Daily Bits

Internet

Mobile Phone is the New Social Connector

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Ruder Finn, an independent PR company published some interesting findings of their new study – Mobile Intent Index. The study measures, well mobile phone users’  intent for accessing the Internet via their mobile devices.

According to the report, the average time spent by Americans on the mobile Internet is 2.7 hours. And what do they do during those times?  To socialize, manage their personal finances and push their advocacy.

Contrary to what we may have believed all along, mobile phone users do not access the Internet via mobile phones for educational purposes or for creative expression.  The study also found out that usage by gender and age differ. That is men access the mobile web to “escape” while women to “make others laugh.” Now that seems rather vague, right?

Another interesting finding of the report is the fact that immediacy is the major factor why users access the Internet via mobile.

“Our survey data shows that people use their mobile phones out of necessity for instant access to the Web whether it’s to conduct business with the most recent information or advocate on the spot on issues of pressing concern and breaking news,” said Marty McGough, director of Ruder Finn Insights

The study also highlights the fact that mobile phone apps are continously increasing with 61% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded an application at least once per month, and 36% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded applications from social networking sites at least once per month.

As a mobile connector, mobile phone access is used primarily to:

  • Instant message – 62%
  • Forward e-mails (58%), content (40%) and photos (38%)
  • Post comments on social networking sites – 45%
  • Connect to people on social networking sites – 43%

Interesting findings, right? So, which of these connectivity features do you do on your mobile phone?

BuddyPress Now Available for All WordPress Installation

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BuddyPress, a social networking add-on that previously worked only with WordPress MU installation is now available for all WordPress installs.  I’m really excited about this development as I’ve always wanted to try out BuddyPress for a long time now.

With BuddyPress 1.2 on your standard WordPress install, you can now start letting your blog readers create extended profiles, display activity streams, discussion forums, private messaging and groups within individual posts on your blogs.  What’s good about BuddyPress 1.2 is the fact that you can turn off some of its features which you don’t like to have.

Integrating WordPress on your current blog installs is easily done as well. It only takes three steps which you can follow here. After installing, you  may need to tweak it a bit to work well with your blog’s overall theme.

In addition to the features we mentioned BuddyPress also now includes permalinks for each action in the activity streams. Likewise, users will now be able to “favorite” activity items as well as send @replies to other users. Truly, a powerful social networking feature.

For requirements, you need to have at least WordPress 2.9.1 or better yet upgrade your install to 2.9.2 if you haven’t done so yet.

Social Network Users are Predominantly Young Middle-Aged Folks

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First of, I really have to commend the folks at Royal Pingdom for coming up with such a comprehensive study on the demographics of social network users. It’s a pretty good study with just about enough statistics that will really give you a good grasp of who are really into social networking today. So, what do they find out? Majority of the social network users are predominantly middle-aged folks who belong to the 35-44, not that tech savvy youngsters that we may all have thought before this study.

The study took stock of site demographics information for the United States which they gathered using Google’s Ad Planner service and then made additional calculations to come up with their final data. The report includes age data of members from 19  social networking sites including -Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Last.fm, Friendfeed, LiveJournal, Hi5, Tagged, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com and Bebo.

So, some interesting highlights of the report include:

  • 25% of social network users belong to the 35-44 age group
  • 3% of social network users belong to the 65-older group
  • 65% of the users are in using Twitter and/or Facebook
  • Bebo and MySpace are both widely used by users age 17 or younger

Those were just some of the key findings of the report. If you want to learn more, just check out Royal Pingdom.

Meanwhile, what really puzzles me is the fact that if  the predominant users of Facebook are age 35-44 how come I still see tons of Mafia updates, senseless trivia questions, virtual gifts and other utterly unimportant stuff from my Facebook contacts?  Does this mean that Facebook users are into the site not for business and social networking purposes but rather to while away time?  Where is the maturity there, friends?

More Shoppers Will Go Mobile by 2015

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It looks like e-commerce is taking a new route these days – via mobile phones. That is more shoppers are doing their daily shopping fix using their mobile phones, says ABI Research’s latest “Mobile Commerce” study which focused on mobile online shopping and mobile payments for virtual goods.

According to the report, mobile shoppers are projected to spend as much as $119 billion on goods and services via their mobile phones. Although the increase is quite significant, overall however this only amounts to 8% of the total e-commerce market. ABI’s report include global forecasts for e-commerce, mobile online shopping as a subset of e-commerce, virtual goods as well as mobile payments for those virtual goods.

ABI’s senior analyst Mark Beccue said that mobile online shopping is getting more common among online shoppers.

“In the United States, mobile online shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. While definitions of ‘mass market adoption’ vary, a more than threefold increase in one year indicates significant consumer interest.”

Interestingly while the U.S. mobile shopping industry is steadily growing, its current condition still fall way too short of the mobile shopping industry in Japan which reached more than $10 billion in 2009. Europe’s mobile shopping market is steadily growing as well and is expected to surpass the US market by the end of 2010.

Does this mean that U.S. online shoppers don’t use their mobile phones as much as their Japanese or European counterparts before?  It seems that it’s not really a problem on the consumers part though.

The report also noted that interests toward smartphone is only starting to build up. Plus support for mobile commerce is websites is also just starting to get a headway recently.

Amazon to Give Free Kindle to Amazon Prime Subscribers?

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Are you a frequent Amazon products buyer? Do you do all of your online shopping via Amazon? If you do, you must be an Amazon Prime subscriber already. Well, guess what? Amazon is reportedly planning to give out free Amazon Kindles to their loyal Amazon Prime Subscribers. Last time I checked, I’m an Amazon Prime subscriber, so Amazon please push through with your plans. I would love to get that free Kindle.

In case you’re not aware, Amazon Prime is a premium subscription product that entitles members to a free two days shipping on any of their purchases at Amazon. Members are charged an annual fee of $79/year to maintain this privilege. They are also considered as Amazon’s best customers who makes multiple purchases every month.

Amazon’s plan of giving out free Kindles was first reported by TechCrunch. According to Arrington, what’s keeping Amazon from pushing this play as of now is that the Amazon folks are still figuring out how to do it without losing too much money. Amazon of course is in dire need of getting the Kindle into the hands of as many people as they can, especially with various threats coming from its rivals, and upcoming rivals such as the iPad. And giving it out for free to those who will potentially purchase e-books from the Kindle store could be a pretty good strategy.

So, there. If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, hope that this plan pushes through.

YouTube Still King of Online Video, But Facebook is Growing Fast

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NielsenWire has just published their latest online video metrics report and as expected like it has been the past couple of years, YouTube is still the most visited online video site. But what’s interesting to note from Nielsen’s stats is how fast Facebook is growing as an online video channel.

First,  some facts and details. According to the NielsenWire’s report, the number of unique viewers of online video increased y 5.2% year-over-year, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million the same month this year. And the fastest growing online video sites include the likes of Disney Online with 23.3% growth, MSN/WindowsLive/Bing with 15.6% and of course Facebook with 18.6% growth during the said period.

YouTube on the other hand managed to posed only a 6.7% growth but it still remains at the top of the list with a commanding 112.6 million unique viewers.

Now, as I said, it’s quite interesting to note how fast Facebook is growing as a video channel. It only goes to show that more Facebook users are sharing online video as well as watching them online via Facebook. What is ironic about this is that most of those videos were actually embedded from the YouTube site.

Perhaps, Google has not yet noticed this trend especially since YouTube continues to be the number 1 online video site. But at the rate that Facebook is growing, it might just be a matter of time before it catches up with YouTube. Unless of course Google does something to prevent this from happening. Hopefully Google won’t do something drastic in the future.