Daily Bits

Internet

Adult Internet Users Spend 13 Hours Online Weekly

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Harris Poll has released some interesting numbers on the daily usage patterns of Internet users. The survey which was conducted through telephone interviews with respondents reveal that the number of hours spent online by adult Internet now totals to 13 hours on a weekly basis. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive between July 7 and 12 and October 13 and 18.

It’s interesting to note that over the years, the average hours spent online by Internet users have increased consistently. From 1999 to 2002 it was only 7 hours. This increased to 8 to 9 hours in 2003-2005 then to 11 hours in 2007 before reaching  14 hours in 2008.

While this year’s 13 hours is less than the number of hours spent online in 2008, it is quite understandable since more people resort to going online due to the economic recession and the start of the U.S. election campaign. And now that the economy has gone back to its feet, Americans are gradually shifting from doing things online to going back to their daily chores in the offline world. [Read more…] about Adult Internet Users Spend 13 Hours Online Weekly

FarmVille, FML, Swine Flu Top Facebook’s Status Updates in 2009

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Following the tradition of year-end list, Facebook released its Memology: Top  which according to the Facebook blog is a study of how “memes” or new ideas and trends spread on Facebook, through member’s status updates and wall postings. Facebook mapped the top trending words and phrases in the U.S. Facebook members to come up with this 2009 list.

If you’ve been following similar annual trend list released by other websites including Google, Twitter and YouTube where the top trends are mostly entertainment and global affairs related, the top trends on Facebook clings more on personal topics. This is of course understandable since Facebook networks are more personalized.

Here’s Facebook’s explanation on how they came up with the list:

To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.

So, here goes Facebook’s Top 5 Status Trends of 2009:

1. Facebook Applications – specific words: Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living

2. FML – specific words: F_ _ k My Life

3. Swine Flu – specific words – Flu, Swine Flu, H1N1

4. Celebrity Deaths – specific words: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays

5. Family – specific words: family, mom, dad, son, daughter, kids

Study Reveals Most Active People Online are Educated

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I don’t know if this report by Eurostat is rather comforting or not. But according to the report people who spend most time online are the most educated member of the society.

The study was conducted on European households with at least one person aged 16-74.  And the study found out that 90% of those who used the Internet on a regular basic  have high formal education. Age-wise though, the numbers are insignificant but it is also worth noting that most of these people belong to the 16-24 age range.

But of course the study was European-based and we could probably assume that Europe probably has one of the highest literacy rate among the developed countries. So, it is rather  no disturbing if majority of those who spend time online are educated because their difference with the not-so-educated Europeans may not be that huge.

But what if this study is to be carried out in the developing countries where literacy is inferior with that of the European countries. Of course, the result might be the same. But what is not so comforting is the fact that if education plays a vital role into IT literacy and usage, what happens now with the majority of uneducated people in the developing countries? Will they be given a chance to learn about technology and how it can change one’s daily life?

And how could the developing countries cope up with the technological revolution if majority of  their population remains uneducated and technologically deprived?

Five Most Anticipated Gadgets of 2010

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With 2009 coming to a close, several manufacturers are already prepping up their latest gadgets for a 2010 launch. We’ve seen some of these gadgets as early as now and they have been generating  buzz already.

We’ve gathered up 5 of these gadgets which are starting to catch fire as early as now despite the fact that they are still being planned for release in 2010. So, here goes our top five most anticipated gadgets of 2010.

1. Apple Tablet

Not the JooJoo, not the CrunchPad or any of those tablet magazine demoed by  Time Inc. but the real Apple Tablet which has been rumored to be already in the works and which Apple remains mum about.  This makes us want the Apple Tablet even more. Will Apple finally release it in 2010? Or is there really an Apple Tablet?  We”ll soon find out about that. [Read more…] about Five Most Anticipated Gadgets of 2010

Best of 2000s in Marketing, Media and Agency

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As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, expect more “top list” kind of postings to come up in the next couple of weeks. This is the best time to release those lists as this is the time to look back and analyze what has happened in our lives during the past 10 years.

In Marketing, Media and Agency World, the decade has been a pretty exciting one. And Adweek Media got it fully covered with its best and brightest in the branding, marketing, media and agency world covering 33 categories.

Among those who made it to Adweek Media’s Best of 2000s are the likes of Google, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Disney Channel, Wired and other Internet famous people, organizations, companies and websites which all graced our lives this past decade.

So, here’s Adweek Media’s Best of the 2000s: [Read more…] about Best of 2000s in Marketing, Media and Agency

WordPress.com Now Allows Posting and Reading via Twitter

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post-view-m2The folks at WordPress.com are really working doubly hard these days to improve on the services they offer to loyal users of the free WordPress hosting site. After the geotagging and emails subscription features, here’s another better and more useful feature – posting and reading via Twitter API.

The new feature is supposed to work with mobile Twitter applications which use the Twitter API. Of course, it was tested on an iPhone application, particularly Tweetie 2.0. But the feature should work on any third party app that allows you to set a custom API URL.

To enable posting and reading to your WordPress.com blog via Tweetie 2.0, you need to add your WordPress account to Tweetie just like you are adding another Twitter account.  To make it work, you need to add https://twitter-api.wordpress.com/ to the API Root field before adding the account. Once your information is verified by Tweetie 2., you can then start posting to your WordPress.com blog using your iPhone’s Tweetie 2. app.

If you’re having problems setting up your account, full details can be found here.