Win a cash prize in our competition!

Technology Bloggers has three lots of cash to give away, totalling the sum of $150 USD!

To be in with a chance to win one of our three $50 prizes (or an equivalent amount in your currency) enter our competition which has just 7 days left.

It is really easy to enter, as we are using a Rafflecopter widget, so you can do as many or few of the easy to achieve tasks we have set as you like. The more options you do, the better your chances!

To enter you must give us an email address so we can let you know if you win, other than that, there are no requirements. Log in with either your name and email, or Facebook and away you go!

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Win $50 thanks to Technology Bloggers

Here are the terms and conditions of the giveaway:

This giveaway is open globally.

Anyone may enter the giveaway, except Christopher Roberts, Alan Tay and Olawale Daniel.

You will need a PayPal address should you win, so that we can transfer your winnings. PayPal is the only method that can be used to receive winning funds.

The competition ends at 12:01am on Saturday the 11th of August 2012 EST (GMT-4). Winners will be emailed shortly after the competition ends, and will have 5 days (120 hours) to respond and claim their winnings.

Please note Technology Bloggers prize may be paid in an equivalent GBP amount as decided by Christopher Roberts.

Winners will be chosen randomly using Rafflecopter’s random winner selector.

As the prize will be paid via PayPal it will be easy for the winner to converted it into whatever currency they like.

Technology Bloggers will announce the winners within a week of the competition ending, so stay tuned for more information.

Good luck to all entrants 🙂

Win $150 thanks to Technology Bloggers 3 blog competition!

Today marks the launch of Technology Bloggers second ever competition, with a total prize fund of $150 USD PayPal cash!

Win one of 3 $50 prizes in our $150 giveaway!Technology Bloggers has teamed up with two other blogs to provide 3 $50 USD prizes in a $150 joint blog giveaway!

You can enter for your chance to win one of our $50 prizes, and it couldn’t be easier!

For many of us at the moment, times are hard. The global economy is currently trying to recover from an economic downturn, meaning in many countries unemployment high and inflation is eroding the purchasing power of your money.

Given the above, what reason is there for you not to enter our three blog giveaway? Thanks to our competition, you and two other people could soon be $50/£32/€40 better off!

Enough talk from me, scroll down to start entering the competition!

Remember, the more options you enter, the greater the chance you have of winning!

Please note: Winners will have all their entries verified. Should you win and claim to have done something, but have not, you will be disqualified, and another winner will be randomly chosen.

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Don’t forget to look up ↑ and check the terms and conditions!

Come back tomorrow to gain more entries!

The giveaway is open world wide, and will end at 12:01am on Saturday the 11th of August 2012 EST (GMT-4).

Winners will be emailed shortly after the competition ends, and will have 5 days (120 hours) to respond and claim their winnings.

Good luck everyone! 🙂

Is there really that much diversity on the internet?

The internet is big right? Okay it is massive. With that massiveness one naturally associates extreme diversity. Don’t get me wrong, across the entire internet, there is amazing variation, with billions of people adding their spin to the net.

What I am going to investigate in this post though is how diverse the ‘main’ internet is. What I mean by that is the internet that we use every day. How diverse is the most regularly used/visited content? Is there really as much choice as we think, or is the majority of the internet dominated by a few firms?


In order to go about this research I am going to use Alexa, who gather statistics on websites traffic. For most sites, the data isn’t that accurate, however for really busy sites, the numbers are so great, the reliability of the data is much higher, hence why I can use it.

Alexa's Logo

Google

According to Alexa, Google.com is the most visited site on the web. How could it not be? Alexa estimates that 50% of all internet users visited Google.com in the last three months. Second on the list for most visited sites is Facebook, which is trailing with just 45% of internet users visiting the site.

Remember however that is just Google.com, Google has a massive monopoly over the internet. In the 100 most visited sites on the web, 18 of the sites are owned by Google – 16 localised sites, Google.com and GoogleUserContent.com (the site you see when there is an error finding/displaying a page).

Google undoubtedly has reduced diversity on the internet, having such a monopoly on the sites we all visit. The thing is, it isn’t just 18 sites. Google also owns YouTube and (the third most visited site on the net) Blogspot which is ranked 10th, Blogger at 47 (Blogger and Blogspot are now one) and Blogspot.in (India) ranked 73. That means 21 of the most visited sites on the net belong to Google, meaning it owns more than one fifth of the ‘main’ internet.

Googlite Logo

Google’s dominance on the web suggests that a lot of us are Googlites!

Can you call the internet diverse, when in the top one hundred sites, one firm owns more than a fifth of all sites? Maybe, what does the rest of the field look like?

Microsoft

Unsurprisingly, the company that is arguable Google’s main rival is in second place. Yahoo and Microsoft are currently in a ‘Search Alliance’ therefore restricting competition, so I am going to count them in the list of sites that Microsoft owns/influences. Here is the list of sites that Microsoft owns/influences which are top 100 websites:

  • Yahoo.com – Ranked 3rd
  • Live.com – Ranked 7th
  • Yahoo.co.jp – Ranked 16th
  • MSN.com – Ranked 17th
  • Bing.com – Ranked 29th
  • Microsoft.com – Ranked 30th – ironic how it is lower many of the other sites it owns!
  • Flickr.com – Ranked 53rd and Yahoo owned

Therefore Microsoft own/influence 7 of the top 100 sites. Add that to Google’s 21, and 28 of the top sites on the net are owned by two firms. More than a quarter.

I am starting to think the ‘main’ internet is not as diverse as one may first assume.

Amazon

Next on the list of internet giants comes Amazon. Amazon.com is ranked 10th, whilst Amazon Germany (Amazon.de) is ranked 91st and Amazon Japan (Amazon.co.jp) is 95th. Amazon also owns the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) which is the 50th most visited site. Amazon owns 4 of the top 100 sites.

Amazon's Logo32 sites gone.

Alibaba Group

The Alibaba Group is a privately owned Chinese business, which owns Alibaba.com, Tmall (tmall.com), Taobao (Taobao.com) and Sogou.com. The group therefore account for four of the sites that make up what I am calling the ‘main internet’.

36 sites taken by just 4 companies. How diverse is our internet?

eBay

Next we come to eBay.com which sits 23rd on the list of top 100 sites. eBay International AG (ebay.de) is in 80th place, followed by eBay UK (ebay.co.uk) in 86th. eBay also owns PayPal (paypal.com) which is ranked 46th.

eBay steals another 4 sites, leaving just 60 of our hundred left, and so far only 5 firms are involved.

Time Warner

CNN (cnn.com) AOL (aol.co.uk) and The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) are all sites owned by Time Warner. Time Warner is the sixth business involved now, leaving just 57 sites.

WordPress

The blogging platform WordPress (wordpress.com) is ranked 19th, and its brother, which allows users to host the content management system on their own site (wordpress.org) is ranked 83rd.

The Official WordPress LogoThere goes another two sites, meaning just 55 left, and only seven players so far.

Twitter

Ranked number 8 on the list is Twitter, however its URL shortener (t.co) is ranked 31st, meaning Twitter is also one of the big players in the top 100 sites, arguably with some form of domination over the internet.

Twitter's Logo47 sites of the top 100 accounted for and a mere eight organisations involved.

The Rest

Of the final 53 sites, 5 are adult only sites leaving 48 sites – although many of these either are a part of, or are a much bigger group.

Some familiar faces appear in the other 48 sites, Facebook (2nd), Wikipedia (6th), LinkedIn (11th), Apple (34th), Tumblr (37th),  Pinterest (47th), BBC Online (48th), Ask (54th), AVG (62nd),  Adobe Systems Incorporated (67th), About.com (81st), ESPN (82nd),  Go Daddy (85th), Netflix (89th),  The Pirate Bay (92nd) and CNET (97th).

Remove these very well known, well established, and massive brands, and we are left with 32 sites – less than a third. Of the remaining sites, around half are Chinese, showing the growing influence and usage of the internet in China.

My Verdict

In this post I have established that of the sites we visit most regularly, 47 are owned by just eight organisations. Does that really represent the freedom that we all believe the internet offers?

I was surprised by the type of content, and the limited number of different sites that there are in the global top 100. It would seem that the most visited sites consist of search engines, social media sites and news websites. Interesting statistics.

So, what is your verdict on how diverse the internet we use everyday is? I personally am not quite as convinced as I was before writing this article that the internet is quite as free and diverse as we all believe.

Please note these rankings are changing all the time, and all content was correct according to Alexa.com at the time of writing – the 6th of July 2012.