Online Media Cultist

I’m sure that some people really are addicted to the Internet. I’m probably one of them! I can and will “unplug” from time to time (”I can quit anytime I want,” he said…) but truth be told I’m online for large chunks of most days. I get tired and burned out and haggard like everyone else in the working masses, but I attribute it more to work than the mere experience of being online.

But there’s addiction and then there’s addiction.

According to a doctor in Israel, “10 percent of Internet surfers are afflicted with ‘Internet addiction disorder,’ which can lead to anxiety and severe depression. Internet addiction is classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior.”

Ten percent of “Internet surfers” is a lot of people. Like hundreds of millions. I think it’s going a little far to allege that hundreds of millions of people are experiencing a disorder from online use that can “lead to anxiety and severe depression.” So in essence one could also argue that eating food in great quantities can lead – for some, mind – to getting fat.

Meanwhile, a new study asserts that Facebook is costing Australian companies billions of dollars in lost productivity (hat tip: Lifehacker). This alarming conclusion comes about due to the speculation that “the cost to companies if one person in every organization spent an hour on Facebook instead of working.”

Note the use of the word if. In other news, if tortoises could fly, there would be a whole new magical way for Internet-addicted Facebook time wasters to commute to work.

I’m going to attempt to quell my Restless Leg Disorder while I ponder this one some more.

The Internet may still very nearly spin around the axis (matrix?) of Google search, but people like Yahoo’s content and services at least a little bit better, according to a new study from the University of Michigan American Consumer Satisfaction Index.

The relaunch of Yahoo’s portal is cited as a reason why Yahoo’s customer satisfaction is on the rise, as well as its e-mail, “social networks and other features.” Meanwhile, Google’s applications and services are not as visible to the average user.

In my view, GMail is superior to Yahoo e-mail, though I’ve heard that people like improvements that have been made to the latter. In terms of social networks, I can’t believe that either Yahoo 360 or Orkut could have made much of a difference in peoples’ responses. I can definitely see the difference if Yahoo’s “web 2.0″ acquisitions such as del.icio.us, Flickr, and MyBlogLog were cited. That’s a pretty great trio of efficient, elegant, and popular web services right there.

I wonder if Google cares very much about this study. As long as it continues to own search and make zillions through its Adsense and Adwords services, they will continue to laugh all the way to the e-bank. Internet Marketing Monitor rightly notes that, “The article suggests that Google’s relatively unchanged interface and dismal marketing of its non-search services give users the impression that little has changed at the site. Those of us who look beyond the interface realize that this is not the case. But most users don’t go much deeper than the outside.”

That said, Yahoo has smartly improved in areas that it needed to – recognizing Google’s dominance in search – and it’s paying off. Another four-year study, produced by Nielsen/NetRatings, proves the old Internet axiom that content is still king.

According to the study, people are consuming online content like never before, watching videos and reading news and entertainment content, “surpassing activities such as sending e-mails, shopping or searching for information.”

While at first glance, these seem to be fairly obvious “revelations,” they are pretty stunning when looking at the short history of the web. E-mail, for instance, is one of the first “killer apps” of the online world. It’s something that grandparents do everyday as part of their lives. People who can barely turn on a computer know how to “Google” search terms to find relevant information.

But the increase in broadband penetration, coupled with the serious and massive effort to increase the quality and quantity of online media and entertainment offerings, has fundamentally shifted the way in which people consume content overall.

People spend more time online today than they do watching television. As recently as four or five years ago, this would have seemed like a farfetched notion.

In other words, the Internet is not just a place to write to friends and family and find relevant information. It’s a place where people can immerse themselves in deep social networks, create and share media, and watch (and interact with!) videos and other forms of entertainment.

So, both surveys show that Yahoo is looking at the long run and improving in areas that reflect where people are spending increasing amounts of time.

comScore has released a report on global Internet traffic for May, and the usual suspects are at the top of the list: Google sites are still tops on the Internets, with over 527 million unique visitors, followed by Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner, and eBay. Wikipedia now sits at the #6 slot, which shows the continued and enormous popularity of the wiki-based community-run encyclopedia of everything and everyone.

I found the following line to be the most striking in the report:

There were 772 million people online worldwide in May (defined as those individuals age 15 or older who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in the last 30 days), an increase from 766 million in April, representing a 16 percent penetration of the worldwide population of individuals age 15 or older.

So six million more adults accessed the Internet in May 2007 than in April 2007. 16 percent penetration.

For all that’s happened online over what is really a short period of time, for all the billions of web pages published and trillions of communications that have taken place, a huge swath of the global population has yet to take part.

Growing up in the 1980s, I clearly recall my family getting its first microwave oven, its first VCR. I played handheld games featuring LCD red dots blipping around a tiny black screen. This was the height of technology at the time, and it was glorious.

Where will we be 20 or 25 years from now? If we can manage not to blow ourselves up and combat the scariest of the world’s problems, the future really is wide open.

Between the Lines wonders what percentage of the world’s population should be online.

A new Ipsos Insight study called The Face of the Web finds that the United States ranks fifth when it comes to the percentage of adults who have visited a social networking website.

South Korea, Brazil, China, and Mexico all have a higher percentage of adults who have visited a social networking site at least once within a thirty-day period. And when you consider the massive populations of Brazil and China, that’s a lot of people getting their profiling and friending and all the rest of it on.

And while MySpace may still be dominant in the US, other parts of the world have different tastes. Facebook is at least on a par with MySpace in the UK, with Bebo making a strong going of it as well. Friendster, exiled after MySpace usurped its power several years ago, still reigns supreme in parts of Southeast Asia. And Cyworld, kind of a social MMO (massive multiplayer online game), is the darling of South Korea.

ars technica notes that Brian Cruikshank, an exec at Ipsos, contends that it’s possible that the massive popularity of social networking websites may have an affect “on other online and offline entertainment behaviors that ultimately compete for a share of the consumer’s disposable time.”

This line of thinking ties into a conversation that has been ongoing since late last week on Deep Jive Interests and a number of other sites. It kicked off when Robert Scoble asserted that top bloggers are losing traffic because of the popularity of sites such as Facebook.

My counter-argument ran thus:

In my view the blogosphere and social networking worlds have very different cultures and people who fill them up. So it’s not a zero sum game i.e. the popularity of Facebook (and hasn’t MySpace had a billion registered users for several years already? How did Facebook reinvent the wheel?) does in no way deflate the popularity of the blogosphere or any “A List” bloggers in the process.

Now, if you want to argue that some bloggers are losing audience due to some notion of “more choice than ever before” (more quality bloggers, more web communities, more high quality content, etc. etc.) that’s something I’d be interested in hearing out.

That said, there’s no doubt that online social networking is having a massive impact on how people around the world are communicating. And hundreds of start-ups are trying to cash in on various niches of the social networking world – from horses to moms to honoring the deceased to college sports and everything in between.

In some ways it’s not fair to measure the growth of Twitter versus the early growth of Blogger by the sheer volume of posts. Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, while Blogger offers a blank slate for publishing blog posts.

That said, it’s very interesting to look at a series of charts, statistics, and analysis offered by Jason Kotte today that compares the growth of the two services.

The long story short, when looking at Twitter versus Blogger, is that Twitter is seeing exponential growth (the tipping point came last November) while Blogger’s growth since its launch in 1999 is far more gradual. Jason cheers Twitter’s “crazy insane viral growth,” and I think that’s a perfect description.

Just as with blogging, there will be people who get into Twitter – which is a form of mini-blogging in some ways – and those who don’t. But people who are into Twitter actively evangelize for the service that bases itself around the simple question, “What are you doing?” At its core, it’s an easy and elegant and even addictive tool to share information and keep in touch with (friends) and keep tabs on (those you admire or want to keep an eye on within) the Twitterverse.

It’s also an agile and flexible tool in that you can use it in any way that you like. For example, a group or friends or co-workers can limit usage to themselves for close communication. Alternatively, you can add influential bloggers (such as Robert Scoble or Dave Winer) or politicians (such as John Edwards or Barack Obama) and keep up with their ongoing thoughts, links, and messages. Finally and importantly, it’s a great service while on the go – you can access Twitter via web, IM, or SMS – and can be a powerful communications tool during events (it drew big time buzz during this year’s SXSW).

The best ideas are usually simple, and Twitter certainly falls into that camp.

There are those on Twitter who “tweet” about mundane, boring, or terribly uninteresting things, just as is the case with bloggers. Similarly, just as there are a great many fascinating, interesting, and compelling blogs, there’s an equal number of Twitterers who are worth the time to follow.

By the way: I’ve just installed Twitbin, a Firefox plug-in that brings messages from those I follow on Twitter to the left side of my web browser, and I love it.

Update: An update from Kottke explains that there are some problems with the data that was used for his study, and that Twitter growth might not be quite as crazy insane as thought. Oh well, I still dig the Twitter and it seems that many others do as well.

It’s more than a cliché to state that technology is rapidly transforming many parts of the world. But when you take a step back and look at it from a sociological perspective, it’s really fascinating.

For instance, Reuters reports this evening about people who are literally living in cyber cafes in Tokyo, Japan. The nightly “rent,” it seems, is cheaper than the super expensive hotels and provides free access to the Internet, soft drinks, and Manga comic books. The downside is that these “freeters” – many of whom are forced into the strange half-life of cyber café living by Japan’s languishing economy – are forced to sleep in a reclining office chair instead of a bed.

Meanwhile back in the states, a new study put out by the Pew Internet & American Life Project claims that there’s a growing divide between those that embrace “Web 2.0 and information and communications technology” and those who do not. The study splits the public into three broad groups: elite tech users (31% of American adults), middle-of-the-road tech users (20%), and “Few Tech Assets” (49%).

At the top end of the elite tech users group, Omnivores (8%) are said to be those who “have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace.” Meanwhile, on the other end of the scale, the “Few Tech Assets” group is broken up into Inexperienced Experimenters (8%), Light But Satisfied (15%), Indifferent (11%), and Off the Network (15%).

There are many potential implications to this study, I’m sure, including the pitfalls of growing tech-savvy “have” and “have not” segments within American society. What’s compelling here to me though is that the transformation of American and other societies is only beginning.

The web services, gadgets, and applications that the Elite Tech Users group are into now will become household terms – the Yahoos and Amazons and Googles and eBays – of the other groups in a remarkably short amount of time. Many of those Middle-of-the-roaders will move up into the elite range, while it’s likely that a whole bunch of non-techies will adopt some level of web- or mobile-commitment.

TeleRead suggests that corporations and libraries should innovate in creating readers and e-books that will allow the elderly and others to help bridge the digital divide.

It’s really amazing when you step back and think that this is really only the beginning, that this whole Interwebs thing is just getting going on a massive scale.

Freeters and Omnivores today. I wonder what will happen tomorrow?

Again with the studies and the misreading of the modern online media environment.

A Reuters story cites a study which declares that user interaction on “web 2.0″ sites “remains weak” and “is far less participatory than commonly assumed.” Stats to back up this claim include .16 percent of YouTube users upload video and .2 percent of Flickr users upload pictures. The study does however grant that somehow, “despite relatively low user involvement, visits to Web 2.0-style sites have spiked 688 percent in two years,” according to Bill Tancer from Hitwise.

This proclamation of weakness is, well, weak.

Here’s why:

* First things first: web 2.0 = the Internet. There’s very little use in differentiating “web 2.0″ websites from the rest of the Internet. If you can leave comments, if you can upload media, if you can personalize a search function in any way, if you can set up a profile of some kind, you’re in web 2.0 land.

* They’re forgetting the 80-19-1 rule. I picked up on this rule from Jason Calacanis, and although it relates to social news sites like Digg and Netscape, I’ve found it very useful in framing the way in which online communities in general tend to operate. The first part states that 80 percent of an online community will never participate, and will be content simply to consume information or entertainment content.

* The 19 percent part is where the study (and its coverage) really misses the mark. According to Jason’s rule, 19% of a community will interact in some way, whether it be leaving comments, or perhaps taking part in voting or ranking on a social news site like Netscape.

What about the 900 million people who have a MySpace and/or Facebook and/or Bebo and/or some other social networking profile, you ask? Aren’t those good folk “participating” on “web 2.0″ sites by browsing profiles and friending and posting pictures and prancing and cavorting and flirting and so on?

The answer would be a big fat yes. Just because media uploads are concentrated into a relatively small group on YouTube and Flickr doesn’t mean that huge numbers of millions of people aren’t actively interacting with the Internet i.e “web 2.0″ sites.

* And what of the 1 percent, or the power users? Those uploading media on YouTube and submitting stories to Digg are the engines that keep those web platforms afloat. However, that the study doesn’t take into account the 19-percenters who comment and vote and rank and set up profiles on these sites is surprising.

A new study produced by Clearswift shows that lots of people use “social media” and “web 2.0″ sites at work. In fact, we’re told that “87% of office workers access web 2.0 sites each week.”

The implication of the study is that businesses should take note of “red flags” such as people spending too much time on non-work related tasks and the potential for “data leaks” (in the e-roof, I guess?).

I’ve got some issues with this study and its analysis as presented by Clearswift. First of all, I’d love to learn how they define social media and web 2.0 sites as compared to the rest of the Internet. In fact, the Internet is social media: it’s an interactive medium. Every time you hit that keyboard or click that mouse on a website, wham-o, you’ve just entered social media-land. That’s so web 2.0, you want to say. And you should. But not out loud, please.

Secondly, didn’t we already know that people spend lots of time goofing off at work in front of a computer? Does MySpace really provide the extra excuse people need to not put a cover sheet on the old TPS reports? In fact, if people want to screw around and not work, there is any number of ways that they can do it. Remember how you always used to see bored secretaries playing Solitaire and Mindsweeper?

In terms of “data leaks,” this comes down to common sense more than anything. Tom from MySpace and the fellas on your Fantasy Football message board aren’t trying to manipulate you out of the Great Secret Project that your company is building. “Social media” websites don’t play greatly into the equation. Either you have a good sense of what and what not to reveal about your personal life and your workplace, in real life or in front of a computer screen, or you don’t.

I’m being slightly tongue-in-cheek here. There are doubtless sensitive situations that come up when an employee engages in business-related discussions within a publicly viewable web environment. This collaboration with colleagues is doubtless largely a boon for the employee’s knowledge base and therefore benefits the organization.

So I would think that instead of laying down the hammer and restricting Internet access in the workplace, a short memo from the brass to the note of think before you type and try to give the Facebook and the Twitter and the AIM a break every now and again, we may be watching, ha ha ha, cough cough cough would be much more appropriate, and really better serves long term interests all around.

Web Worker Daily (which uses the coolest Soviet-looking font ever in its header) provides some good and practical tips for laying off the ADD-vortex of the Internet, including setting aside blocks of time for e-mail, and allowing yourself the right to lay off registering for yet another site “just because all the cool kids are doing it.”