â–¶ Decade Depression: According to a Pew Research Center for the People & The Press survey, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about the last decade. By a roughly 2-1 ratio, more say they have a generally negative rather than a generally positive impression of the past 10 years.
Happy to put the 2000s behind them, most Americans are optimistic that the 2010s will be better. Nearly 6-in-10 say they think the next decade will be better than the last for the country as a whole, though roughly a third think things will be worse.
Respondents were quizzed on a number of topics and their impact during the decade, including technology. Those findings include:
• The Internet and e-mail are widely seen in a favorable light. About two-thirds (65%) say both the Web and e-mail have been changes for the better, while just 16% say the Internet has been a change for the worse and 7% say e-mail has been a change for the worse.
• Nearly 7-in-10 (69%) say cell phones are a change for the better compared with just 14% who call them a change for the worse. Overall, the public’s take on cell phones is slightly better than it was 10 years ago.
• The public is ambivalent on social networking sites such as Facebook. About a third (35%) call them a change for the better, 21% say they have been a change for the worse, while 31% say social networking sites have not made much of a difference.
Source: Pew Research Center For the People & The Press
â–¶ Social Experiment: Econsultancy recently studied how companies are using online PR tactics and social media sites for marketing and customer service. The results show that almost two-thirds of companies have experimented with social media but haven’t launched significant campaigns. Other findings include:
• Microblogging (i.e. Twitter) is now the most widely adopted social media tactic, used by 78% of company respondents.
• Just under half of companies (46%) are not yet using reputation or buzz monitoring tools to understand what is being said about their brand.
• Nearly a third of respondents (31%) are not spending any of their budget on social media.
• There is a mixed view of the benefits of Twitter, with almost a third of respondents (31%) saying that there are tremendous opportunities available.
• The biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies surveyed is the lack of resources (54%).
Source: Econsultancy
â–¶ Apps Are Where It’s At: A report by ABI Research states that mobile application downloads will hit 5 billion by 2014, more than double the estimated 2.3 billion apps downloaded in 2009. The growing sales of smartphones, which rose 20% last year, and the opening of application stores were cited as major drivers for the surge. Other forecasts include:
• Apple iPhone’s share of the app market will contract from its 2010 level into 2014, but it will remain the leading platform for applications.
• Google’s Android OS will benefit from an iPhone app slowdown, seeing its market share of total application downloads increase from 11% of the market in 2009 to 23% in 2014.
• Revenue from mobile app sales are expected to decline by 2013, as competition will lead to downward pressure on application prices and a greater proportion of “must-have” applications will begin to face competition from free or ad-supported substitutes.
Source: ABI Research
â–¶ Kids Are Alright: Research from the University of New Hampshire finds that students who heavily engage in social networking do just as well academically as students who are less interested in the medium.
Defining social media as Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn, the study set heavy users of social media as those exceeding 61 minutes per day, and light users as less than 31 minutes per day. Key findings include:
• 63% of heavy users received high grades (A’s or A’s and B’s), compared to 65% of light users.
• 37% of heavy users of social media received lower grades (C’s and D’s); 35% of light users received fell into that same category.
• Facebook and YouTube are the top social media platforms, with 96% using Facebook and 84% using YouTube; blogs (20%) Twitter (14%) MySpace (12%) and LinkedIn (10%) followed. PRN
Source: University of New Hampshire