The Brooding Savage

With all the excitement and media attention being paid to Social Networks and Social Media, let's not forget about good ol' fashioned email.  This week, AOL released the results of its annual Email Addiction Survey, which was a stark reminder of the ubiquity of the Web's #1 social medium.

According to the research, a significant number of Americans have become addicted to email as they're increasingly unable to detach from their in boxes, regardless of whether they contain business or personal messages.  In fact, nearly half (46%) of all survey respondents admitted to being email addicts, up from just 15% last year.

Many people may think that Social Networks have become the default communication tool of the 21st century.  But email continues to be the #1 online activity.   The average Consumer online spends 87% of their Web time reading/writing email, according to Forrester research.

The AOL survey (conducted in conjunction with Beta Research) polled 4,000 email users ages 13 and up, and found that use of email in increasingly strange places was on the rise.

• About 59% of email users said that they check their messages while in the bathroom

• More than two-thirds of Americans said they checked email while in bed (in pajamas!)

• About 15% of respondents said that they even scanned messages while in church.

• Half of the respondents said that they checked their email while driving

"We really do live in a 24-7 society and it's not uncommon to be online and checking email at all hours of the day," said Regina Lewis, AOL Online Consumer Advisor.

Of course, email is old news compared to new communications utilities.  But while MySpace brags about their 110 million members, Yahoo mail has 250 million regular users.

Recent ComScore Media Metrix figures for the 4 top email clients, show a combined 650 million users.  That number dwarfs the leading Social Networks. 

• All Microsoft webmail properties: 256.2 million users
• Yahoo: 254.6 million users
• Google: 91.6 million users
• AOL webmail properties: 48.9 million users

Lets keep this in mind when predict the future of the Web!  

Search has always been the Web 2.0 equivalent of Direct Mail.  The genius of Google has been to understand the clear action-oriented value of the text ad, and then sell it at auction based on the actual click, not the impression.  Impressions, after all, are for brand advertisers.  In the world of Google, the only thing that matters is immediate action.  Brand equity is a disposable quality, sacrificed to measured ROI.

Now Google, its stock price down 30% for the year, is releasing a study that claims that search advertising has value as a branding vehicle, too.  One supposes their hope is that advertisers will pour additional money into Google AdWords now that there’s extra undocumented value as a branding vehicle. 

In a MediaPost interview, Kevin Kells, Google's CPG Industry Director, said "Typically, ROI models for search don't give any value to a search impression, but this study finds that there's brand value in a search impression, particularly in top-of-mind awareness and purchase intent.”

The study exposed about 2400 searchers to one generic search term such as "drinks," or "make-up."  The pages included search results and paid search ads -- including some brands, but excluding others.  Respondents were then given a survey designed to measure brand impact in the areas of aided brand awareness, unaided brand awareness, purchase consideration, and purchase intent.

The survey results?  When polled immediately after seeing a search results page (SERP), respondents remembered those brands displayed on the page better than those brands that were not on the SERP page. In other words, respondents only recalled seeing things that they actually saw.

Click to read more ...

Updated on Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 09:42AM by Bill Houghton

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal recently expounded that having a personal Web profile soon would be a social necessity.  The argument goes: it’s impossible to keep personal (and often private) information about yourself off the Web, so you better be proactive and manage the information that’s out there.  

Typically, it won’t be your excellent employment reviews or your responsible charitable giving that makes its way online.  Like other media, sensational images and amusing stories are much more likely to get wide distribution.  Therefore, it behooves all individuals to do some basic proactive public relations by creating their own site where they can manage their online persona. 

Search engines are becoming more sophisticated and efficient.  Soon photo recognition technology will be able to pick your face out of a crowd of hundreds waving brassieres in a Cross-Dressers Rights demonstration.  If you don’t want that decades-old photo of you hugging the beer keg at your college frat house to become your online identity, you better take action.  Create a profile, include all of your best and most positive achievements, and optimize it so that it appears in Google before those other profiles.  

Click to read more ...

Readers of this blog know that I have reservations about the feasibility of ad-supported music strategies, like Imeem.  (For a look back at some of my earlier analysis, click here or here.)  But I have to defend the revenue model for businesses such as Imeem --  if they can manage to build an audience, they should be able to make a go of it.

Up until now, I have only weighed in on possible ad-supported models for actually distributing and downloading music files.  But a new opinion  penned by Silicon Alley Insider raises the question of ad-supported music streaming, too.  And, like I’ve also chimed, it’s largely the fault of music labels and the RIAA.

Now, my basic problem with streaming music services is that they’re basically the same as radio – which has always been free.  XM and Sirius tried pay radio (and I admit their product is far superior than FM) but we all know how poorly these businesses performed. 

As much as you’d like to think that streaming services like Imeem are better than radio – it just isn’t true.  A really good radio broadcaster actually has better service than anything users can program themselves.  As evidence, I site a recent Pew study that says Radio listening is how 83% of Americans discover new music.  In other words, the public relies on Radio for it’s ability to expose them to songs they don’t yet know – and this service goes right out the window if the service is solely an on-demand product.   

No. I’m afraid the price point has already been set in this streaming market.  And the price is nil.

Click to read more ...

Last year, the record industry won a major battle when a jury found Jammie Thomas liable for piracy for making tracks available on Kazaa. This was the the first case against an alleged file-sharer to go to trial, and the outcome made headlines and bolstered the RIAA's fight against it's customers.

But now, the federal district court judge who presided over the trial may have changed his mind.  Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minn., has stated that he might have "committed a manifest error of law."  He is considering negating the RIAA victory and ordering a new trial.

What changed his mind?  In the original case, judge Davis instructed jurors that they could find Thomas guilty of piracy for having made tracks available for downloading via Kazaa -- whether or not it was shown anyone actually downloaded the files.  According to Davis, he originally planned to instruct jurors that tracks actually had to be downloaded in order to prove copyright infringement.  But at the last minute, the RIAA convinced him to change his instructions -- and he told jurors that merely making tracks available could constitute copyright infringement.

Click to read more ...