3 charts for you today:
Big tech's been in the headlines even more than usual this week. First Tesla became the newest member of the trillion dollar club. Then Microsoft and Google reported some truly staggering quarterly numbers. Then Amazon and Apple reported some less staggering numbers. Then Facebook changed its name (to Meta).
But there's one internet property that rarely hits the headlines, despite reaching billions of people around the world. It also doesn't directly monetize its reach or influence: Wikipedia.
Check the Wiki
The English version of the online encyclopedia gets a little over 7.5 billion hits a month — roughly one visit for every single person on the planet per month.
That's a number that could, even at a conservative estimate, be worth tens or even hundreds, of millions of dollars in advertising revenue every month. Fortunately for all of us, Wikipedia has remained not-for-profit, relying on donations to fund its operations.
Last year the Wikimedia Foundation (the foundation behind Wikipedia and the other "wiki" projects) reported income of $129m, 93% of which came from donations and contributions, which helped to fund its 550 strong workforce.
Core to Wikipedia's operation are the thousands of unpaid editors who spend their time creating and editing articles, citing other sources wherever possible to make the content as reliable as possible.
Some Wikipedia editors do it casually, editing or creating certain articles where they might have some expertise or interest — but there are also some super users.
We've charted the 100 most prolific editors on English language Wikipedia, who between them have made more than 63 million edits to the site.
Top dog is Steven Pruitt, who goes by the username Ser Amantio di Nicolao. He alone has made 4.45 million edits, creating more than 35,000 Wikipedia articles along the way. Handy person to have on your quiz team.
Manufacturers sold almost 204 billion cigarettes in the United States last year, a 0.4% increase on 2019, marking the first year that cigarette sales have grown in almost 20 years. That works out to roughly 620 cigarettes per person.
Kickin' the habit
America has been — slowly — kicking the smoking habit ever since the early 80s. In 1981 cigarette sales peaked at 636 billion, meaning that sales are down more than two-thirds since then.
That longer term trend is probably going to continue. Considering how extreme last year was on so many levels, it's not hard to come up with theories why 2020 might have seen more people reaching for a cigarette, as nicotine can offer a quick hit of dopamine.
1) Salad chain Sweetgreen filed to go public on Monday, but its actual financials reveal a slightly different picture to the one that the company has painted to multiple reporters over the last few years.
2) Thousands of people started reading up on the "metaverse" at the same time according to Wikipedia data after Facebook changed its name to Meta.
3) The National Weather Service now has 12.1 petaflops (that's the actual word) of supercomputing capacity, which should help it make more accurate weather forecasts.
4) US traffic fatalities rose 18% in the first half of 2021 according to new data released on Thursday.
5) You can help build the AI kitchen of the future! Invest in Miso Robotics today.*
6) Looking for a scary movie to watch this Halloween? Empire's put together a list of the 50 best ones.
*This is sponsored content.
