OK, I give up. I have no idea why there’s so much space before the tables in the next entry. Anyone who’s reading this know why it’s happening?
[UPDATE: This was fixed within an hour of posting by the first comment attached to this message. Thank you!]
Author: Barry Parr
How broadband users use those big pipes
Broadband users are on the web more often and view more pages than dial-up users, according to Comscore, but they don’t appear to have any special interest in content designed for their speedy connections.
| Broadband | Dial-up | |
|---|---|---|
| Average Days per month per user | 30 | 18 |
| Average Pages per Usage Day | 131 | 108 |
| Average Minutes per Visitor | 1,850 | 1,119 |
| Average Pages per Visitor | 3,882 | 1,921 |
They use “Radio”, “Movies”, and “Multimedia” more than dial-up users, but they use “Taxes”, “Shipping”, and “Classifieds” a lot more, too. A lot of the differences in their habits can be accounted for by their greater household incomes.
| Broadband Visitors As % of Total Visitors | |
|---|---|
| Total Internet | 32% |
| Taxes | 55% |
| Radio | 52% |
| Shipping | 52% |
| Car Rental | 49% |
| Politics | 49% |
| Classifieds | 48% |
| Jewelry/Luxury Goods | 48% |
| Movies | 47% |
| Hotels/Resorts | 47% |
| Weather | 47% |
| Home Furnishings | 47% |
| Consumer Goods | 46% |
| Multimedia | 46% |
| Online Gambling | 46% |
| Comparison Shopping | 45% |
There’s little or no evidence in this study that broadband users are looking for broadband content. And once you account for the fact that they were probably heavier than average users when they had dial-up connections, it’s even unclear how much of their increased usage is due to their higher-speed connections.
It’s probably not a mistake to think that the one-third of US Internet usrs who have broadband will mind slow sites less than the two-thirds who have dial-up. But thinking that broadband users demand a new kind of Web is a mistake.
MSNBC makes a great case for HTML
This MSNBC story displays all the worst sins of Flash in news sites: useless animation for the sake of animation, long load times even on a high-speed connection, and crashing on a Macintosh. Then there’s their use of the word “interactive” as a noun to denote an interactive news story.
Couldn’t this story have been told better (and less expensively) using HTML?
Media Unspun post mortem
Back during the bubble, the only must-read email newsletter was the Industry Standard’s Media Grok. I was sorry when closed with the Standard and was glad to see it revived as Media Unspun. Media Grok did the best job of synthesizing the trades and the dailies and showing who really understood the implications of what they were reporting.
Now, sadly, Cyberjournalist interviews founder Jimmy Guterman about Media Unspun’s death and the challenges of making a living publishing on the Net.
Reading between the lines of press releases
Joho the Blog points us to Peter Kaminski’s brilliant analysis of the Cometa WiFi announcement:
To me it looks even simpler than that, a couple guys trying to make a small deal look big. Why else would they call Intel Capital “Intel”, and IBM Global Services “IBM”? Why are there no quotes from ATT, Intel and IBM in the release? Why don’t they post the size of the deal, instead of the scope of their goals? Why is their entire physical contact info “866-266-3823”? Why is Steve Harris, VP Corporate Affairs, listed as the sole press contact on the copy of the release on att.com? Etc.
Dead on. Clearly the reporters who reported this press release didn’t understand it.
I think this is a potentially exciting announcement, but clearly there are big issues with WiFi networks that remain to be resolved and this new joint venture announcement has failed to resolve them.
The tragedy of the marketing commons, Part II
Maistream marketers continue to foul the waters in which we all have to fish.
According to Marketingfix, Activision, Elvis Costello’s label, and thesite.org have hired an agency to post fake endorsements of their products to Usenet; and “MP3.com, owned by Vivendi Universal, requires users to provide an e-mail address before they can listen to music. Then, without offering a choice or notice, the site adds that address to six mailing lists, including a music newsletter and one for “partner product announcements.”
Why so much lousy marketing. Well, it works. Over at Clickz, Rudy Grahn admits a lousy, annoying banner he tossed off in a couple of minutes continues to live on–because it works.
Meanwhile Bonzi’s deceptive, jittery web junk is omnipresent–because it works. According to DoubleClick, “rich media” ads are gaining share–because they work (ten times as well as regular banners).
Big companies like Verizon and SBC assert their right to sell your private information to whomever they please and assert that it’s not simply their right, but that they’re doing you a favor. And Sprint PCS distributes flyers to their customers labeled “Sharing your information and protecting your privacy” without appreciating the irony.
But even Sprint can appreciate the irony of a spammer drowning in junk snail mail. He’s going to have to opt out of every one of those lists.
Saving Usenet with neglect
There have been many times in my life when Usenet answered questions I couldn’t get answered any other way: where can I get a copy of Benny Goodman’s recording of Bolero, what’s that song on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, and how do I set the date on a particular vintage wristwatch?
I just got the wristwatch question answered yesterday by a netizen who took some extra effort to get the answer right, and it saved me a lot of trouble.
I love how smart and helpful people are on Usenet. I love how communities continue to thrive there despite trolls, spammers, and now big company Astroturf marketing.
Usenet may be on its way to being useful again specifically because AOL and the mainstream ISP’s aren’t pointing newbies and trolls in that direction any more, or even offering access to newsfeeds.
Meta-disinformation
How much information is too much? WebSense notes that CBS MarketWatch’s links to meta-information (symbol, news, chart, profile) make the stories hard to read and aren’t really all that useful. A lot of this falls under the heading of something we do because we can and not because anyone uses it. Why not single link to a page with all that information and more? (Thank you, Jeremy Zawodny)
AOL's strategy: Six Feet Under?
AOL/TW is remaking AOL in the image of HBO.
Their thinking goes something like this: (1) AOL’s long-term success depends on moving from the doomed dial-up business to the hip and happening broadband business. (2) AOL’s broadband business depends on relationships with the cable companies who control broadband access to most American homes. (3) AOL must offer cable companies the kind of deal they’re used to from premium channels (like HBO) if they’re to cooperate. (4) AOL must develop premium AOL-only content if it’s going to be able to add value to basic high-speed access.
Every link in this chain of reasoning is weak.
The dial-up business is going to be around a lot longer than anyone thought because the access monopolies control the pipes into our homes. Besides, if AOL feels it needs to move beyond dial-up, it should be exploring wireless infrastructure with IBM, AT&T, and Intel.
InStyle Online is not premium content. AOL’s premium content is its software and its network of users–not its content. AOL has neglected its software and its users for too long. Especially insulting is its tag line for AOL 8.0 (“It’s more than an new version, it’s a whole new vision” — it’s barely a new version).
HBO’s success is not based on TV versions of Time Inc magazines–CNN gets those. It is based on access to movies that are available from lots of other sources, and original content that is available nowhere else.
Did patents and secrecy kill Xanadu?
Mamading Ceesay on the U.K. Patent Office site says HTTP defeated Ted Nelson’s Xanadu because it was a publicly available protocol, and Xanadu was a deep secret. That’s an interesting thesis, but it seems to me that HTTP defeated Xanadu because it was dirt-simple and (not coincidentally) it was an actual working protocol.
Xanadu, like Charles Foster Kane’s mansion, was never finished.