Internet - cyberpop!

tech boom(ers)

February 16, 2010 By sem 4 Comments

Who knew that Boomers were such media-hungry digital infovores? New research on the media use habits of the age 45 to 54 consumer demographic by the CRE Mapping Study shows that they consume more TV and more Internet media than any other cohort.

Digital Boomers account for about one-third of Web traffic on a typical day, according to The Pew Internet and American Life Project. “In their younger years, they eagerly adopted new technologies such as Walkmans, VCRs, PCs, DVRs and the Internet,” said Lisa E. Phillips, senior analyst at eMarketer, and “most carry that adaptability into their 50s and 60s.”

What’s more, Boomers are active online social networkers, with about half maintaining a profile on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Trends in socialTV programming and promotion are now purposefully designed with the Boomers in mind.

With all of this tech savvy behavior, it’s no wonder that Harlequin Enterprises is following Boomers into social gaming. Harlequin was already way way out in front in developing ebooks—though others are following suit, to capitalize on cross-generational trend in mobile lifestyling, and digital Boomer-consumers’ love of reading and gadgetry. Coming up next: more gadgets with easy-to-see buttons and simplified functions (like this CosyPhone) for the over-50 set and their tired, screen-weary eyes.

Filed Under: ebooks, gaming, media use, mobile, social networks, television, video Tagged With: BlackBerry, cellphone, facebook, gaming, Internet, iPhone, iPod, mobile, smartphone, social media, social networking, social networks, TV, twitter, YouTube

lips like sugar

January 2, 2010 By sem 17 Comments

In his 2009 TED talk Jonathan Zittrain spoke about the nature of the web, claiming that the Internet relies on random acts of kindness by “geeky strangers.” Ours is an online culture and economy increasingly fueled by two things: reciprocity—think friends, followers, lists, reviews, recommendations, comments, open-source and crowd-sourcing, P2P help forums. And second, shareability—on socnet walls and profiles, via curation in the clouds, tweeting, playlisting, favoriting, youtubing, and torrenting the media we value, distributing it to our social graphs.

When people are nice, when we share, encourage and promote each other, act generous, give compliments, pay it forward, we all win. This is especially true in our increasingly networked e-society. Today the online reputation of an individual or a brand is linked closely with how they are received according to factors of influence, competence, and relevance—on and offline.

Beyond earning yourself (or your product or organization) a good rep, there are many other reasons to be nice, including the connections between fostering happiness and enabling productivity, creativity, inspiration, and motivation in those around you. Happy friends, employees, clients, kids and spouses are likely to be healthier and make better decisions too. Long before Coke and Pepsi launched campaigns based on optimism and joy, FastCompany explained that the most successful brands are in the business of helping their clients in the pursuit of happiness.

socially-networked niceties and e-complimentarity

We all know that a few well-delivered and carefully-timed compliments can open doors (a lot faster than being clever, cynical or critical), but what if you are the type of person who struggles to come up with a nice thing to say? For the truly desperate, yessir, there’s an app for that. The one-million-compliments app or the compliments confidence booster app (both for iPhone) will instantly produce something nice and fresh for you to say, to give you lips like sugar even when you are in the most tongue-tied, uninspired, or foul mood. However, if you never feel in the mood to give a compliment, either you are a permagrouch, chronically self-absorbed, or maybe it’s just way past time to assess the health of your relationships (at work and at home). Just sayin’.

Silly apps aside, authentic and honest praise for a job well done, communicated clearly, perhaps with a dose of appreciation or and gratitude, tends to have a boomerang effect. Niceness comes right backatcha. This is especially true (and sometimes amazingly rapid) within online social networks. People notice our graciousness and our not-so-nice and uncool behavior on the web, and they respond, sometimes in real time. Case in point: of the top ways to rapidly lose Twitter followers, insulting someone or someone’s city rates far higher (in fact it is number one) than swearing or being spammy. Interesting! Potty mouths and pushy promoters are tolerated more easily than Tweeters who cannot be nice.

The savvy networkers and marketers among us already know that in the economy of niceties, well-wishes can fortify loose social and professional ties, sometimes almost instantly. Connections forged via acts of e-kindness are mutually beneficial. Used with skill and sincerity then, niceness is both cultural capital and social glue.

So for all the talk about how the net makes it easier for people to hide behind cloaks of anonymity to be rude and hateful to each other—it is also true that the age of social computing has made it easier to share, communicate, connect, and befriend.

Now is a great time to flex networked niceness.

Filed Under: social networks Tagged With: crowdsourcing, facebook, Internet, P2P, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter, web 2.0

broadband or bust?

August 28, 2009 By sidneyeve Leave a Comment

A second digital divide has emerged, separating the high-speed connected class from the slow-poke modem folk

When it comes to Internet connectivity, speed matters. It’s not enough to be connected to the Web—today the new digital divide is about dial-up versus DSL. Having a too-slow and pokey online connection will severely impact people’s online experiences, and even limit their digital fluency.

A new study from the Communications Workers of America measured the network of download speeds in the USA and found that consumer’s online experiences vary dramatically, depending on how many megabits per second they can download. Not surprisingly, urban areas have faster Internet coverage than rural places—because the dense population in the city makes it commercially viable for broadband ISPs to set up shop.

For dial-up customers, the experience of attempting to play online games, view web video, or access graphic- and widget- heavy social network sites, (at all, or without head-exploding levels of frustration) is often an endurance test. And although it could be argued that YouTube and Myspace or Facebook are not important but rather purely diversionary, leisure, entertainment media—we know that increasingly these online communication tools are being used for e-commerce, for professional networking, and even for news distribution. Without adequate access to these mainstream online sites, it’s easy to feel left behind and disconected from the information flow of digital culture. Whether it is searching for health information or watching sports coverage, contributing to the office wiki or downloading TV or music files—a sufficiently fast and reliable download rate at home and the office certainly makes our increasingly multimedia lives easier.

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Filed Under: media use Tagged With: broadband, DSL, Internet

connected kids

August 18, 2009 By sidneyeve Leave a Comment

How unplugged are parents from their kids’ online habits?

Last week Symantec received a lot of media buzz when they released figures showing “the big disconnect” separating parents and kids when it comes to time spent online. Notable results: “22% of teens check social networking sites more than 10 times a day, while only 4% of parents believe kids are checking that much,” and “51% of teens check social networking sites more than once a day, while only 23% of parents say their kids check more than once a day.”

It’s interesting that parents underestimate how connected their kids are. But are these media use frequency rates unreasonably high for teens? If Facebook or MySpace is THE communications channel linking you with your friends, is accessing your online profile ten times a day all that different from making ten phone calls, or checking your email a dozen times a day, or your BlackBerry messages (all things parents are perhaps more apt to do)?

It is unlikely that these findings will inspire the technopanic that accompanies studies of teen texting, because an ever higher percentage of Boomers and Gen Xers are also using Facebook and other social media networks, so there a far greater understanding of how these sites facilitate real-time online communication. (For more on the graying of Facebook, go here).

And while we’re on the subject of parents, kids, and digital culture, what are the top words that kids enter into search engines (which might just happen to correspond to their parents’ nightmares)? If you guessed “sex” and “porn” you’d be right. Sexual curiosity plus access to the internet can add up to a triple X education for kids whose parents aren’t plugged in to their online habits. A recent survey by the security folks at Symantec showed that in many households kids are using networks, machines, and connections to access restricted online materials–often by entering a false age. Symantec advises parents who suspect or become aware that their kids are “breaking the rules” (to buy their filtering/monitoring security software and) to treat these infractions as “teachable moments”–when a little honest family dialog can go a long way.

And, parents take heart: the Sydney Morning Herald recently reported on new research from Griffith University which showed that schoolwork is the number one task for most kids when they log on. “The predominant activity that our kids are doing online is educational research and fact-finding, and a lot of it,” said Margee Hume, the lead researcher on the study. “We found that they would always do this before they would do anything else.” Hmmm. I’m betting that finding surprised the researchers too.