Posted 11/19/09 at 04:27:38 PM by Bart Salisbury

RapLeaf, a self-proclaimed “leader in automated search for people information on the social web,” has released the second part of its three-part study about the demographic characteristics of webmail users. In this part they consider the social media profiles and friend counts of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo users. What they find, unfortunately, doesn’t really reveal all that much about who does what, social networking-wise, based on their webmail ident.

It’s possible to conclude from the study that Gmail users have, on average, more online friends than other webmail users. And it’s possible to say that Hotmail users have more social media memberships then their online counterparts. But the differences are relatively slight; probably aren’t statistically significant; and quite likely within the realm of measurement error.

For example, guess how many friends the average Gmail user has.

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Posted 11/16/09 at 04:04:28 PM by Bart Salisbury

There’s good news and bad news for Rupert Murdoch in a study recently published by the Boston Consulting Group. People are willing to pay for online content, supporting Murdoch’s insistence it shouldn’t be given away free. But, the study reveals, they aren’t inclined to pay a whole lot for that content, possibly leaving Murdoch no better off then where he is right now.

The study included the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Forty-eight percent of Americans, classified as regular Internet users, said they were willing to pay for online content. This, along with Great Britain’s Internet users, was the lowest the study recorded. Most other countries reported about 60 percent of users would be willing to pay.

But, on average, Americans said that online news was worth only $3 a month, again a bottom figure (which tied with Australia). Italian Internet users were the most generous, on average saying they’d pay $7 for such a service.

The lack of willingness to pay, and the relative tight-fistedness of Americans is a reflection of content availability, says John Rose, a senor partner in the Boston Consulting Group. According to Rose: “Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content. There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else.” According to Rose, a banding together of major news providers in the United States wouldn’t help because of the availability of other free sources on the Internet users can access.

The study concludes that newspapers which charge for online content probably won’t see a big increase in revenues, but, because online content is cheaper to provide, profits should increase. Maybe that will be enough to make Murdoch happy.

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Posted 11/16/09 at 02:15:37 PM by Paul Lilly

It might sound hard to believe for those of us who attended grade school back before broadband, cell phones, and the social networking phenomenon, but according to a new report, as many as 340,000 kids and teens are regular victims of cyberbullying, a term that didn't even exist not that long ago.

"We know the consequences of online bullying are just as traumatic as those of face-to-face bullying," said Emma-Jane Cross,  chief executive of the charity Beatbullying. "We want all social networking sites, Internet service providers, and mobile phone companies to take measures to identify and remove offensive material."

Beatbully's survey pinged 2,094 respondents between the ages of 11 and 18, nearly two-thirds of which said they had been witness to some form of online bullying. About half of them said they know of people setting up fake profiles, and 20 percent said they had seen hate groups set up with the sole intention of bullying someone.

This raises the question of whether social networking sites are doing enough. Over half of the those who claim to have been bullied said the incident took place on MSN, now renamed Windows Live Messenger. But Microsoft contends that "as with any communication service, these online communication tools are misused by a tiny minority."

In other news, "O'Doyle rules!"

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Posted 11/08/09 at 02:29:09 PM by Justin Kerr

A recent ComScore survey on Internet usage is reporting that Microsoft might not be leading the way in search, but in terms of total hours spend online, it has a commanding lead over its competition. The survey, which measured a whopping 27 billion hours of Internet usage by Web users aged 15 or older is an increase of nearly 24% over the year prior, and of those studied, over 3.9 billion hours were spent using Microsoft services. Google came in a not so close second place with around 2.5 billion hours.

The big winner in the Microsoft portfolio might surprise you however, with about 70 percent of the usage being attributed to Windows Live Messenger. Of course, this number measures time spent “online” and not just those “actively engaged” with the service, but it certainly shows the popularity of Microsoft’s instant messenger. Google’s numbers are pretty typical explain analysts, since they make it their business using search to try and get you “in and out” as quickly as possible. The most successful Google property continues to be YouTube with nearly 1.2 billion hours logged watching video.

Yahoo placed third with 1.7 billion hours, and Facebook commanded a respectable fourth place with 1.4 billion hours. The individual rankings may have been a bit of a shock, but the trend showing “Internet usage on the rise” certainly isn’t. Did any of these results surprise you? Let us know what you think.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 01:35:31 PM by Paul Lilly

At nearly 10 percent, the unemployment rate is the highest it's been in 26 years, or a little over a quarter of a century. Nevertheless, SMBs are looking to the coming year with optimism and planning to hire rather than lay off more workers, suggests a new study.

Intuit Payroll pinged over 1,000 SMB owners and found that 44 percent have plans to hire in the next year, and 60 percent are expecting their businesses to grow. But there's also a bit of a quandary SMBs find themselves in.

Nearly 90 percent of the survey participants indicated health insurance benefits as key to attracting and retaining good employees, but 58 percent don't offer healthcare benefits, with nearly half saying they simply can't afford it.

"There's a wideing gap of expectations," said Nora Denzel, senior vice president of Intuit's Employee Management Solutions Division. "On one hand, we as a society assume that health and retirement benefits are part of every employee's compensation package. And yet even as these small businesses gear up to hire, according to our results, small businesses are leery about what those benefits will cost."

Intuit also found that only 1 percent of respondents reported receiving federal stimulus money, even though 74 percent admit that they are probably not taking advantage of all the benefits made available to them under the federal economic stimulus plan.

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Posted 09/06/09 at 04:14:59 PM by Justin Kerr

Avid bookworms will swear by their Kindles, but according to a new study released on Wednesday, e-readers will likely never go main stream as long as the price hovers around the current $199-$489 range. "The price points for how most consumers value e-readers is shockingly low -- for most segments, between $50 and $99," Rotman Epps said. "To reach the largest market possible, the prices will need to come way down." Currently the biggest obstacle to hitting the $50 price is the e-ink display itself which costs roughly $60 all on its own. Device makers can be expected to "look for alternative providers of displays if E Ink can't bring its prices down fast enough," Rotman Epps said.

Everything comes down in price over time, but to see the kind of growth that most companies expect, analysts expect e-reader manufactures to explore subsidy based business models, partnering with either network providers, or newspapers to help offset the cost of the device. Rotman Epps said its "a reasonable assumption" that network operators and newspapers will only subsidize e-readers if they can recover their costs by enticing consumers to sign up for long-term data plans that command monthly fees. "

The survey estimated that approximately two million e-readers will be sold in 2009 at current prices, bringing the total install base up to about three million by the end of the year. Forrester also estimates that this only represents about 12 percent of the maximum addressable market at the $199 price point.

What would you pay?

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Posted 08/21/09 at 03:47:34 PM by Paul Lilly

As the back to school shopping season kicks into high gear, look for OEMs to push PCs with product bundles and all kinds of enticing offers. For Apple, that might mean once again bundling an iPod with the purchase of a new Mac or MacBook, but that might not be enough. According to a new study by consumer electronics site Retrovo, college-bound students are less willing than ever to pay the so-called "Apple Tax" by purchasing a pricier Mac.

"While Apple has done well historically in the education market, 2009 marks the dawn of the netbook," says Vipin Jain, Retrevo CEO. "Students told us they wanted longer battery life, smaller size, and a lighter laptop. 58 percent of them plan on spending less than $750. Only 18 percent have a budget over $1,000."

It also isn't helping Apple's cause that "retailers are working overtime to attract students," such as Wal-Mart expanding its laptop selection by 40 percent and partnering with HP to make a sub-$300 Compaq Presario.

But take the survey with a grain of salt. While respondents were selected from a random sampling of Retrevo's 4 million monthly visitors, the sample size was only 300.

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Posted 08/19/09 at 09:26:04 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Many financial savants grabbed their crystal balls and went into hiding when the economy went into freefall. Now that there are signs of recovery, they are again gazing into their crystal balls with renewed hope. According to many of them, including IMF’s chief economist Olivier Blanchard, the recession is behind us.

Tech honchos now believe that the IT industry would lead the recovery. According to a survey conducted by KPMG, two thirds of the 130 CEOs that were surveyed believe the IT industry would recover quicker than the US economy. Furthermore, a vast majority of CEOs feel 2010 would bring glad tidings for their industry. One can expect lesser job cuts in the near future as more than two thirds of tech bosses are not too keen on cost cutting.

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