The initial pains of building another network, from scratch, AND having to engage were definitely enough to keep me at bay- at least for a few hours.  I finally gave in and started the initial set up, which took about 15 minutes. As the weekend went by, I couldn’t help but check in on my growing circles, attempt to invite more of my friends (which I haven’t been successful with since that first hour) and after many tries, got my Instagram feed to publish. What’s the most interesting thing about Google + for me? Simply all the buzz around this shiny, new toy. I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

The world is definitely buzzing with Google+. Chris Brogan’s recent article provides an in depth look at how powerful, or weak this new toy really is, or has the potential to be.  What are your musings so far? We’d love to hear from you!

The key fnding is that Netflix is now the undisputed king of the Internet in North America constituting 29.7% of peak downstream traffic – up from 21% last fall.

In addition, real-time entertainment applications consume 49.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 29.5% in 2009 – a 60% increase. Sandvine forecasts that the Real-Time Entertainment category will represent 55-60% of peak aggregate traffic by the end of 2011.

Other findings from around the world:

• In Latin America, Social Networking (overwhelmingly Facebook) is a bigger source of traffic than YouTube, representing almost 14% of network traffic . Real-Time Entertainment represents 27.5% of peak aggregate traffic, still the largest contributor of traffic in that region.

• In Europe, Real-Time Entertainment continues a steady climb, rising to 33.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 31.9% last fall. BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol, is the largest single component of both upstream (59.7%) and downstream (21.6%) Internet traffic during peak periods. In the UK, BBC’s iPlayer is 6.6% of peak downstream traffic, reflecting the demand for localized content in many markets.

• Overall, individual subscribers in Europe consume twice the amount of data as North Americans.

Check out the full report at – http://www.sandvine.com/news/global_broadband_trends.asp

Challenge: Zenzi was tasked to create awareness and recognition for Ignify’s e-commerce platform in the small to medium enterprise space. Zenzi formulated a strategy to differentiate and leverage Ignify’s unique features such as heuristic trending and advanced security precautions that are common in the large enterprise space – but not affordable to the smaller enterprises.

Solution: Zenzi called on its trusted relationships with technology and business media and analysts to establish Ignify as a thought leader in e-commerce solutions for the SME market and creatively pitched story ideas to editors and analysts. We positioned Ignify as an excellent business model for feature stories and company profiles as well as an expert source to comment on the validity of current trends. By developing case studies that showed the value and benefits of Ignify’s solutions, Zenzi was able to penetrate an incredibly crowed media space and garner accolades for Ignify from analysts and top-tier media alike.

Results: Sandeep Walia, President of Ignify is now considered an authority in e-commerce order placement and security and fraud prevention, appearing in top national business publications such as Forbes and BusinessWeek. They have had frequent appearances in top-tier trade publications including CRN, Computerworld, eWeek, Internet Retailer, RIS News, E-Commerce Times and others. As a result of a well-rounded PR campaign, Ignify has been able to leverage media recognition creating a name in the industry for e-commerce while expanding into areas such as ERP, Business Intelligence and CRM. The media attention has helped foster attention from Microsoft. Today, Ignify is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has expanded into the large enterprise market, serving customers including Black & Decker, Microsoft, Aerosoles and Giant Bikes among others.

According to Walia, “Zenzi has been a strong element of Ignify’s success story. The amount of positive coverage we have received in two years has been more than what we expected. We couldn’t have made the ranking of the 178th fastest growing business in America without their help.”