DIGITAL - Instagram Reaches 700 Million Monthly Users

After six-plus years many social media apps become a bit stagnant and growth slows.

Not so for Instagram who announced yesterday they now have 700 million monthly users.

It’s the quick bump in growth that is so impressive - the latest 100 million users signed up in just four months.

This announcement was right on the heels of a blog post which noted over 200 million people use Instagram Stories every day.

To put the growth of Instagram Stories into perspective - the feature was just launched last August, while Snapchat launched five years ago and has 161 million daily users.

Instagram is expanding on its international presence and sticking with its foundation as a visual communication medium.

According to TechCrunch here’s how long it took Instagram to add each 100 million users:

• October 6, 2010 – Launch
• February 26, 2013 – 100 million;  28 months
• March 25, 2014 – 200 million; 13 months
• December 10, 2014 – 300 million; 9 months
• September 22, 2015 – 400 million; 9 months
• June 21, 2016 – 500 million; 9 months
• December 15, 2016 – 600 million; 6 months
• April 26, 2017 – 700 million; 4 months

“Growth was driven by a number of factors, including our ability to better connect people with their friends on Instagram,” said a spokesperson. “We also took steps to simplify and improve our sign-up process, which helped bring in new people from all over the world.”

Instagram is now more than twice the size of Twitter.

Canadian Pet Market Trends

The Canadian Pet Market Outlook, 2nd Edition reports that the Canadian pet food market in 2014 had the highest growth in the past five years. Key elements driving this growth were pet food sales, humanization trends, increased interest in non-medical pet services. Veterinary professionals continued to see fewer visits from pet owners. The Outlook estimates that sales in the Canadian pet market will rise to $9.2 billion by 2019.

Canadian Pet Market Outlook provides and recommendations regarding the future of the pet market in Canada, contrasts drivers and sales in the Canadian and U.S. pet markets, and pinpoints ways current and prospective players can capitalize on current trends and spearhead new ones.

InVivo Expanding Indonesian Pet Food Market

According to Asian Agribusiness Group, InVivo NSA is looking to grow their business in the Indonesian pet food market.

The pets in Indonesia consume 15,000 to 20,000 tons of pet food each year. The market is dominated by two brands. Country Manager Indonesia of InVivo, Alain Symoens said, “If in the next 10 years the market doubles to 40,000 tonnes, we will have a 10-20% market share. We recently added a new pet food line at our facility in Vietnam which will supply to Southeast Asia and also China and India.”

READ THE ARTICLE

Howard Schultz Brings Healthy Growth to Starbucks

When Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO in early 2008, after a hiatus of nearly eight years, he quickly concluded that growth had become a “carcinogen” and that the company needed a transformation in its culture and operating approach. As he was leading that change process, Schultz also chronicled it in his new book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul.

This McKinsey Quarterly interview provides a window on Starbuck's operations, growth and strategies.

http://tinyurl.com/4fbwkrf

IBM Survey shows consumers demanding different approach

How do customers leverage technology in the market today?

A new IBM global survey, which included 4,000 Canadians, reveals that technology is giving Canadian shoppers a new source of power, driving an increasing need for retailers to engage them with more personalized promotions and offerings, and reaching them via social media rather than relying strictly on traditional marketing.

The survey, which included an additional 28,000 consumers from five other countries, demonstrates the changing economy is giving rise to the smarter consumer – one who uses technology to make more informed buying decisions, exchange information with peers, make purchases on-the-go and shop across multiple channels.

Highlights of the survey include: 84% want to use Web sites to access and print coupons; 75% want to use mobile phones to find out where the nearest store is located; and 72% want to see what goods are in stock before going into the store. The survey also found that for those willing to shop by mobile phones, 43% were willing to use texting to make a purchase.

Sixteen per cent of respondents said they were likely to “follow” a retailer on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter.

Bell's highspeed digital network delivers impressive Olympic metrics

As the first telecommunications partner to deliver both wireless and wireline connectivity to an Olympic Games, Bell has announced it successfully executed all critical network and communications services at Vancouver 2010, including enhanced high-speed wireless data and fibre broadband networking, complete broadcast support, extensive Internet portal services and full network security.

The 2010 Winter Games network supported the communications needs of an estimated 250,000 visitors, almost 6,500 athletes and officials, 50,000 staff and volunteers, and more than 10,000 members of the Canadian and international media. Bell’s Olympic network delivered over 24,000 hours of broadcast coverage to more than 3.5 billion viewers around the world according to the International Olympic Committee – the most in Olympic history.

Also for the first time in Olympic history, Bell customers had access to the company’s new high-speed HSPA/HSPA+ wireless network. Bell’s wireless network statistics for Vancouver 2010 include 90 million minutes of mobile voice traffic, 30 million megabytes of mobile data and 65 million text messages sent and received.

2010 - Entering the next Decade

Earlier this morning we received a note from one of our colleagues Tom Trifaux, who is the Director - Canada West, of the Canadian Management Centre. In conveying best wishes for 2010 he published this guiding thought:

Doing the right thing isn’t always easy...

But it is always right!

We wanted to share this with you because we think it is instructive and encouraging for each of us as we look to move PetLynx forward along the path into this next decade. Our business plan for 2010 expresses some of the new strategies we will bring into being for PetLynx during this new decade:

• It hasn't been easy to stay one degree removed from the 'pet family' in favour of working with those who already own this relationship, but it has been right.


• It hasn't been easy to identify the value chain of the companion animal industry nor to rally the industry around the PetLynx vision of a more collaborative approach to deliver a compliant pet family, but it has been the right investment.


• It hasn't been easy to bear the investment of 'thought leadership', or Urban Animal Surveys or the Summits for Urban Animal Strategies, but it has been the right thing to do.


• Finally, it hasn't been easy to ask our shareholders to be patient as these things came together to deliver the market for our automation and services, but it was the right thing in the right time.

Our clients are working with us in more collaborative ways than ever to accelerate our business and deliver a win for the industry and for each of them as well as PetLynx. Today as we contemplate the coming year, we are confident, even though the past hasn't been easy, the future will be right!


We invite you to join with us on this journey.


Onward and upward!

July Registrations & Recoveries at new levels

PetLynx has recorded an annual peak in recovery activities each July which is consistent with anecdotal information from industry sources. Since moving into commercial production in May of 2006, registration activities have also recorded higher levels during the four months from June to September.

Automated recoveries in July came in at 4,683 which is up 22% from 3,832 in 2008 and up 131% from 2,021 in January 2009. Registrations in July came in at 6,606 which is up 27% from 5,197 in 2008 and up 84%from 3,588 in January 2009.

Another interesting metric is the relationship between recovery episodes and registrations, the V2 recovery rate. In 2008 there were 0.737 recoveries for each registration in July. In 2009 there were 0.709 recoveries for each registration during July. One interpretation of this trend is that there are more registrations coming from marketing programs than there are from the recovery services. As new point of market entry [POME] programs come into production one might expect this gap to widen. Essentially, we believe this means more animals are being registered based on the value proposition and reputation of the PetLynx Automated Recovery Service than are being registered because of an active recovery episode.

The PetLynx system automatically handled 124,093 recovery episodes to the end of July 2009, which provides a V1 recovery rate of 94%. PetLynx continues to lead the industry by a substantial margin in both the V1 and V2 metric and for this reason maintains a significant competitive advantage.