Each year in May, Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a well regarded Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley, releases the Internet Trends report.

In my world, web marketing and online tech generally, this is 'an event'. This year's presentation has been viewed 2.5 million times so far. That is an absolutely phenomenal number in B2B marketing terms. By way of context, the main Twitter accounts of the top 200 UK legal firms have around half a million followers.

Why does this work?

1. It is very well researched - it has a mass of information that you would struggle to get elsewhere. As Hero content it has a density of facts - not drip fed snippets;
2. She saw the importance of this massive, and extremely broad, market early (not very early mind) - so it is very long running and has credibility;
3. It is released on third party networks - by letting the content go free it can be seen widely. KPCB could easily have put this behind an email capture. Clearly they thought that there was more value for them in the outreach and reputation than a list of email addresses. It is difficult to argue that they made the wrong choice.

One thing, interestingly, that it is not, is well designed. It looks horrid but no-body cares. There's probably a lesson in that too.