Every year since1995, Mary Meeker issues a comprehensive, exhaustive and, definitive internet and social media trends report. This Report underscores the most important statistics and technology trends on the internet. It focuses on internet usage, advertising trends, and other tech trends. Almost everyone in the tech and social media areas pays particular attention to Meeker’s findings and statistics. This year’s Report came out in June. Meeker, left Kleiner Perkins last fall after eight years at the VC firm and is now with Bond Cap LLC.
I recently listened to the Kennedy-Mighell podcast in which they discussed the Report and its findings, which caused me to wade through the 334 slides that compose Meeker’s observations and analysis. I found key metrics that should interest lawyers and particularly trial lawyers.
Whether you are a technology zealot or not, it is essential to know and understand the trends that demonstrate how people are and how they expect to be persuaded.
What’s Important to Lawyers? Why Should We Care?
There’s a lot of stuff in the Report which, while interesting, is not particularly relevant to lawyers. But lawyers are in the communication and persuasion business. Whether you are a technology zealot or not, it is essential to know and understand the trends that demonstrate how people are and how they expect to be persuaded.
And there were some very relevant findings in the Report relating to this point:
There is an explosion of online learning both in general and in educational institutions. People frankly expect to learn through the tools they experience online. Just one example: YouTube reports 4.5 billion annual hours are spent by people watching “how-to” videos. This is how we are learning There are 3.8 current worldwide internet users, which is more than half the world’s population. More
