Chapter # 1 Introduction

Mobile applications (apps) have been gaining rising popularity dueto the advances in mobile
technologies and the large increase in the number of mobile users. Consequently, several app
distribution platforms, which provide a new way for developing, downloading, and updating
software applications in modern mobile devices, have recently emerged. To better understand the
download patterns, popularity trends, and development strategies in this rapidly evolving mobile
app ecosystem, we systematically monitored and analyzed four popular third-party Android app
marketplaces. Our study focuses on measuring, analyzing, and modeling the app popularity
distribution, and explores how pricing and revenue strategies affect app popularity and
developers income. Our results indicate that unlike web and peer-to-peer file sharing workloads,
the app popularity distribution deviates from commonly observed Zipf-like models. We verify
that these deviations can be mainly attributed to a new download pattern, to which we refer as
the clustering effect. We validate the existence of this effect by revealing a strong temporal
affinity of user downloads to app categories. Based on these observations, we propose a new
formal clustering model for the distribution of app downloads, and demonstrate that it closely fits
measured data. Moreover, we observe that paid apps follow a different popularity distribution
than free apps, and show how free apps with an ad-based revenue strategy may result in higher
financial benefits than paid apps. We believe that this study can be useful to appstore designers
for improving content delivery and recommendation systems, as well as to app developers for
selecting proper pricing policies to increase their income.

1.1 What is mobile application ?

A mobile application is a software application designed to run on smartphones, tablet
computers and other mobile devices. They are usually available through application distribution
platforms, which are typically operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the
Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store, and BlackBerry App World. Some
apps are free, while others must be bought by Usually, they are downloaded from the platform to
a target device, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone or Windows Phone, but
sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktops. For apps with a price, generally a
percentage, 20-30%, goes to the distribution provider (such as iTunes), and the rest goes to the
producer of the app.[1]
The term "app" has become popular, and in 2010 was listed as "Word of the Year" by the
American Dialect Society.[2] In 2009, technology columnist David Pogue said that newer

smartphones could be nicknamed "app phones" to distinguish them from earlier lesssophisticated smartphones.[3]
Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including
email, calendar, contacts, and stock market and weather information. However, public demand
and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, such as
mobile games, factory automation, GPS and location-based services, banking, order-tracking,
and ticket purchases. The explosion in number and variety of apps made discovery a challenge,
which in turn led to the creation of a wide range of review, recommendation, and curation
sources, including blogs, magazines, and dedicated online app-discovery services.
The popularity of mobile applications has continued to rise, as their usage has become
increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users.[4] A May 2012 comScore study reported that
during the previous quarter, more mobile subscribers used apps than browsed the web on their
devices: 51.1% vs. 49.8% respectively.[5] Researchers found that usage of mobile applications
strongly correlates with user context and depends on user's location and time of the day.[6]
According to market research firm Gartner, 102bn apps will be downloaded in 2013 (but 91% of
them will be free) but they will still generate $26bn (16.1bn), up 44.4% on 2012's $18bn.[7] An
analyst report estimates that the app economy creates revenues of more than 10 billion Euros per
year within the European Union, while over 529 thousand jobs have been created in EU28 states
due to the growth of the app market.

1.2 Development Of Mobile Application:

Developing application software for mobile devices requires considering the constrains of these
devices. Mobile devices run on battery and have less powerful processors than personal
computers. Developers also have to consider a lengthy array of screen sizes, hardware
specifications and configurations because of intense competition in mobile software and changes
within each of the platforms.
Mobile application development requires use of specialized integrated development
environments made. Mobile applications are first tested within the development environment
using emulators and later subjected to field testing. Emulators provide an inexpensive way to test
applications on mobile phones to which developers may not have physical access.

Chapter # 2 Smartphones

A smartphone, or smart phone, is a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with
more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature phone.[1][2][3] The first
smartphones combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with a mobile phone.
Later models added the functionality of portable media players, low-end compact digital
cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units to form one multi-use device. Many
modern smartphones also include high-resolution touchscreens and web browsers that display
standard web pages as well as mobile-optimized sites. High-speed data access is provided by WiFi and mobile broadband. In recent years, the rapid development of mobile app markets and of
mobile commerce have been drivers of smartphone adoption.
The mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google's Android,
Apple's iOS, Nokia's Symbian, Blackberry Ltd's BlackBerry OS, Samsung's Bada, Microsoft's
Windows Phone, Hewlett-Packard's webOS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo
and MeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and
typically each device can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime. A few other
upcoming operating systems are Mozilla's Firefox OS, Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu Phone, and
Tizen.
Worldwide sales of smartphones exceeded those of feature phones in early 2013.[4] As of July 18,
2013, 90 percent of global handset sales are attributed to the purchase of Android and iPhone
smartphones.

2.1 Buying Behavior of Operating Systems :

Regardless of the demographics based on operating systems, many campaigns use the iPhone as
their choice of platform because it has more market awareness because phone and operating
system are made by the same company while there are many manufactures for Android devices.
Some of the larger manufactures are Samsung, Motorola, and HTC.
Android has a higher repurchase rate of its devices than iPhone or BlackBerry (Zokem, 2011).
Repurchase rate is relevant to marketers and advertisers because if they want to launch a long
term campaign, it is useful to know if users are going to be switching devices for a competing
operating system. With 89% of Android users coming back to. Android and 85% of iPhone users
going back to iPhone, it shows that these two platforms are solid platforms in consistently
keeping consistent users (Zokem, 2011).

Apple has higher brand loyalty, around an 84% difference in loyalty compared to Android
(Zokem, 2011). BlackBerry is last in brand loyalty compared to the other two with 25% less
brand loyalty than Android (Zokem, 2011). The iPhone was the first to enter the market with
downloadable mobile applications which could explain the higher brand loyalty. However,
Android and BlackBerry are creating similar products such Tablet computers in order to compete
with product differentiation. Bottom line is that each of the three key competitors can do similar
tasks, the main difference between them are mobile applications.

Smartphone Customer Satisfaction

by J.D. Power and Associates
Manufacturer

Score

Apple 2010
Apple 2011
HTC 2010
HTC 2011
Industry Average 2010
Industry Average 2011
Samsung 2010
Samsung 2011
Motorola 2010
Motorola 2011
RIM 2010
RIM 2011
LG 2010
LG 2011
HP/Palm 2010
HP/Palm 2011
Nokia 2010
Nokia 2011

Rankings are based on a possible top score of 1000

2.2 Applicaton Stores:

810
838
727
801
753
788
724
777
N/A
775
741
762
N/A
760
712
733
720
721

The introduction of Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch in July 2008 popularized
manufacturer-hosted online distribution for third-party applications focused on a single platform.
Before this, smartphone application distribution was largely dependent on third-party sources
providing applications for multiple platforms, such as GetJar, Handango, Handmark,
PocketGear, and others.
The iPhone's platform is officially restricted to installing apps through the App Store, through
"B2B" deployment, and on an "Ad Hoc" basis on up to 100 iPhones. Through jailbreaking it can
install apps from other sources. Other platforms may allow application distribution through
additional sources outside of their manufacturer-provided app stores, such as third-party app
stores and downloads from individual websites.
Following the success of Apple's App Store other smartphone manufacturers quickly launched
application stores of their own. Google launched the Android Market in October 2008. MiKandi
launched the first adult app market for smartphones in 2009. RIM launched its app store,
BlackBerry App World, in April 2009. Nokia launched its Ovi Store in May 2009. Palm launched
its Palm App Catalog for webOS in June 2009. Microsoft launched an application store for
Windows Mobile called Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009, and then a separate
Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone in October 2010. Samsung launched Samsung
Apps for its Bada based phones in June 2010. Amazon launched its Amazon Appstore for the
Google Android operating system in March 2011.
The relatively high revenue of U.S. $5782 million in 2012 for Apple's App
Store compared to competitor's stores can be attributed to a combination of
factors. In large part this can be attributed to having the largest number of
apps available and the highest download volume of any mobile app store in
2010, but besides that only 28% of the apps in Apple's App Store were free
apps, compared to over 57% in the Android Market. Similarly, Nokia's Ovi
Store and the BlackBerry App World both had only 26% of their apps
available for free, and both generated higher revenues than the Android
Market despite having much lower download volumes. Another significant
difference is the mobile applications available to each operating system. Apple has around
400,000 iPad and iPhone mobile applications, Android with 200,000, and BlackBerry with
27,000 (Spriensma, 2011; Empson, 2011). The Apple App Store has an application process for
3rd party applications for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. On the contrary, Android does not have an
application process, just a registration of the developer and once registered, the developer can
freely post applications without approval. It should also be noted the difference of the number of
free applications available. Android has the most free applications available compared to Apple;

134,000 and 122,000 respectively (Spriensma, 2011). But Apple has about three times as many
paid mobile applications as Android (Spriensma, 2011).
According to Pawan Kumar, a senior research analyst from MarketsandMarkets, marketers and
advertisers need to be aware of mobile operating systems and how they play a huge role in
reaching the target audience through mobile applications. Each operating system is different
which causes fragmentation over operating systems and mobile applications (as cited in Tsirulnik
G. , 2011). This fragmentation can make applications from one platform to another fail because
they are not created the same. When problems occur between platforms over similar applications,
it creates a barrier. Users with a certain platform will only use applications
Furthermore, each of the three big competitors have discovered and refined their competitive
edge with their operating system. For instance, Android diversifies itself through its
personalization of its user interface. Apple, reliability, stability and simplicity. BlackBerry, slight
a mix of both.

2.3 Different Application Store:

 Amazon Appstore:
Amazon Appstore is an alternate application store for the Android operating system.
It was opened in March 2011, with 3800 applications.

App Store:
Apple's App Store for iOS was the first app distribution service, which set the
standard for app distribution services and continues to do so, opened on July 10,
2008, and as of January 2011, reported over 10 billion downloads. As of June 6,
2011, there are 425,000 third-party apps available, which are downloaded by 200
million iOS users. During Apple's 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference in 20,
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the App Store has 650,000 available apps to
download as well as "an astounding 30 billion apps" downloaded from the app store
until that date.

BlackBerry World:
BlackBerry World is the application store for BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10
devices. It opened in April 2009 as BlackBerry App World, and as of February 2011,
was claiming the largest revenue per app: $9,166.67 compared to $6,480.00 at the
Apple App Store and $1,200 in the Android market. In July 2011, it was reporting 3
million downloads per day and one billion total downloads.[13] In May 2013,
BlackBerry World reached over 120,000 apps.

Google Play:
Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market) is an international online
software store developed by Google for Android devices. It opened in October 2008.
[14]
In April 2013, there were approximately 850,000 apps available for Android, and
the estimated number of applications downloaded from Google Play was 40 billion.

Nokia Store:
An app store for Nokia phones was launched internationally in May 2009. As of April
2011 there were 50,000 apps, and as of August 2011, Nokia was reporting 9 million

downloads per day. In February 2011, Nokia reported that it would start using Windows
Phone as its primary operating system. In May 2011, Nokia announced plans to rebrand
its Ovi product line under the Nokia brand[16] and Ovi Store was renamed Nokia Store in
October 2011. Nokia Store remains as the distribution platform for its previous lines of
mobile operating systems.

Windows Phone Store:

Windows Phone Store was introduced by Microsoft for its Windows Phone
platform, which was launched in October 2010. As of October 2012, it has over
120,000 apps available.

Windows Store:
Windows Store was introduced by Microsoft for its Windows 8 and Windows RT
platforms. While it can also carry listings for traditional desktop programs certified
for compatibility with Windows 8, it is primarily used to distribute "Windows Store
apps"which are primarily built for use on tablets and other touch-based devices
(but can still be used with a keyboard and mouse, and on desktop computers and
laptops.

Samsung Apps Store:

An app store for Samsung mobile phones was founded in September 2009.[21] As of
October 2011 Samsung Apps reached 10 million downloads. Currently the store is
available in 125 countries and it offers apps for Windows Mobile, Android and Bada
platforms.

Chapter # 3 Mobile Applications

3.1 Native Apps vs. Mobile Web Apps:

There are two main types of mobile applications: native and mobile Web. Native applications
integrate directly with the mobile device's operating system and can interact with its hardware
much like the software on a personal computer. Native applications are also capable of taking
advantage of local APIs in order to maximize functionality while preserving efficiency. Mobile
Web applications are apps that run directly from an online interface such as a website. These
applications typically cannot manipulate a device's hardware and are limited to the web
application's APIs rather than the programming packages found on the phone13. A mobile
website is a series of web pages created for the sole purpose of being viewed on a mobile
device's web browser. These pages are often created using HTML, but some operating systems
such as iOS or Android are equipped with a webkit. These webkits enable web page rendering
that extends functionality far beyond that of a typical mobile Web application; they allow
hardware manipulation, user interface scaling, and more.Some applications are hybrids that
combine the interface and coding components of a web-based interface with the functionality
derived from native applications.
This allows developers to update the application remotely while still affording a large amount of
programming functionality. It also extends the number of platforms which can run the
application, as their web-based nature ensures the application must not necessarily be
platformspecific Currently, the two dominant operating systems - Googles Linux-based opensource Android Operating System and Apple's iPhone Operating System (iOS) - both support
their own marketplaces where users can purchase mobile applications. Some apps are packaged
with the operating system by default, but most apps must be downloaded manually from an app
marketplace.

3.2 Consumer Preferences in Mobile Apps:

By the year 2010, the mobile apps industry became increasingly saturated
as new
competitors entered the market flooding it with numerous varieties of
utilitarian as well as lifestyle apps. A survey conducted by Nielsen in 2010
revealed the types of apps that were in greatest demand by users. A
breakdown of the various categories of applications used within a span of 30
days as emerging from the survey is presented in Figure 234. In addition, a
chart of app popularity by users of specific operating systems is depicted in
Figure 3. The survey revealed that games, including both free and paid, were
the most downloaded application category. Facebook, Google Maps, and the
Weather Channel were the most popular apps across all platforms. In social
networking, Facebook was by far the most popular app, with MySpace trailing
behind in part due to its continuing popularity with teenagers. LinkedIn also
attracted a large number of users in the age group of 25 to 4435. The news
and weather application category was dominated by The Weather Channel,
which was downloaded by 58% of the users surveyed. Amazon and eBay led
the shopping category with 57% and 41% respectively. Finally, the music
category was fiercely competitive with iTunes, Pandora, Sirius-XM, and Yahoo!
Music all Data collected by Flurry in May 2011 revealed that games and
social networking apps,led by Facebook, continued to be the most popular
app categories among users. Flurry also discovered that users not only
accessed game and social networking apps more frequently but also for
longer periods of time per session. That many users were accessing
Facebook in order to play games available on that platform points to the
overwhelming dominance of this category of smartphone apps.

Chapter # 4 Different application

4.1 Google Play:

Google Play, is a digital distribution platform for apps on Android and online electronics and
digital media developed and maintained by Google.
The service allows users to browse and download music, magazines, books, movies, television
programs, and applications published through Google. Users can also purchase Chromebooks,
Google Nexus-branded mobile devices, other Google-branded hardware, and accessories through
Google Play.
Applications are available either free of charge or at a cost. They can be downloaded directly to
an Android or Google TV device through the Play Store mobile app, or by deploying the
application to a device from the Google Play website.[2] These applications are generally targeted
to users based on a particular hardware attribute of their device, such as a motion sensor (for
motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).
On March 6, 2012, with the merging of the Android Market and Google Music, the service was
renamed Google Play to coincide with the rebranding of Google's digital distribution strategy.[3]
As of July 2013, the Google Play store officially reached over 1 million apps and had over 50
billion downloads.[4]

4.2 Maps:

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, that
powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder,
Google Transit,[1] and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API.[2] It
offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, car, bike (beta), or with public
transportation and a locator for urban businesses in numerous countries around the world.
Google Maps satellite images are not updated in real time, but rather they are several months or
years old.[citation needed]
Google Maps uses a close variant of the Mercator projection, so it cannot show areas around the
poles. A related product is Google Earth, a stand-alone program which offers more globeviewing features, including showing polar areas.
Google Maps for mobile runs on smartphones with over 54% of users using it between AprilJune 2013.[
Satellite view
Google Maps provides high-resolution aerial or satellite images for most urban areas all over the
world. Most of the world's current satellite imagery is over 5 years old and updated infrequently,
resulting in not showing the newer features and updates that have been made to various
infrastructures. Various governments have complained about the potential for terrorists to use the
satellite images in planning attacks.[4][dead link] Google has blurred some areas for security (mostly
in the United States),[5] previously[6] the United States Capitol, the White House, and the U.S.
Naval Observatory area (where the official residence of the Vice President is located). Other
well-known government installations, including Area 51 in the Nevada desert, are visible.
Not all areas on satellite images are covered in the same resolution; less populated areas usually
get less detail. With the introduction of an easily pannable and searchable mapping and satellite
imagery tool, Google's mapping engine prompted a surge of interest in satellite imagery. Sites
were established to feature satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks,
including such novelties as "large type" writing visible in the imagery, as well as famous
stadiums and unique geological formations.[7] Although Google uses the word satellite, most of
the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 8001500
feet rather than from satellites; while most other imagery is in fact from satellites.

Directions:
Google Maps provides a route planner under "Get Directions".[9] Up to four modes of
transportation are available depending on the area: driving, public transit (see the Google Transit
section below), walking, and bicycling. In combination with Google Street View, issues like
parking, turning lanes, and one-way streets can be viewed before travelling. Driving directions
are covered as follows:
Most countries of mainland Eurasia and Africa are covered contiguously, including the
United Kingdom, Ireland, the Canary Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Sri Lanka, most of
Indonesia and Timor-Leste. China mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Israel (including parts
of the West Bank), Jordan, Lebanon and North Korea have directions available without
connection to other states. Only public transit directions are provided for South Korea.
All countries of mainland North and Central America are covered contiguously.
All countries of mainland South America are covered. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela are treated
contiguously, whereas Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname are not
connected to other states.
All inhabited countries and territories in the Caribbean are covered, though in general
there are no connections between islands.
Additionally, American Samoa, Australia, the Azores, Brunei, Cape Verde, The Comoros,
The Cook Islands, the Faroe Islands, The Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French
Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Iceland, Japan, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte,
New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, the Philippines,
Runion, So Tom and Prncipe, the Seychelles, Samoa, Taiwan, Tonga, Vanuatu, Wallis
and Futuna are covered as stand-alone regions, as are Nuuk in Greenland, Sabah in
Malaysia, parts of Papua New Guinea, parts of Solomon Islands and Socotra in Yemen

4.3 Facebook:

Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name stems from the colloquial name for the
book given to students at the start of the academic year by some American university
administrations to help students get to know one another.[7] Facebook was founded in February
2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students
Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[8] The founders had
initially limited the website's membership to students of the University of Harvard, but later
expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually
added support for students at various other universities before it opened to high school students,
and eventually to anyone ages 13 and over. Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at
least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.

Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add
other users as friends, exchange messages, and receive automatic notifications when they update
their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace,
school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People
From Work" or "Close Friends". As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active
users,[10] of which 8.7% are fake.[11] According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are
7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of
service.[12] Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180 petabytes of data a year and grows by over half a
petabyte every 24 hours.
In May 2005, Accel partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer[14] added $1
million of his own money to the pot. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the
most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.[15] Entertainment
Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we
stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of
Scrabulous before Facebook?"[16] Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on
February 1, 2012, and was headquartered in Menlo Park, California.[2] Facebook Inc. began
selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012.[17] Based on its 2012
income of USD 5.1 Billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time, being placed
at position of 462 on the list published in May 2013.

4.4 Google Search:

Google Search (or Google Web Search) is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google
Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web,[4] handling more than three
billion searches each day.
The order of search on Google's search-results pages is based, in part, on a priority rank called a
"PageRank". Google Search provides many options for customized search, using Boolean
operators such as: exclusion ("-xx"), alternatives ("xx OR yy"), and wildcards ("x * x").
The main purpose of Google Search is to hunt for text in publicly accessible documents offered
by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as with Google Image Search. Google Search was
originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997. Google Search provides at least 22
special features beyond the original word-search capability. These include synonyms, weather
forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquake data, movie showtimes, airports, home

listings, and sports scores. There are special features for dates, including ranges, prices,
temperatures, money/unit conversions, calculations, package tracking, patents, area codes, and
language translation of displayed pages. In June 2011, Google introduced "Google Voice Search"
and "Search by Image" features for allowing the users to search words by speaking and by giving
images. In May 2012, Google introduced a new Knowledge Graph semantic search feature to
customers in the U.S.
The frequency of use of many search terms has reached such a volume that they may indicate
broader economic, social and health trends. Data about the frequency of use of search terms on
Google have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels and provide
the information faster than traditional reporting methods and government surveys.
Major competitors of Google are Baidu and Soso.com in China; Naver.com and Daum
Communications in South Korea; Yandex in Russia; Seznam.cz in Czech Republic; Yahoo! in
Japan, Taiwan and the United States, and Bing.

4.5 Youtube :

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005
and owned by Google since late 2006, on which users can upload, view and share videos.[4] The
company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5
technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV
clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos,
and educational videos.
Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations
including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the
site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.[5] Unregistered users can watch videos, while
registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain
potentially offensive content are available only to registered users at least 18 years old. YouTube,

LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion in November 2006 and now operates as a
Google subsidiary

Company history:

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early
employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while
Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the
idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing
videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not
attend the party and denied that it had occurred, while Chen commented that the idea that
YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas
around creating a story that was very digestible".
Karim said that the inspiration for YouTube came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super
Bowl incident, when her breast was accidentally exposed during her performance. Karim could
not easily find a video clip of the incident online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.
Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating
service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.
YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a $11.5 million
investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early
headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.
The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was
developed over the subsequent months.
The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the
San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.
YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official
launch in November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that
more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100
million video views per day. According to data published by market research company

comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market
share of around 43 percent and more than 14 billion videos viewed in May 2010.
YouTube says that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and
that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S. The site has 800 million
unique users a month. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the
entire Internet in 2000. Alexa ranks YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet,
behind Google and Facebook.
The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website,
www.utube.com. The owner of the site, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit
against YouTube in November 2006 after being overloaded on a regular basis by people looking
for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to
www.utubeonline.com. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube
for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.
Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in
2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article
projected the 2008 revenue at $200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. In January
2012, it was estimated that visitors to YouTube spent an average of 15 minutes a day on the site,
in contrast to the four or five hours a day spent by a typical U.S. citizen watching television.
YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC in June 2006. In
November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and
CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site,
accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was
intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC,
Fox, and Disney. In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK
viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners. In January 2010,
YouTube introduced an online film rentals service,[35] which is available only to users in the US,
Canada and the UK as of 2010. The service offers over 6,000 films.
In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches
of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online
broadcast of a major sporting event.
On March 31, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the
interface and increasing the time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva
Rajaraman commented: "We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter." In
May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, which it
described as "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks

combined". In May 2011, YouTube reported in its company blog that the site was receiving more
than three billion views per day. In January 2012, YouTube stated that the figure had increased to
four billion videos streamed per day.
In October 2010, Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of
YouTube to take an advisory role, and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the
company.
In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed that 30 percent of videos
accounted for 99 percent of views on the site.
In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and
the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+
interface. On December 1, 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the
video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of
social networking sites. At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was introduced
with a darker shade of red, the first change in design since October 2006.
In May 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program to began offering some content providers the
ability to charge $0.99 per month or more for certain channels, but the vast majority of its videos
would remain free to view.

4.6 Whatsapp:

WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging subscription service

for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and
audio media messages. The client software is available for Android, BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry
10, iOS, Series 40, Symbian (S60), and Windows Phone. WhatsApp Inc. was founded in 2009 by
Brian Acton and Jan Koum (also the CEO), both veterans of Yahoo!, and is based in Santa Clara,
California.[1]
Competing with a number of Asian-based messaging services (like LINE, KakaoTalk, and
WeChat), WhatsApp was handling ten billion messages per day as of August 2012, growing from
two billion in April 2012[3] and one billion the previous October. On 13th June, 2013, WhatsApp

announced on Twitter[5] that they had reached their new daily record of processing 27 billion
messages. According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones
what Skype did to international calling on landlines." The service is free for the first year then
costs $0.99/Yr.
As of August 6, 2013, WhatsApp has over 300 million active users, and 325 million photos
shared each day.

Technical:
WhatsApp uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible Messaging and Presence
Protocol (XMPP). Upon installation, it creates a user account using one's phone number as
username (Jabber ID: [phone number]@s.whatsapp.net). WhatsApp software automatically
compares all the phone numbers from the device's address book with its central database of
WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user's WhatsApp contact list. Previously the
Android and S40 versions used an MD5-hashed, reversed-version of the phone's IMEI as
password,[9] while the iOS version used the phone's Wi-Fi MAC address instead of IMEI. A
recent update now generates a random password on the server side.
Multimedia messages are sent by uploading the image, audio or video to be sent to a HTTP
server and then sending a link to the content along with its Base64 encoded thumbnail (if
applicable).
Until August 2012, messages were sent in unencrypted plain-text format, making the system
vulnerable to session hijacking and packet analysis. As of August 15, 2012, the WhatsApp
support staff claim messages are encrypted in the "latest version" of the WhatsApp software for
iOS and Android (not including BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian), without specifying
the implemented cryptographic method.

Security:
In May 2011, a security hole reportedly left WhatsApp user accounts open for hijacking.[16] Since
May 2011, WhatsApp communications are reportedly not encrypted, and data is sent and
received in plaintext, meaning messages can easily be read if packet traces are available.[17]
According to some sources, the hijacking hack was performed and later fixed by helping
WhatsApp reproduce it on Android and Symbian, by Liroy van Hoewijk, CEO of CoreISP.net.[18]

[19]

In May 2012, security researchers noticed that new updates of WhatsApp no longer sent
messages as plaintext,[20][21][22] the cryptographic method implemented was subsequently
described as "broken".[23]
In September 2011, WhatsApp released a new version of the Messenger application for iPhones,
closing critical security holes that allowed forged messages to be sent and messages from any
WhatsApp user to be read.[24]
On January 6, 2012, an unknown hacker published a website (WhatsAppStatus.net) that made it
possible to change the status of an arbitrary WhatsApp user, as long as the phone number was
known. To make it work, it only required a restart of the app. According to the hacker, it is only
one of the many security issues in WhatsApp. On January 9, WhatsApp reported that it had
resolved the issue, although the only measure actually taken was to block the website's IP
address. As a reaction, a Windows tool was made available for download providing the same
functionality. This issue has since been resolved in the form of an IP check on currently logged in
session.[25][26]
On January 13, 2012, WhatsApp was pulled from the iOS App Store, and the reason was not
disclosed. The app was added back to the App Store four days later.[27]
German Tech site The H demonstrated how to use WhatsAPI to hijack any WhatsApp account on
September 14, 2012.[28] Shortly after a legal threat to WhatsAPI's developers was alleged,
characterized by The H as "an apparent reaction" to security reports, and WhatsAPI's source code
was taken down for some days.[29] The WhatsAPI team has since returned to active development.
[30]

Privacy:
Another issue was witnessed on November 28, 2012, and before (WA blog post about it is from
January 12), though this is not a security concern at all but more a problem with "chain
messages", when users got spam messages and ignorantly forwarded hoax messages to people on
their contact lists.[31] The WhatsApp team clearly mentioned on its website that all such messages
are fake.[32] This has not been the work of hackers, but simply the work of people randomly
forwarding nonsense, a problem on any social media.
A major privacy and security issue has been the subject of a joint Canadian-Dutch government
investigation. The primary concern was that WhatsApp required users to upload their entire
mobile phone's address book to WhatsApp servers so that WhatsApp could discover who, among
the users' existing contacts, is available via WhatsApp. While this is a fast and convenient way to

quickly find and connect the user with contacts who are also using WhatsApp, it means that their
address book was then mirrored on the WhatsApp servers, including contact information for
contacts who are not using WhatsApp. However, this information was stored as a hash and
without additional identifying information such as a name.[33][34][35][36]
WhatsApp uses a timestamp feature, which allows the ability to view the last time a user was
logged-on (or "Last seen"), unless expressly blocked by said user. This feature is considered to
be a privacy issue. While iPhone users can choose to disable this feature, Android users cannot.
[37]

WhatsApp allows you to view the profile picture and current "Status" of every user, as long as
that user is enlisted in Contacts.[38]
On March 31, 2013, the governing body of telecommunications affairs in Saudi Arabia, the
Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), issued a statement regarding
possible measures against WhatsApp, among other applications, unless the service providers
took serious steps in order to comply with monitoring and privacy regulations.[39]

4.6 Skype:

Skype /skap/ is a freemium voice-over-IP service and instant messaging client that is currently
developed by the Microsoft Skype Division. The name originally derived from "sky" and "peer".
Skype was first released in August 2003; it was written by Estonian developers Ahti Heinla, Priit
Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, Danish Janus Friis, and Swedish Niklas Zennstrm, who had also

originally developed Kazaa. Skype had 663 million registered users as of the end of 2010.[16] It
was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. Microsoft's Skype division headquarters is in
Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the
division are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
The service allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by
using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients
on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of
charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user
account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features, including file transfer,
and videoconferencing. Competitors include SIP and H.323-based services, such as Linphoneand
Google Voice.
Unlike most other VoIP services, Skype is a hybrid peer-to-peer and clientserver system. It
makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software, and this is reflected
in Skype's original proposed name of Sky Peer-to-Peer.
Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home and education
networks, citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage,
and security concerns.

History:
Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennstrm from Sweden.
The Skype software was created by the Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn
The first public beta version was released on 29 August 2003.

Features:
Registered users of Skype are identified by a unique Skype Name, and may be listed in the
Skype directory.[31] Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant
messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and
conference calling, and uses a proprietary audio codec. Skype's text chat client allows group
chats, emoticons, storing chat history and editing of previous messages. Offline messages were
implemented in a beta of version 5, but removed after a few weeks without notification. The
usual features familiar to instant messaging users user profiles, online status indicators, and so
on are also included.

The Online Number, a.k.a. SkypeIn, service allows Skype users to receive calls on their
computers dialed by conventional phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local
numbers are available for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican
Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Mexico,
Nepal, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[32][33] A Skype user can have
local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls
to fixed lines in the country. The countries on this growing list are referred to collectively as the
SkypeIn Countries.
Skype supports conference calls up to 25 people at a time. Skype also supports video chat
between two people for free. Screen sharing and group video calling is available for Premium
subscribers between a maximum of 10 people.
Skype does not provide the ability to call emergency numbers such as 112 in Europe, 911 in
North America, 000 in Australia, 100 Call Police in India and Nepal[35] The U.S. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) has ruled that, for the purposes of section 255 of the
Telecommunications Act, Skype is not an "interconnected VoIP provider".[36] As a result, the U.S.
National Emergency Number Association recommends that all VoIP users have an analog line
available as a backup.
On July 14, 2011 Skype partnered with Comcast to bring its video chat service to Comcast
subscribers via their HDTV sets.
On June 17, 2013 Skype released a free video messaging service which can be operated on
Windows and Mac OS, iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
On August 12, 2013 Skype released the 4.10 update to the app for Apple iPhone and iPad that
allows HD quality video for iPhone 5 and fourth generation iPads.

Client Application and Devices:

Skype runs on a number of platforms including Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8), OS X (10.6
or newer), Linux (Ubuntu and others), Android, BlackBerry 10, iOS, Symbian and Windows
Phone.
On 29 October 2007, Skype launched its own mobile phone under the brand name 3
Skypephone, which runs a BREW OS.[64]

Skype also offers a Skype Wi-Fi Phone, which is a wireless mobile phone that allows users to
make Skype calls, using a wireless Internet connection. The Skype Wi-Fi Phone has an on-screen
menu that lets Skype users see who is online and available to talk, similar to what is seen on a
PC. It can also be used to talk with non-Skype users. SkypeOut minutes can be used to call any
phone for a low price and no monthly fee. The Skype Wi-Fi phone does not contain a web
browser and so can not access hotspots that require web-based login or authentication.[65]
Other platforms officially supported include:
The Nokia N800, N810 and N900 Internet Tablets, which run Maemo
The Nokia N9 and Nokia N8, which runs MeeGo, comes with Skype voice calling and
text messaging integrated however lacks video-calling.
Both the Sony mylo COM-1 and COM-2 models
The PlayStation Portable Slim and Lite series, though the user needs to purchase a
specially designed microphone peripheral. The PSP-3000 has a built in microphone,
which allows communication without the Skype peripheral.[66] The PSP Go has the ability
to use Bluetooth connections with the Skype application, in addition to its built-in
microphone.[67] Skype for PlayStation Vita may be downloaded via the PlayStation
Network in the U.S. It includes the capability to receive incoming calls with the
application running in the background.
Samsung Smart TV has a Skype app which can be downloaded for free.[68] It uses the
built in camera and microphone for the newer models. Alternatively a separate mountable
Skype camera with built in speakers and microphones is available to purchase for older
models.[69]
Some devices are made to work with Skype by talking to a desktop Skype client or by
embedding Skype software into the device. These are usually either tethered to a PC, or
have a built-in Wi-Fi client to allow calling from Wi-Fi hotspots like the Netgear SPH101
Skype Wi-Fi Phone, the SMC WSKP100 Skype Wi-Fi Phone, the Belkin F1PP000GNSK Wi-Fi Skype Phone, the Panasonic KX-WP1050 Wi-Fi Phone for Skype Executive
Travel Set, the IPEVO So-20 Wi-Fi Phone for Skype and the Linksys CIT200 Wi-Fi
Phone.
Third-party developers, such as Truphone, Nimbuzz and Fring, previously allowed Skype to run
in parallel with several other competing VoIP/IM networks (Truphone and Nimbuzz provide
TruphoneOut and NimbuzzOut as a competing paid service) in any Symbian or Java
environment. Nimbuzz made Skype available to BlackBerry users and Fring provided mobile

video calling over Skype as well as support for the Android platform. Skype disabled Fring users
from accessing Skype in July 2010.[70] Nimbuzz discontinued support on request of Skype in
October 2010.[71]
Before and during the Microsoft acquisition, Skype withdrew licensing from several third parties
producing software and hardware compatible with Skype. The Skype for Asterisk product from
Digium was withdrawn as "no longer available for sale".[72] The Senao SN358+ long-range (10
15 km) cordless phone were discontinued due to loss of licenses to participate in the Skype
network as peers. In combination these two products made it possible to create roaming cordless
mesh networks with robust handoff

4.7 Twitter:

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and
read "tweets", which are text messages limited to 140 characters. Registered users can read and
post tweets but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website
interface, SMS, or mobile device app.[10] Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has offices in
New York City, Boston, and San Antonio.
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July 2006, the site was launched. The
service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered users in 2012, who
posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day.[11]
[12][13]
Twitter is now one of the ten most visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of
the Internet."[7][14]

History:
Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the
podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University,
introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.[15]
[16]
The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed
to Noah Glass,[17] inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes.
The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for
"ease of use and memorability."[18] Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey
published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my
twttr".[1] Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title:
...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of
inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was.[19]
The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an
internal service for Odeo employees[20] and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15,
2006.[9]
In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo, formed
Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assetsincluding Odeo.com and
Twitter.comfrom the investors and shareholders.[21] Williams fired Glass, who was silent about
his part in Twitter's startup until 2011.[22] Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.[23]
Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview:
With Twitter, it wasn't clear what it was. They called it a social network, they called it
microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didn't replace anything. There was this path
of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is. Twitter actually
changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and
a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really
more of an information network than it is a social network.[24]
The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)
conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.[25]
"The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways,
exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of
conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned
the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it."[26]

Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter "absolutely
rul[ed]" SXSWi. Social software researcher danah boyd said Twitter "own[ed]" the conference.
[27]
Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you
in 140 characters or less. And we just did!" [28]
The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station
by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010.[29] By late November 2010, an average of
a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts.
NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA
facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the
outreach goals of NASA.
In August 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain from News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network
as president of revenue.[30]

Growth:
The company experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This
grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were
sending 50 million tweets per day.[31] By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000
registered applications.[32] As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day,
equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.[33] As of March 2011, that was
about 140 million tweets posted daily.[34] As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the
third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twentysecond.[35]

Jack Dorsey, a co-founder and the chairman of Twitter, in 2009

Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010
FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan

scored against Cameroon on June 14. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per
second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17,[36]
and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users
published 3,283 tweets per second.[37] The record was set again during the 2011 FIFA Women's
World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were
published.[38] When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers
crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of
100,000 tweets per hour.[39] The current record as of January 1, 2013, was set by all citizens of
the Japan Standard Time Zone as the new year began, reaching a record of 33,388 tweets per
second (and hence beating the previous record of 25,088, also set by Japan after a television
screening of the movie "Castle In The Sky").[40]
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the
Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application,
now called "Twitter" and distributed free of charge, is the official Twitter client for the iPhone,
iPad and Mac.[41]
From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an
entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos
without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and
clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube and Flickr, and a complete
overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the
Twitter stream, while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top
of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the "New Twitter
experience" had been rolled out to all users.
On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage and phased out the "Old Twitter." [42] However,
a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in
use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20.[43][44]
On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design,
which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to
the Home tab, the Connect and Discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile
and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook.[45][46]
On February 21, 2012, it was announced that Twitter and Yandex agreed to a partnership.
Yandex, a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to Twitters real time
news feeds. Twitters director of business development explained that it is important to have
Twitter content where Twitter users go.[47]

On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday while also announcing that it has 140
million users and sees 340 million tweets per day. The number of users is up 40% from their
September 2011 number, which was said to have been at 100 million at the time.[48]
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of
working with automotive brands and advertising agencies.[49] Twitter also expanded its office in
Dublin.[50]
On June 5, 2012, a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to
showcase the slightly redesigned bird as the sole symbol of Twitter.[51]
On October 5, 2012, Twitter acquired a video clip company called Vine that launched in January
2013.[52][53] Twitter released Vine as a standalone app that allows users to create and share sixsecond looping video clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible
directly in users' Twitter feeds.[54] Due to an influx of inappropriate content, it is now rated 17+ in
Apple's app store.[55]
On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users.
Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011.[56]
On April 18, 2013, Twitter launched a music app called Twitter Music for the iPhone.[57]
On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr,[58] followed by the acquisition of MoPub on
September 9, 2013.[59]
As of September 2013, the company's data showed that 200 million users send over 400 million
tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices.[60]

4.8 Instagram:

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables
its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of
social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.[5] A distinctive feature
is that it confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in
contrast to the 16:9 aspect ratio now typically used by mobile device cameras. Users are also
able to record and share short videos lasting for up to 15 seconds.[6]
Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. The
service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012.[7][8]
Instagram is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play.[9] Support was originally
available for only the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; in April 2012, support was added for
Android camera phones. The service was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately
$1 billion in cash and stock.[10]

History
Instagram began development in San Francisco when Kevin Systrom and Brazilian Michel
"Mike" Krieger chose to focus their multi-featured HTML5 check-in project Burbn on mobile
photography.[11][12]
On March 5, 2010, Systrom closed a $500,000 seed funding round from Baseline Ventures and
Andreessen Horowitz while working on Burbn.[13] Josh Riedel joined the company as
Community Manager.[14] Shayne Sweeney joined in November 2010 as an engineer and Jessica
Zollman was hired as a Community Evangelist in August 2011.[15][16]
In January 2011, Instagram added hashtags to help users discover both photographs and each
other.[17] Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging
generic words like "photo" in order to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded
Instagrammers.[18] In September, version 2.0 went live in the App Store (iOS). It included new
and live filters, instant tilt shift, high resolution photographs, optional borders, one click rotation
and an updated icon.[19]
On February 2, 2011, it was announced that Instagram had raised $7 million in Series A funding
from a variety of investors, including Benchmark Capital, Jack Dorsey, Chris Sacca (through
Capital fund), and Adam D'Angelo.[20] The deal valued Instagram at around $25 million.[21]
On April 3, 2012, Instagram for Android phones running the 2.2 Froyo version of the OS was
released,[22] and it was downloaded more than one million times in less than one day.[23] That
same week, Instagram raised $50 million from venture capitalists for a share of the company; the
process valued Instagram at $500 million.[21] In the next three months Instagram was rated more
than one million times on Google Play[24] and was the fifth app ever to reach one million ratings
on Google Playas of April 2013, it had been rated nearly four million times.
In its largest acquisition deal to date, Facebook made an offer to purchase Instagram (with its 13
employees) for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock in April 2012, [10] with plans to keep
the service independently managed.[25] Britain's Office of Fair Trading approved the deal on
August 14, 2012,[26] and on August 22, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission in the United States
closed its investigation, allowing the deal to proceed.[27][28] On September 6, 2012, the deal
between Instagram and Facebook officially closed.[29]
On April 12, 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock.
[30][31]
The deal, which was made just before Facebook was scheduled to go public, cost Facebook
about a quarter of the cash-on-hand they had as of the end of 2011. The deal was for a company
characterized as having "lots of buzz but no business model", and the price was contrasted with
the $35 million Yahoo! paid for Flickr in 2005,[25] a website which has since become among the
50 most popular in the world.[32] Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook was "committed to

building and growing Instagram independently", in contrast to its common practice of, as
CNNMoney.com put it, buying "hot startups, kill[ing] their products, and redeploy[ing] their
staff on other projects."[25] According to multiple reports, the deal netted Instagram CEO Kevin
Systrom $400 million based on his ownership stake in the business.[33]
The exact purchase price was $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of stock.[34]
On December 17, 2012, Instagram updated its Terms of Service, granting itself the right to sell
users' photos to third parties without notification or compensation starting on January 16, 2013.
[35][36][37][38][39][40]
The criticism from privacy advocates, consumers, National Geographic[41] and
celebrities like Kim Kardashian[42] prompted Instagram to issue a statement retracting the
controversial terms; regardless, the issue caused Instagram to lose a portion of its user-base as
former users switched to other Instagram-like services. These services included Pheed, a multimedia social sharing platform launched in November, that gained more new users than any other
app in the United States the week that Instagram changed their terms of service. [43] Another
service that gained many new users post-announcement was Yahoo!'s Flickr[44][45][46] which Flickr
released as the new mobile app for iOS with built-in vintage filters to rival Instagram prior to the
changes of terms and conditions by Instagram. [47][48][49] Instagram is currently working on
developing new language to replace the disputed terms of use.[50]
In January 2013, it was confirmed that Instagram has asked for photo IDs to verify identities due
to unspecified violations.[51]
Following the appointment of Emily White to the position of chief operating officer in March
2013, White stated in September 2013 that the company should be ready to begin selling
advertising by September 2014 as a way to generate business from a popular entity that had not
yet created profit for its parent company.[52] For users, Instagram remains committed to free and
open access to their smart-phone app.[53]

Popularity
Users
By December 2010, Instagram had 1 million registered users.[54] In June 2011 Instagram
announced it had 5 million users[55] and it passed 10 million in September of the same year.[56] In
April 2012, it was announced that over 30 million accounts were set up on Instagram.[57]
Instagram announced that 100 million photographs had been uploaded to its service as of July
2011. This total reached 150 million in August 2011.[58][59] By May 2012[60] 58 photographs were

being uploaded and a new user was being gained each second. The total number of photographs
uploaded had exceeded one billion.
There are basic Terms of Use that Instagram users must follow, including an age requirement of
13 years or older, restrictions against posting violent, nude, partially nude, or sexually suggestive
photographs and responsibility for one's account and all activity conducted with it.[61]
There are also proprietary rights in content on Instagram. Instagram does not claim any
ownership rights in the text, files, images, photographs, video, sounds, musical works, works of
authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, content) that users post on or
through the Instagram Services.[61]
On August 9, 2012, English musician Ellie Goulding came out with a new music video for her
song "Anything Could Happen". The video only contained fan submitted Instagram photographs
that used various Instagram filters to represent words or lyrics from the song [62] and over 1200
different photographs were submitted.
On February 27, 2013, Instagram announced 100 million active users, only two-and-a-half years
after the launch of the app.[63] As of September 9, 2013, the company has announced a total of
more than 150 million monthly active users.[52]
Many celebrities have profiles on Instagram, sharing photos and videos of their personal and
professional lives with fans. Some celebrities deleted their accounts in response to Instagram's
proposed change to its Terms of Service, which would have allowed the photo-sharing app to sell
images to advertisers without compensation to users.[64]
Instagram was listed among Time's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013.[65]

4.9 Dropbox:

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco,
California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. Dropbox allows
users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so
that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of which computer is
used to view it. Files placed in this folder also are accessible through a website and mobile phone
applications.
Dropbox, Inc., was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, as a Y Combinator
startup company.[4]
Dropbox provides client software for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS,
BlackBerry OS and web browsers, as well as unofficial ports to Symbian, Windows Phone, and
MeeGo.

History:
According to Dropbox, founder Drew Houston conceived the idea after repeatedly forgetting his
USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT. He says that existing services at the time
"suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or just made me think too much". He
began making something for his personal use, but then realized that it could benefit others with
the same problems.[5] Houston founded Dropbox, Inc. in June 2007, and shortly thereafter
secured seed funding from Y Combinator.[4] Dropbox officially launched at 2008's
TechCrunch50, an annual technology conference.[6]
Due to trademark disputes between Proxy, Inc. and Evenflow (Dropbox's parent company),
Dropbox's official domain name was "getdropbox.com" until October 2009, when they acquired
their current domain, "dropbox.com".[6]
OPSWAT reported in their December 2011 market share report that Dropbox held 14.14% of the
worldwide backup client market, based on number of installations.[7]
In May 2011, Dropbox struck deals with Japanese mobile service providers Softbank and Sony
Ericsson. As per the terms of the deal Dropbox will come preloaded on their mobile telephones.[8]
In May 2010, Dropbox users in China were unable to access Dropbox. Later, Dropbox confirmed
they had been blocked by the Chinese government. Due to the fact that the censorship usually
focuses on popular services only, many considered this evidence of Dropbox's rapidly rising
popularity and international user base.[9][10][11][12][13] As of January 2013, the website is still blocked
in China, but locally installed applications are usable with some ISPs.[citation needed]
As of October 2011, Dropbox had more than 50 million registered users.[14]
In April 2012, Dropbox announced a new feature allowing users to automatically upload
photographs or videos from camera, tablet, SD card, or smartphone. Users will be given up to 3
GB (initially 5 GB) extra space to accommodate the photographs and videos uploaded in this
fashion, but the space is permanently added to the user's allowance and is not restricted to
pictures. It is viewed as a move against Google's recently launched Google Drive and Microsoft's
SkyDrive.[15]
As of 26 September 2012, Facebook and Dropbox integrated to allow group users to share files
to Facebook Groups using Dropboxs cloud-based storage system. The feature allows users to
directly share inside Facebook's group pages without exiting the Facebook domain. This did not
replace the built in Facebook uploading feature, but added to it for any files that were already
uploaded to their Dropbox storage account.[16]

On November 12, 2012, Dropbox announced it had reached 100 million users.[17]
On December 19, 2012 Dropbox acquired the photo cloud storing giant Snapjoy, which allowed
users aggregate, archive and view all digital photographs taken from cameras, phones, or popular
photo apps and view them online, or via an app, in one location. Financial terms were not
released at the time of the acquisition.[18]
As of February 2013, Dropbox was responsible for 0.29% of all worldwide Internet bandwidth.
[19]

On March 15, 2013, Dropbox acquired the email management application for iOS Mailbox.[20][21]
[22]

On July 20, 2013 Dropbox acquired mobile coupon startup Endorse.[23]

Financials:
Dropbox has received a total venture capital funding of US$257.2 million from several investors,
including Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners.[citation needed]
In 2011, it was speculated that Dropbox's valuation was more than $1 billion.[24] TechCrunch,
VentureBeat, Business Insider, and Financial Post speculated that Dropbox's valuation could be
up to $5 to $10 billion.[25]
Dropbox's 2011 revenue was expected to be $240 million.[14]
Dropbox is based in San Francisco, and is funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and
Amidzad.[4] Starting in mid-2009, they began releasing new features gradually to help measure
customer interest, a Lean Startup technique.[26]
On April 3, 2012, Dropbox announced Bono and The Edge, two members of the Irish rock band
U2, were individual investors in the company.

Business model:
Dropbox uses a freemium business model, where users are offered a free account with a set
storage size and paid subscriptions for accounts with more capacity.[28]
The desktop client has no restriction on individual file size; files uploaded via the web site are
limited to no more than 300 MB per file.[29] To prevent free users from creating multiple linked

free accounts, Dropbox includes the content of shared folders when totaling the amount of space
used on the account.

Technology:
Both the Dropbox server and desktop client software are primarily written in Python.[31] The
desktop client uses GUI toolkits such as wxWidgets and Cocoa. Other notable Python libraries
include Twisted, ctypes, and pywin32. Dropbox ships and depends on the librsync binary-delta
library (which is written in C).
The Dropbox client enables users to drop any file into a designated folder that is then
synchronized with Dropbox's Internet service and to any other of the user's computers and
devices with the Dropbox client.[32] Users may also upload files manually through a web browser.
[33]

Dropbox client supports synchronization and sharing along with personal storage. It supports
revision history, so files deleted from the Dropbox folder may be recovered from any of the
synced computers.[34][35] Dropbox supports multi-user version control, enabling several users to
edit and re-post files without overwriting versions.[citation needed] The version history is by default
kept for 30 days, with an unlimited version called "Pack-Rat" available for purchase.[36]
The version history is paired with the use of delta encoding technology. When a file in a user's
Dropbox folder is changed, Dropbox only uploads the pieces of the file that are changed when
synchronizing, when possible.[37]
Dropbox uses Amazon's S3 storage system to store the files;[38] though Houston has stated that
Dropbox may switch to a different storage provider at some point in the future.[39] It also uses
SSL transfers for synchronization and stores the data via AES-256 encryption,[40] though this is
done with Dropbox's own encryption keys, and not the users'.[41]
Dropbox also provides a technology called LAN sync,[42] which allows computers on a local area
network to securely download files locally from each other instead of always hitting the central
servers. LANSync was developed by Dropbox Engineer Paul Bohm.[43]

4.10 Line:

Line (usually stylized in all-caps as LINE; (Japanese: Hepburn: rain?)) is a Japanese

proprietary application for instant messaging on smartphones and PCs. Line users exchange text
messages, graphics, video and audio media, make free VoIP calls, and hold free audio or video
conferences. Line, launched in Japan in 2011, reached 100 million users within eighteen months
and 200 million users only six months later.[1]
Line was originally developed as a mobile application for Android and iOS smartphones. The
service has since expanded to BlackBerry (August 2012),[2] Nokia Asha (Asia and Oceania,
March 2013),[3][4] and Windows Phone (July 2013).[5] The application also exists in versions for
laptop and desktop computers using the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS platforms.
Line began in 2011 as the brainchild of engineers at NHN Japan, the Japanese arm of Naver
Corporation (formerly NHN) based in South Korea. Today the popular messaging service is
operated by Line Corporation, a spinoff company headquartered in Japan.[6]

Development:
Line began as a response to disaster. Japan's devastating Thoku earthquake in March 2011
damaged telecommunications infrastructure nationwide, obliging employees at NHN Japan, a
unit of Korea's NHN Corp, to rely on Internet-based resources to communicate. The company's
engineers developed Line to facilitate this. NHN Japan released Line for public use in June 2011.
[7]

The application proved hugely popular and by late October Line experienced an unexpected
server overload.[8] After concluding that the scalability process needed to be improved, NHN
Japan chose to adopt HBase as the primary storage for user profiles, contacts, and groups.[9]
Within eighteen months of its release Line reached 100 million users; six months later it reached
200 million.[1][6][7]
On July 3, 2012, NHN Japan announced the new Line features "Home" and "Timeline." The
features allowed users to share recent personal developments to a community of contacts in realtime, similar to the status reports in social networking services.[10]
On 6 February 2013 the success of Line led NHN Japan to announce a new spinoff company
named Line Corporation. Line Corporation, based in Japan, continues to develop Internet
resources such as Line, the Naver Japan search portal, and the Livedoor ISP and blog platform.
Games, including those for the Line Game brand, remain under the auspices of Hangame Japan.
A new joint venture named Line Plus Corporation, also based in Japan, develops overseas
markets. At launch the majority of Line Plus shares were held by the newly created Line
Corporation (60%) with the remain shares (40%) held by its Korean parent NHN Corp.[6]\

Market share:
Line began in summer 2011 as a communication system for NHN Japan employees, then saw
explosive growth when released to the public in June of that year. By January 18, 2013 Line had
been downloaded 100 million times worldwide.[11] The number expanded to 140 million by early
July 2013 and to 200 million by July 21.[12] At that milestone Japan claimed 45 million users,
Taiwan and Thailand 15 million each, and Spain and Indonesia 10 million each.[13] NHN
Company representatives promptly announced plans to reach 300 million by further expansion in
East Asia, Spain, and Chile.[14]

4.11 Wechat:

WeChat (Chinese: ; pinyin: Wixn; literally "micro message") is a mobile text and voice
messaging communication service developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011.
[7]
The app is available on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian
platforms. Languages supported include traditional/simplified Chinese, English, Indonesian,
Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Malay, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi
and Russian. WeChat is supported on Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, and 4G data networks.
WeChat provides multimedia communication with text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging,
broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, photo/video sharing, location sharing, and contact
information exchange. WeChat supports social networking[8] via shared streaming content feeds
and location-based social plug-ins ("Shake", "Look Around", and "Drift Bottle") to chat with and
connect with local and international WeChat users.[9]
Photos can be taken and embellished with artistic filters, captions, and placed into a personal
photo journal for sharing with other users. User data is protected via an on-demand contact list
backup and retrieval to/from the cloud. WeChat claims to provide a social networking platform
that emphasizes user privacy and fast response performance.[citation needed]
Registration is completed through Facebook Connect, mobile phone SMS/VM, or Tencent QQ.
The application was initially launched as Weixin in China in January 2011, with international

language support in October 2011, and re-branded as WeChat in April 2012. It is being promoted
in India via gaming site Ibibo, in which Tencent holds a stake.[10]
The app is available in the App Store for iTunes, Google Play Store for Android, BlackBerry App
World and Marketplace for Windows Phone.

History:
WeChat began as a project at Tencent Guangzhou Research and Project center in October 2010.
[11]
The original name of the app, "Weixin", was devised by Ma Huateng, Tencent CEO.[12]
In May 2011, WeChat had 4-5 million users,[12] and by the end of 2011, it had 50 million users.[13]
WeChat had more than 100 million users by March 2012.[13]
In April 2012, Weixin re-branded as WeChat for the international market.[14]
In September 2012, WeChat had more than 200 million users according to Tencent CEO, Ma
Huateng.[15] As of January 2013, it had 300 million.[16][17] Today WeChat is the first mobile phone
text and voice messaging communication application in the world by users and downloads in the
world.[citation needed] It has influence in Mainland China, HK, Taiwan, South-East Asia, and Chinese
People areas around the world.[citation needed]
In April 2013, rumors online speculated that WeChat will charge a fee for the app. A poll showed
that 90% of users strongly oppose this move.[18] WeChat currently is free to download and use.
In May 2013, it was revealed that Rainie Yang would be a product endorser for WeChat.[19] To
promote the app in India, WeChat roped in Bollywood actors Varun Dhawan and Parineeti
Chopra as brand ambassadors.[20]
In July 2013, Tencent announced WeChat has 70 million users outside China[21] and Lionel Messi
became the latest product ambassador of WeChat.[22]
In July 2013, Tencent announced to test Games within WeChat.[23]
On 5 July 2013, Tencent Wechat 5.0 for iOS. The new version has some new features:
1. Download loads of new animated stickers from the Sticker Shop (every stickers $0.99)
2. Save favorite content clippings from chats or Moments
3. Add friends nearby easily with the new Hold Together function

4. Swipe to the right to return from a chat. Double tap the Chats tab to cycle through unread
chats
5. Scan bar code, cover of the book or album, street view and word
6. Play games with your friends in Game Center (preinstalled airplane war)
7. Bind credit/debit cards and mobile paying
8. Input by voice
9. Public Accounts divided two categories: Service (in your chat list) and Official Accounts
(in independent list)
10. Double-tab the text to show full text
According to GlobalWebIndex, WeChat set in fifth place of most used smartphone app
worldwide and in August 2013 WeChat claimed set a 100 million registered international users
which it is achieved only in 3 months from 50 million registered international users outside of
300 million registered China's users.[26]

Global censorship:
Starting January 9 of 2013 reports arose that Chinese language searches outside of China were
being keyword filtered and then blocked. This occurred both to China from foreign countries and
from foreign countries to other foreign countries. WeChat already censors its communications
within China. In this new international example of blocking that showed up on a users phone
screen was The message you sent contains restricted words. Please check it again.
The Chinese characters stand for a Guangzhou China based paper called Southern Weekly or
alternatively Southern Weekend. The next day Tencent released a statement addressing the issue
saying A small number of WeChat international users were not able to send certain messages
due to a technical glitch this Thursday. Immediate actions have been taken to rectify it. We
apologize for any inconvenience it has caused to our users. We will continue to improve the
product features and technological support to provide better user experience. WeChat has plans
to build two different platforms to avoid this problem in the future; one for Chinese mainlanders
and one for the rest of the world. The problem exists because WeChat's servers are currently all
located in China and thus subject to its censorship rules. [27] [28][29]