Facebook and YouTube receive the most Business traffic

Apr 19, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Social Media, Technology

Every week I hear from Marketing and PR folks that their ‘official’ company policy blocks access to Facebook, YouTube, and a host of other social networking-esque sites. While the concept boggles my mind, as to date, I’ve been hard pressed to find solid numbers to present to upper management, making the case for this epic fail.

Thanks to a new report issued by Network Box, management might have to block out a few hours this week to review/rethink this policy. The Network Box report indicates that more business traffic lands on Facebook that any other website.

The report analyzed over 13 billion URLs used by businesses in Q1 2010, and found that 6.8 percent of all business internet traffic ended up at Facebook, indicating a 1 percent growth from Q4 2009. In terms of bandwidth pull, video sharing Goliath YouTube garnered 10 percent of all corporate bandwidth, a 2 percent jump from Q4 2009.

250 IT managers were surveyed, no data was provided as to their geography or professional sector, about their biggest security concerns in the year ahead. 43 percent reported “employees using applications on social networks” as their biggest headache.

In a separate question, 36 percent of those surveyed indicated that they were concerned about malware passed via networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter, as employees are likely to trust links sent by those they’re connected to on the aforementioned platforms.

It’s been my experience that there’s often a great disconnect between the IT department, the HR staff, and the Marketing and Sales folks. While I certainly don’t critique the IT professionals from wanting to keep their systems free and clear of troubles (it’s their job, after all), I do believe that many companies could benefit from a “know the internetz” series of regular in-house trainings. I.e., how to spot a phish, how to check a shortened URL, etc. Remember, it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people.

In today’s rapidly changing face of business, cutting off your marketing and sales engagement, is exactly like that age old adage, Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Or more clearly, by restricting access, are employers, thus, restricting innovation?

With a little bit of personal internet security training, I’d imagine that those IT managers might find themselves with a few more problems; balancing server load do to the landslide of inbound company interest – thanks to social media engagement, for example.

Additional stats from the Network Box report:

The top five websites visited by businesses in Q1 2010 were:

1. Facebook – 6.8 per cent of all traffic
2. Google – 3.4 per cent of all traffic
3. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.8 per cent of all traffic
4. Yahoo! – 2.4 per cent of all traffic
5. Doubleclick – 1.7 per cent of all traffic.

The top five websites using the most bandwidth in Q1 2010 were:

1. YouTube – 10 per cent of all bandwidth used
2. Facebook – 4.5 per cent of all bandwidth used
3. Windows Update – 3.3 per cent of all bandwidth used
4. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.7 per cent of all bandwidth used
5. Google – 2.5 per cent of all bandwidth used.

Bonus thought: With the inclusion of Google’s Buzz, are IT professionals planning on restricting access to Google as well?  Score for Bing?

U.S. Mobile Gamers Smartphone Data

Apr 16, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Games

Industry leading metrics firm ComScore recently released their mobile gaming study data, with some interesting results. Although ComScore found a 13 percent drop in the number of U.S. mobile gamers over the past year, the same study saw mobile gaming on smartphones surge: up 60 percent. ComScore point out that the overall decline in mobile gamers is driven primarily by a 35 percent decline in mobile gaming on feature phones, which currently dominate the market with 80 percent.

“Although the number of mobile gamers has declined in the past year, there is reason for significant optimism about the future of this market,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP Mobile and senior analyst. “As the market transitions from feature phones to smartphones, the dynamics of gameplay are also shifting towards a higher quality experience. As a result, we can expect to see a profound increase in adoption of this activity, both in terms of audience size and overall engagement.”

Smartphone owners are heavy on mobile games

The ComScore data also found that smartphone owners are three times more likely than feature phone owners to play games on their device at least once a month. These same smartphone owners are more than five times more likely to play games almost every day.

Perhaps owing to the ease, smartphone owners also install significantly more games on their devices with 27.3 percent having installed at least one game, as compared to feature phone owners, who came in at a paulty 5.6 percent. Moreover, 33 percent of smartphone owners that install games have more than five games on their phone at any given time. By contrast, less than 1 percent of feature phone owners have more than 5 games installed.

“Smartphones offer a more accessible and compelling mobile gaming experience that is enabling adoption of this behavior, even among consumers who have not traditionally been gamers,” added Donovan. “Marketers and advertisers ought to be paying close attention to the opportunity this presents for reaching consumers in new and engaging ways in a cross-platform environment. The potential for highly creative marketing efforts is exciting.”

Arcade Puzzle games take top priority

In each area of gaming surveyed, smartphone owners are playing the pants off their feature phone counterparts. The games genre with the highest usages among smartphone owners is Arcade Puzzle games, garnering 12.9 percent of the market. Second place belongs to Card games (11.9 percent), Word/Number games in third (11.4 percent), Casino games scores fourth on players’ go-to list (7.6 percent), and Retro Arcade titles round out the top five (6.3 percent).

Casual vs. Hardcore

The ComScore study found that while casual games have a higher penetration rate over hardcore gaming titles and genres (sports, racing, action/adventure, FPS), the hardcore games exhibit a significantly higher adoption rate among smartphone owners.

HTML5 puts Google Gears offline permanently

Apr 15, 2010 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: Technology

With all the hoopla surrounding Monday’s announcement of a new and improved version of Google Docs, there’s one little phrase at the bottom of the announcement that may have passed by the average office worker: Gears is going offline. For good.

Google Gears is/was a plugin that allowed users to access their Google Docs sans internet connection, i.e. an ‘offline’ mode. Starting May 3rd, this option will no longer be available to Google Docs users, with functionality being “temporarily removed” … at least according to the official blog announcement. The same announcement does however, cite that Gears support will still be available for Gmail and Google Calendar.

So what gives? Why is Google taking the toys away? Well, the plain and simple answer is: HTML5. If you’ve not already familiarized yourself with HTML5, now would be the time, as these changes are likely to effect you. HTML5 is the next version of the markup language used to code the web (in one form or another). Note the phrase here: to code the web. Looking at Google Gears, we see the suffix: plugin. What we have here is a web standard vs. a plugin. Which one do you think is more attractive to developers?

By utilizing a new web standard, Google is freeing itself from the compatibility problems that can often arise when using plugins. For example, Apple’s Snow Leopard OS and Safari 4 introduced some new features that effectively squashed the ability to use Gears on newer Macs. Internet Explorer users were never able to view spreadsheets offline, and ‘other’ browser users either had zero Gears functionality, or had to jump through a ring of fire to obtain even minimal functionality.

Likewise, by switching to an HTML5 standard, Google is preemptively removing itself from the current shitstorm surrounding Apple’s decision not to allow the Adobe Flash plugin. In other words, they’ve found a clever, and competent, workaround to Apple’s sometimes draconian control of what makes it, and what doesn’t make it to their platform(s). With the inclusion of a new web standard, all Google has to do is conform Docs to this standard, et voilà, a cloud based document creation tool that will work in both off and online modes … internet connected or not.

While Google is remaining tight lipped on when exactly the HTML5 implementation will go live, they are hosting a webinar on 4/20 to further outline details of the ‘new’ Google Docs and all it’s functionality.

Social Media and Mobile Digital Radio Stats

Apr 11, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Social Media

Arbitron Inc. and Edison Research, have recently published the results of their The Infinite Dial 2010: Digital Platforms and the Future of Radio report, revealing a number of useful statistics in regards to today’s digital lifestyle. The survey includes data not only on MP3 and iPod usage and interest in digital radio, but also consumers’ relationship with traditional television media, as well as valuable social media usage.

Arbitron/Edison Research’s survey found that almost half (48 percent) of Americans aged 12 and older have a profile on one or more social networking platforms. The number effectively doubles the number from two years ago, where 24 percent had responded with the same information.

78 percent of teens and 77 percent of 18 – 24 year olds have a personal profile page, but that’s not to say that the older demographic isn’t in on the fun as well. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of 25 – 34’s have a profile page, and the 35 – 44’s indicated that more than half (51 percent) are ‘in’ social networking (profile page included).

“The use of social networking sites has expanded beyond younger consumers, with substantial numbers of Americans over the age of 35 now using social media,” said Bill Rose, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Arbitron Inc.

Mobile Digital Radio

The study found that nearly 25 percent of all Americans had listened to audio from an iPod or other MP3 device connected to the car stereo. Even though users must overcome a sometimes confusing myriad of adaptors and cables to route their audio through a car system, 54 percent of iPod/MP3 player owners have listened to their device in the car. The number equates to 24 percent of all those surveyed age 12 or older.

“Younger consumers show interest in radio on mobile phones,” said Tom Webster from Edison Research. “More than four in ten mobile phone owners age 12 to 24 say they would listen more to FM radio if a tuner were built into those phones.”

And while users are listening behind the wheel, on the Advertising front, survey respondents indicated that local TV and Newspaper websites are their go-to’s, and not the radio station website, which currently garners only 16 percent of their listening audience. Nearly half of those aged 12 and older admit that radio station websites have improved over the past few years, while 17 percent said that these sites have become worse or less interesting.

The survey, which included 1,753 people, found that most Americans between the ages of 12 – 44 now consider the Internet “most essential” in their lives when asked to choose just one information/entertainment media. 42 percent responded with “Internet”, and 37 with “Television”. Radio saw 14 percent, print media, 5 percent.

62 percent of homes with internet access also have wireless networks set up in their homes. The survey also found that 84 percent of homes with internet access have a broadband connection. Arbitron and Edison Research believe that the residential broadband adoption has leveled off, with little change year over year in weekly usage of online radio (17 percent) and online video (29 percent). They believe that the next wave of growth is likely to spark from use of mobile and in-car internet devices.

Gaming Industry vet Stevie Case launches StevieFTW podcast

Apr 1, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Games, News

If you’re a long time gamer, chances are you know, Stevie Case. She’s been deeply involved in the gaming industry for over 10 years now, with her initial success stemming from a triumphant win over John Romeo, creator of the all-time classic, genre-defining title: Quake.

During the 1990’s Stevie was a pre-law student at the University of Kansas by day, and hardcore gamer by night. She joined the ranks of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), and holds the honor of being the first ever professional female gamer. Post world gaming tours, Stevie moved into game development rolls, and eventually found herself in the world of High Tech Management. She currently juggles the hectic pace of heading up business development at microtransactions software provider, as well as being a full time mom “and loving it,” says Case.

Partnering with NewWorld.com, Stevie has recently signed a two-year agreement to host a weekly podcast, appropriately titled Stevie FTW. The podcast will focus on not only gaming, but the high tech lifestyle including web culture, digital media, and the latest gadgets and tech trends. Not solely bound to tech, Stevie will seek to cross her passions for adventure, food, wine, travel and more with her unique industry experiences.

The StevieFTW podcast officially launched yesterday, March 31st, and will air every Wednesday. Her initial guest, none other than gaming industry icon Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games. Bleszinski is one of the driving forces behind the Unreal franchise, as well as the Gears of War series. If this isn’t a high bar to set in an inaugural episode – I don’t know what is. I, for one, can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

“This is something that I’ve done for years, just not in Podcast form,” says Case. “There’s all this great info floating around in my, and others’, heads, and so the option to put it down on tape [so to speak] was a no-brainer. “

Catch Stevie FTW at stevieftw.com. No iTunes stream has been set up yet, but Case assures me it’ll be there “very soon”. You can also stay up to date with Stevie FTW on Twitter and Facebook.

4/4/10 Update: Here’s the Stevie FTW iTunes Podcast link.