36% more traffic than it did at the end of 2013! This fact was revealed in the “1st Quarter 2014 edition of the Shareaholic Social Media Traffic Report”, published on April 21, 2014. Shareaholic, (maker of “share” buttons) collated data from over 300,000 blogs, publisher and e.commerce sites, which receive over 400 million unique visitors each month. Over the four month period to March 2014, Pinterest’s share of traffic grew to 7.1%, which is greater than the total figures for each of the six remaining social networks (Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn). A Business Insider chart demonstrates the massive gaps between referral link leader Facebook (21.25%), Pinterest (7.1%) and the rest; Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn (all around 1% or less). In this chart, the month columns show the percentage of overall traffic that sites received from each network, and the change lists how much each social network’s share of visits gained or declined. Pinterest has grown dramatically since its launch in March 2010, and in October 2013 was valued at US $3.8 billion. Worldwide, over 70 million curators now satisfy an innate human desire to collect, by pinning images, text and videos to topic-specific ‘boards’, for no cost but their time. The ability to easily search, source and pin items of interest, has assumed the scale of an addiction, as some self-referential images attest. In one, a father says to his children: “I am about to introduce you to Pinterest. But first, take a moment to say goodbye to your family and friends”! Brands looking to promote a product, are recognising the value of building boards by and for enthusiastic Pinners, who are focused on their particular product; whether it is avocado dip, timber floorboards or diamond engagement rings. Currently, about half a million brands have Pinterest accounts. Women reportedly comprise a substantial proportion of Pinners (80%), and in the US, are likely to have on average, 67 followers each. This constitutes a massive digital 'village square' where personal referrals are exchanged. Referral links are only a portion of website traffic, (comprised of direct traffic, social referrals, organic search, paid search, and more). However, they are often valued highly, as they are the product of individual advocates using social media to generate positive messages to global networks. Many brands are attempting to drive traffic on the web, by posting content to multiple social sharing sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, without necessarily being aware of the comparative impact or benefit. Piqora, visual, interest-based network marketing & analytics specialist, states that on average, the value of a pin is USD 0.78 in sales. Brands wanting to engage with their markets need a social media strategy. Digital Tsunami can help you plan yours.   Sources: Shareaholic Business Insider Piqora Digital Marketing Ramblings

Over the 3 years to Q4 2014, time spent watching video on handheld devices has increased by 719%. The Global Video Index Q4 2013, just released by Ooyala, has revealed record growth of video viewing on smartphones and tablets. As predicted in Q1, growth over the year doubled. In Q4, the time consumers spent watching video on mobile devices exceeded one fourth of all online viewing. The year-over-year growth represents an opportunity for brands to build and monetize cross-device experiences, and to reach broader audiences as mobile and tablet viewers multiply. It also indicates the power and increasing ubiquity of video as a selling and informational tool. By 2016, Ooyala predicts that handheld devices will account for half of all online video viewing. Digital Tsunami proclaimed 2013 the Year of Video, Mobile and Social and has re-emphasised them as critical marketing priorities in 2014. Some recent items which reinforce this:

• Australians spending almost 24 hours online each week
• Around the globe, there are now more smartphones in use than desktop computers

Ooyala helps broadcasters, cable providers and online media companies by monitoring the global video marketplace through 200M unique users in 130 countries with real-time video analytics. Clever advertisers are utilising the video medium to build brand awareness and social engagement. Several excellent examples of creative brilliance are videos by Post-It Notes, Air New Zealand and The Sunday Times (UK). Digital Tsunami has been producing online video since 1996. Company founder Andrew W Morse first worked in film production in 1979, and has worked with globally recognised brands including Mercedes-Benz, Merck, Citizen, Cathay Pacific and Abbott. While at Essential Asia in 1993, Morse produced and directed television commercials in the style of a computer game, for US food brand Tootsie Roll. He states "We developed a licensed character based on the fruit gummy product, an environment with challenges and rewards which emphasised the nutritional benefits of the product, then used fast moving '2 and a half D' cel animation, with integrated sound effects consistent with those of a computer game." The spot was produced in multiple languages for terrestrial and satellite broadcast across Asia. With the expertise to produce a global video or a six-second 'blipvert', Digital Tsunami enables you to maximise the exceptional ROI of online video. To promote your brand effectively with social, mobile and video, across all languages, geographic regions and platforms, contact Digital Tsunami today.   Sources: Ooyala Global Video Index Q4 2013 Global Web Index Digital Tsunami on Twitter Vine Digital Tsunami on YouTube

The majority of Australians (82 per cent), now spend an average of 23.3 hours online, each week. This is revealed in the “2013 Australian Connected Consumers Report” a comparative study of Australian connected consumers in 2003 and 2013, has been published by global information and measurement company, Nielsen. Cross-Platform Research Director at Nielsen, Melanie Ingrey, stated: “Australians have shifted toward portable devices, affording them greater flexibility and more occasions of online access. More than a third of online Australians today own connected devices that didn’t exist for the mainstream population 10 years ago” including internet-enabled smartphones and tablets. Business Insider reveals that in just 3 years, the increase in time Americans spent on the Internet via a smartphone has grown by 237% to now exceeds time spent via desktop and time on the Internet via a tablet has grown by a dramatic 1,040% Related: Mobile video consumption data In 2014, the number of smartphones in use globally is anticipated to exceed the number of PCs. In 2015, smartphone worldwide sales are projected to reach 776 million units. Related: Sales of smartphones exceed PCs The increased sales, traffic and time on smartphones and tablets merely reflects a global trend in ever-accelerating volume of mobile computing. The increasingly frequent use of handheld devices for timeshifting, second screening, social networking, pre-purchase research, m.commerce and mobile video are all changing patterns of user behaviour. Related: Mobile traffic growing at a faster rate than desktops.

How does this relate to business?

All enterprises, large and small, corporate and retail, need to focus marketing and operations on handheld devices:

• To avoid miniaturisation of a standard website, and adapt to the size and orientation of handheld device screens, the online presence must be built with responsive design
• To maximise visual impact and propel your brand forward, videos (of between 1'00" and 2'00" duration) are the most effective. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is also best served with video, as Google ranking is considerably higher for content presented in video, than the identical content in text and images only
• To maximise community engagement, client advocacy and prospect opportunities and SEO, social media platforms must be created and curated. If your business does not have the in-house resources to moderate, generate and curate content, an external supplier should be engaged to train or supply this service for your brand

Digital Tsunami can assist in all these. Our executives each have over 3 decades in video production, ALL our online solutions are now built in responsive design, and for many years, we've been successfully integrating our client brands in social media. We listen carefully to your profile, requirements and objectives, propose appropriate solutions which will achieve your goals, and implement online and offline collaterals to effectively promote your brand. Related: Social Media for business To maximise the impact of your brand in mobile, contact us today.   Sources: Business Insider Nielsen 2013 Australian Connected Consumers Report Statista Read more:

• Second Screening infographic
• Mobile consumer statistics 2012
• How Mobile is changing business
• Is that a phone in your hand or you just shopping?
• Video via Mobile. The latest statistics
• Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; 2012 Internet Trends
• 2013. The year of Mobile, Social and Video

Over the 12 months to 2013, time spent watching video on mobile devices has doubled. In the first 3 months of 2013, the market share of video viewed on handheld devices grew by 19 percent. In a 24 hour period on 7 June, tweets with links to Vine, exceeded those to Instagram. Within 2 weeks, they doubled! Digital Tsunami has proclaimed 2013 the Year of Video, Mobile and Social. Here are the latest statistics which demonstrate massive growth in these 3 marketing platforms. Tablets have passed smartphones as the most popular device for viewing video. A chart from Silicon Alley Insider shows that in January, tablets oustripped mobile as a video platform. Mobile and tablet video now comprise more than 10 percent of all online video views. In Business Insider of 20 June, Steve Kovach states, "In the past year alone, video-watching on mobile devices has doubled." The statistic was extracted from Ooyala’s Q1 2013 Global Video Index. After doubling in 2012, the share of tablet and mobile video increased by 19 percent in the first quarter. At this rate of expansion, it is on track to double again in 2013. The data sample used in this report covers the first quarter of 2013. All video data was collated from an anonymous cross-section of Ooyala’s global customer and partner database, anonymized and in real time. Across the Asia/Pacific, on all devices, live video dominates Video on Demand (VOD). On average, people streamed live video longer than VOD. Tablet video viewers watched live video 4x longer, and mobile audiences tuned in to live video 3x longer. The report also revealed that the most watched duration was 1 to 3 minute videos, (cf: less than 1 minute, 3-6 minutes, 6-10 mins, 10-30 mins, 30-60 mins). The completion rate (at which viewers watch a portion or all of a video), demonstrates a direct inverse relationship with duration. The shorter the video, the more people watch it all. Reinforcing this statistic is the recent revelation that Vine has passed Instagram in the total number of tweet links. In Marketing Land, Matt McGee wrote "Still not sure about the idea of making and sharing six-second looping videos? .. on Friday there were more Vines shared on Twitter than Instagram photos." Instagram, the online photo-sharing and social networking service that was launched on October 2010, has become a global hit, and 18 months later, was acquired by Facebook for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Founded by Twitter, the six-second looped video platform Vine, launched in January 2013. So in just 5 months, the 'established' platform Instagram, with over a hundred million users worldwide, has been surpassed in social links by the 5 month old Vine! Topsy Analytics calculated 2.37 million links to vine.co on Twitter compared to 2.14 million links to instagram.com, over the same 24-hour period. It was only on June 3, that the Android app was launched. The preponderance of Android smartphones across Asia may have contributed to this growth. Vine has become an immediate hit on Android. Within the 2 weeks since, tweets have doubled (as at 09:00 on 19 Jun), with 1,144,187 tweets linking to Instagram, compared with 2,308,317 tweets linking to Vine. Any doubts over whether people would want to make or watch videos limited to six seconds have been allayed. Brands are increasingly adopting Vine, including Samsung and Target. Vine is perfectly suited to concise animations of all types, but has clearly prompted creativity. Digital Tsunami has been producing online video since 1996. Company founder Andrew W Morse first worked in film production in 1979, and has worked with globally recognised brands including Mercedes-Benz, Merck, Citizen, Cathay Pacific and Abbott. While at Essential Asia in 1993, Morse produced and directed television commercials in the style of a computer game, for US food brand Tootsie Roll. He states "We developed a licensed character based on the fruit gummy product, an environment with challenges and rewards which emphasised the nutritional benefits of the product, then used fast moving '2 and a half D' cel animation, with integrated sound effects consistent with those of a computer game." The spot was produced in multiple languages for terrestrial and satellite broadcast across Asia. With the expertise to produce a global video or a six-second 'blipvert', Digital Tsunami enables you to maximise the exceptional ROI of online video. To promote your brand effectively with social, mobile and video, across all languages, geographic regions and platforms, contact Digital Tsunami today.   Sources: Ooyala Global Video Index Q1 2013 Global Web Index Business Insider Chart of the Day Silicon Alley Insider Marketing Land "Vine passes Instagram total Twitter shares" Topsy Analytics Instagram Digital Tsunami on Twitter Vine Digital Tsunami on YouTube

More people on the Internet are communicating via social media than ever before, and Facebook is the most popular platform. In the first quarter of 2013,  over half the world's Internet connected population is using Facebook! Using data collated by Global Web Index, Statista has just released a chart of the world's ten largest social media sites by global market penetration. 51 percent of Internet users were active on Facebook. Google Plus has gradually expanded to 26 percent. A quarter of users regularly visit YouTube to watch videos. Twitter messages are posted by just over a fifth of online users, even if 85% of all tweets are posted by the top 15% of Twitter users. Contribution to the volume and penetration of these platforms can, in part at least, be attributed to the continuing increase in ownership of handheld devices. The ability to connect and view mobile video via tablets and smartphones while commuting, travelling or 'second screening' has generated an increase in the use of social media. Mobile traffic in 2012 was 12 times higher than the total global Internet traffic of a dozen years earlier, in 2000! Consequently, as a result of this increased social interaction, patterns of in-store and m.commerce purchasing have changed. All current data indicates that consumers are now persuaded more by the recommendations of friends, family and other users, than by advertising. Of the top ten platforms, six are in Chinese language. These platforms offer similar functionalities to the English language sites, (some of which are not accessible in mainland China). Weibo (and Tencent Weibo) comprise 40%, and offer similar posting to Facebook and similar micro-blogging to Twitter. The popular QQ (now owned by Tencent and branded as Tencent QQ, and as such, representing 41% penetration) offers similar micro-blogging to Twitter. YouKu (12%) offers similar video posting to YouTube, while renren (10%) offers posting similar to Facebook. Many of these sites do not offer English content. Digital Tsunami has been working with Chinese clients and clients in China since the 90's. Delivering solutions in branding, eStrategy, mobile, photography, print, video and web to this market, requires an understanding and familiarity with customs and business criteria. 2013 is the Year of Mobile, Social and Video. To maximise the impact of your brand, contact us today. Sources: Statista Global Web Index Tencent QQ QQ renren Weibo YouKu