The evolution of how we spend time online

The winners and losers are clear. Mary Meeker, the well known internet analyst from Morgan Stanley, once deified and then reviled through the early boom/bust period of the internet, is now a respected analyst of how we use the internet. She recently gave a very interesting speech at Web 2.0 on the current state of play. Silicon Alley Insider covers that talk and shares her Powerpoint preso here.

Confirming what we all knew, YouTube and Facebook, have devoured the time we used to spend at places like Yahoo and MSN (who?). NPR did an interesting piece revisiting and updating the socioeconomic/demographic gulf between those using MySpace and those using Facebook. As 19 year old Diego Luna puts it in the NPR piece; “I have friends who are white, they are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”

A couple of other interesting graphics from Meeker’s speech relate to just how enormous Apple’s iphone has been in the history of consumer devices. Again, this is for most confirmatory but overwhelming evidence, demonstrating Apple’s lead on the penetration rate of consumer electronics products and services that went before it, surprisingly including its own ipod. You’ll have to visist the link above as it appears they don’t like sharing their graphics, but its worth a click if you’re interested.

The Wall Street Journal’s James B. Stewart had a good piece yesterday on why Apple and Google may be the two best buy and hold stocks in the market. Buy and hold has come under much criticism of late but Stewart points out that these two entities and their preeminent positions in the premiere growth spaces of our consumer economy, such as it is, recommend them for a buy and hold strategy. Unfortunately, they’ve gotten very expensive and if you’re not in them you may want to wait for the next pullback…yes even APPL and GOOG have pullbacks. You can read Stewart’s piece here.