Message From Michael 
February 22, 2010
FUHGEDDABOUTIT
DIALING FOR DIGITAL DOLLARS
HEADLINES OF THE FUTURE:
BY THE NUMBERS
FOOTNOTE TO THE FUTURE
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FUHGEDDABOUTIT: That’s apparently the reaction of nearly a third (31.6%) of Americans to the Internet. According to a survey by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, done in conjunction with the Census Bureau, that’s the percentage of Americans who don’t use the Internet anywhere (inside or outside the home). Now that’s down significantly from the last time the survey was taken in 2007 when more than a third (37.6%) said they didn’t use the Internet anywhere. But, talk about a reality check on our digital delusions, that is for any and all Internet use, not just broadband Internet access which was the main focus of the survey. According to the survey done in October of last year, nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of Americans have broadband access. That is almost the same exact percentage (63%) that the Pew Internet and American Life survey found in June of last year. Two out of five people surveyed (40.8%) say they don’t have broadband access at home, mainly because they just “don’t need” it or aren’t interested (37.8% of that number); or that it’s too expensive (26.3%). As a piece of perspective, the
DIALING FOR DIGITAL DOLLARS: Americans spent $209.6 Billion buying things online last year, according to comScore’s digital year in review. But, that was actually a drop of two percent from the previous year and that’s after years of double digit growth. But (another but) the figure is expected to climb back up again in 2010. The report also notes that the number of videos viewed online more than doubled year to year, from an amazing 14.3 Billion videos in December of 2008 to an even more amazing 33.2 Billion videos in December of 2009. The number of unique viewers jumped from 150 Million in 2008 to 178 Million in 2009 while the number of videos those people watched, nearly doubled from the year before – from 95.7 videos in 2008 to 186.9 videos per viewer in 2009. Now, while the amount of time spent viewing videos increased significantly, it was still only 4.1 minutes per video compared to 3.2 minutes the year before. Video website Hulu did buck that trend, according to comScore, with its users averaging more than two hours of online video viewing a month. Of course, YouTube remains the giant of the online video business, accounting for more of the video viewing time (26%) than the next 25 video sites combined (22%). In the category though of half full or half empty, comScore notes that still meant the myriad of other video sites (the so-called ‘long tail’) accounted for more than half (52%) of all video viewing which speaks to increased fragmentation. And all of that (as pointed out in a previous message) speaks to increased mobile use. The comScore report notes that one in five mobile phone subscribers (21%) have unlimited data plans -- a significant increase from the year before (16%). Equally significant, the number of people with smart phones increased to one in six (16%) from just over one in ten (11%) the year before. Continuing the significant trend theme, comScore says four out of five Internet users visited a social networking site in December, representing 11% of all time spent online, “making it one of the most engaging activities on the Web.”
HEADLINES OF THE FUTURE: According to a series of scenarios of how media and consumers will intertwine in five years, those headlines could range from a warning about ‘media addiction’ becoming a worldwide epidemic with consumers spending more time online than asleep; to the government providing personal genetic profiles to everybody and companies providing ‘mood-balanced’ news services; to attention deficit order being listed as a global health crisis amidst a consumer movement to ‘switch off’; to media giants creating the world’s largest virtual book club. The report, Media 2015, created for Unilever, ESPN and marketing company Mindshare, says it will be a balancing act between the amount of media access versus the amount of consumer attention, as to which scenario prevails. The four scenarios are: ‘tons of twitter’ in which “media access is unbridled and consumer attention is highly fragmented”; ‘portal of me’ in which “media access remains always on but in which consumer attention has been narrowed and focused to a number of trusted partners”; ‘a media buffet’ in which consumer attention is highly fragmented but media access is restrained and consumers “dip in and out of media”; and ‘traditional new media’ in which both consumer attention and media access is limited because consumers’ media interaction is habitual and stable. A variety of factors come in to play in the future including increasingly powerful devices and even more readily available information leading to more fragmentation, along with the consumer desire for fame colliding with concerns about privacy. The result will be more dynamic content being created, more aggregation of that content, while balancing consumer data with consumer trust as consumers “leave data trails wherever they go” and then integrating media consumption into the process. And if you just went, ‘what the heck’, I don’t blame you. It’s a lot, but it is an interesting lot and you can read it all at http://www.unileverusa.com/Images/FOM_Final_09_tcm23-206938.pdf .
BY THE NUMBERS: It seems like every media outlet has adopted ‘by the numbers’ as a regular feature. So, in the interests of keeping up with the latest trends… Apple’s iTunes is expected to soon pass its 10 Billionth download which it is celebrating with a $10,000 gift card to the lucky person, and which WebProNews columnist Mike Sachoff notes is a little chintzy when you consider that at 99cents a pop, how much Apple made off ten billion downloads. Social (and business) networking site LinkedIn has reached 60 Million which is pretty impressive, considering only two months ago it was at 55 Million. Although it’s nowhere near (another number here) Facebook’s 400 Million membership which it reached this month. Another WebProNews columnist, Doug Caverly, notes that Linkedin’s number is still pretty impressive, considering its more select audience, and puts LinkedIn in the lead in its category. More than 60 Million Americans listen to Internet radio weekly with four out of five (84%) listening to AM/FM streams and two out of three (62%) listening to Internet only radio stations. Radio researcher Bridge Ratings says that people are listening more to AM/FM streams (2.5 hours per day) versus Internet only stations (1.4 hours), but that AM/ FM is in danger of losing that advantage because people expect more options online and not just a re-streaming of their over the air content. Finally, a survey by Pew Research indicates that singles are happy being single with only 16% saying they are currently looking for a ‘romantic partner’ and half (49%) saying they had been on no more than one date in the past month. The majority of American adults (56% or 113 Million people) say they are not in the dating game because they are either married or living as married but that still leaves a significant number (43% or 87 Million people) who say they are single.
FOOTNOTE TO THE FUTURE: As we so often do, we point out projects or innovative ideas that may point to what the future holds. The latest of these is the WeMedia Awards being presented at the University of Miami next month. The community choice poll winner of the Game Changer idea of the year goes to Tom Stites’ BanyanProject.com which uses Web-based journalism to engage everyday citizens (quote – people who are the bread and butter of American life) who are ill-served by mainstream journalism. Other neat nominees include musician Peter Gabriel’s witness.org which uses witness video to “open the eyes of the world to human rights violations”; website seeclickfix.com which allows anyone to report and track community needs, like potholes that need filling; website newsy.com (which I subscribe to) and which labels itself a news analyzer, not an aggregator, by showing multiple reports from multiple sources on different topics; and Global Voices (globalvoicesonline.org) which “aggregates and curates” blogs from around the globe to provide a world-wide window. You can find them all at the website wemedia.com.
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