Issue no. 389 - 22 June 2008

• ComScore: Facebook is beating MySpace worldwide (CNET)
  New numbers from metrics firm ComScore show that in May, the battle of the social-networking sites may have gained a new front-runner: Facebook appears to have surpassed longtime rival MySpace in worldwide unique visitors for the first time. ComScore representatives said that this began in April when Facebook passed MySpace by a hair, and widened in May. see also Facebook in France: Bonne chance. Facebook's still a long-shot second place in French social networking, according to the metrics. Skyrock, a site almost completely unknown in the U.S., pulled in 11.5 million unique visitors in April 2008 compared to Facebook's 3.2.

• UK - Facebook profiles need shielding from media intrusion, say users (OUT-LAW News)
  Nine in ten web users want guidelines on what information the media can use from social networking sites and 78% would change the information they publish about themselves online if they thought it would later be reproduced in the mainstream media. The research was carried out by Ipsos MORI for the Press Complaints Commission and involved interviews with 1,000 British web users aged 16 - 64.

Issue no. 388 - 1 June 2008

• AU - Cyber bullying an issue for Australian youth, poll finds (theage.com.au)
  Cyber bullying is affecting more than one in five young Australians, said the annual Youth Poll survey. The internet plays a critical role in the lives of 15- to 20-year-olds, with 64 per cent having a social network site such as MySpace or Facebook. But 22 per cent had been harassed or bullied online.

• Nielsen: MySpace, Club Penguin growth static, LinkedIn soaring (CNET)
  Nielsen's numbers, which track monthly unique visitors to social-networking sites, indicate that MySpace's growth from April 2007 to April 2008 was just 3 percent, and that Club Penguin's traffic shrank 7 percent. Business social network LinkedIn, is still growing rapidly, pulling in 361 percent more unique users than it did a year ago. Facebook is growing more slowly, with 56 percent more visitors.

• OECD - The broadband myth (Economist)
  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regularly releases a ranking of broadband penetration, speeds and prices across its 30 countries. More recently, it has begun to look at coverage and competition too. The OECD released its latest report. The number of broadband subscribers in the world's 30 biggest countries grew by 18% to reach 235m, or one-fifth of those countries' total population. Between 2005 and 2006, prices fell by an average of 19% for DSL connections and 16% for cable lines. At the end of 2004 the average speed was 2 megabits(MB) per second; in 2007 it increased to almost 9MB. But the excellent report, written by Taylor Reynolds and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, goes beyond the numbers and examines why broadband is actually useful. And here the authors face a problem: there simply is not good data to show that broadband matters. there is little evidence to support the notion that faster is inherently better. The rankings miss something crucial about how broadband is used, regardless of where a country stands.

• UK - Web users back code for bloggers (Guardian)
  Nearly half of all internet users would support a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers and online commentators, according to research. A survey by legal firm DLA Piper said 46% of web users think bloggers should sign up to a code that reflected the laws on defamation, intellectual property and incitement, with 15% ambivalent and 4% strongly opposed.

• UK - Web worlds 'useful' for children (BBC)
  Virtual worlds can be valuable places where children rehearse what they will do in real life, reveals research. They are also a "powerful and engaging" alternative to more passive pursuits such as watching TV, said the BBC-sponsored study. The research was done with children using the BBC's Adventure Rock virtual world, aimed at those aged 6-12. The researcher said the BBC should have involved children early on to guide development and provide feedback.

Issue no. 387 - 12 May 2008

• Class war hits social networking sites (vnunet.com)
  The college educated turn more to Facebook, according to the report, while MySpace caters largely for those who leave school early. A preliminary report from a six-month research project by the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley carried out by PhD student Danah Boyd found the class divide between popular social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.

• NZ - Research shows how Kiwi kids use the media (BSA)
  New research shows that New Zealand children are savvy media users and that while there has been an explosive growth of media devices in homes in the past few years, television remains the principal form of entertainment. The research, Seen and Heard, was carried out by Colmar Brunton for the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA). It involved interviewing more than 600 children aged between six and 13 and their primary caregivers. The focus of the research was how New Zealand children use and respond to media, including television, radio, the internet, and cell phones.

• Réseaux sociaux : des audiences différentes selon les continents (Le Monde)
  voir aussi Réseaux sociaux, mode d'emploi.

• UK - Brits addicted to social networking (Guardian)
  It seems that Britons are more addicted to poking and tweeting and writing on each other's walls than anyone else in Europe. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace reached 9.6 million users in the UK in 2007, according to a new report from Datamonitor. This puts it ahead of bigger countries, including France with 8.9 million and Germany with 8.6 million. Spain is in fourth place with just 2.9 million. The UK user base is forecast to almost triple to 27.1 million by 2012. For Europe overall, the user base is forecast to rise from 41.7 million now to 107.4 million over the next four years.

• US Digital media's impact on youth: Fresh research (Net Family News)
  "America's young people spend more time using media than they do on any single activity other than sleeping," according to The Future of Children, a joint project of Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. So we all need to know how our children and students use media - the Web, phones, videogames, instant messaging, music, video, TV, etc. - and how they affect their users. The just-released new issue of the project's journal Children and Electronic Media, published semi-annually, "looks at the best available evidence on whether and how exposure to different media forms is linked to child well-being."

Issue no. 386 - 20 April 2008

• UK - Children ignore age rules on social networking sites, says Ofcom (OUT-LAW)
  Half of the UK's internet-using children have profiles on social networking sites despite bans for users under 13 on the major sites according to research by media regulator Ofcom. The research found that users are not especially concerned with privacy. The regulator's research found that 49% of 8 to 17 year-olds who use the internet have a profile on a social networking site such as MySpace, Facebook or Bebo. This is despite the fact that the major sites say that users under 13 should not register pages.

• EU - Eurobarometer survey measures perceptions amongst European data controllers (RAPID)
  National laws on data protection demand good data management practices on the part of the entities that process data: the "data controllers". These include the obligation to process data fairly and in a secure manner, and to use personal data for well-defined and legitimate purposes. This Flash Eurobarometer survey on Data Protection in the EU (No 226) measures perceptions about data protection among data controllers in the 27 EU Member States.

• EU - Eurobarometer survey reveals that EU citizens are not yet fully aware of their rights on data protection (RAPID)
  This summary gives an overview of the findings of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on Data Protection that was conducted in January 2008. Previous waves of the survey had been performed three times before, in 1991, 1996 and 2003. Fieldwork was carried out from January 8th to 12th, 2008. Over 27,000 randomly selected citizens aged 15 years and over were interviewed in the 27 EU Member States.

• EU - More than 250 million Europeans regularly use Internet (RAPID)
  More than half of Europeans are now regular Internet users, 80% of them have broadband connections and 60% of public services in the EU are fully available online. Two thirds of schools and half of doctors make use of fast Internet connections, thanks to strong broadband growth in Europe. These are the findings of a Commission report on the results achieved so far with i2010, the EU's digital-led strategy for growth and jobs.

• UK - A generation of youth are being 'raised online' (IPPR)
  Many young people are effectively being 'raised online' spending in excess of 20 hours a week using sites such as bebo, Myspace, Facebook and YouTube, according to new research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). This is over three times higher than previous official estimates. This new research comes ahead of the final report of the Byron Review of children and new technology, set up by Gordon Brown in 2007 and headed by Dr Tanya Byron. See Behind the Screen: the Hidden Life of Youth by Kay Withers with Ruth Sheldon.

Issue no. 385 - 21 March 2008

• CN - Chinese race past Americans to top of world internet league (Guardian)
  China has more internet users than any other country in the world, according to researchers at the Beijing-based analysts BDA. The research group said China had leapfrogged the US to become the world's most powerful nation online. At the end of 2007, figures from China's internet network information centre said the country had 210 million internet users, putting it just a few million people behind the US. According to BDA, growth rates indicated that China had now taken the top spot.

• EU - Mobile Internet Usage In Europe To Surge Over The Next Five Years (Forrester)
  Thirty eight percent of cell phone users in Western Europe will use mobile Internet services by 2013 according to a new five year forecast by Forrester Research. The growth in adoption means that 125 million Europeans will access the Web regularly from their mobile phone - triple the number that do so today. One of the key drivers will be the proliferation of 3.5G-enabled devices, which will overtake the number of GSM-only and GPRS phones by 2010. By 2013, one in four consumers will own a 3.5G-enabled phone. Forrester Research Analyst Pete Nuthall said "Deploying high-speed mobile networks and rolling out advanced handsets are not enough to spark demand - our data shows that less than half of 3G phone owners use the 3G capability on their phone. To drive the mobile Internet, operators will need to push flat-rate data plans, increase the number of relevant services and applications, and introduce new devices that provide a better user experience."

• EU - Telecoms sector in broadband stats clash (EurActiv)
  Telecoms operators were embroiled in a statistical row, with the latest figures on broadband internet published by incumbent operators association ETNO appearing to contradict those provided by ECTA, the "competitive" operators group. The Commission will resolve the dispute on 19 March with the publication of a definitive set of data.

• UK - Digital kids ditch homework for networking (Guardian)
  British 15-to-19-year-olds admit spending significantly less time doing homework than they used to as a result of their use of social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. While teachers and parents will be dismayed, the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey also makes uncomfortable reading for commercial TV executives. It shows that not only does a significant proportion of the important 15- to 19-year-old audience watch less television as a result of social networking, but that the vast majority of Britain's 15-to-54-year-olds fast-forward through adverts when they watch programmes they have recorded. The report, produced by Entertainment Media Research for media law firm Wiggin, shows the way the internet has changed working, reading and viewing habits.

• UK - Facebook fatigue (Economist)
  The number of Britons logging on to Facebook has fallen for the first time, according to Nielsen Online, an internet-metrics firm. In January, 8.5m unique users caught up with friends and colleagues, down by 5% from December. Facebook has added 712% more users in Britain since January 2007 and it appears that a natural plateau has been reached: Bebo and MySpace hit their user peaks in mid-2007. People may also be turning to more specialised sites, such as LinkedIn, a professional-networking site. America has already seen growth slacken.

• UK - YouTube most popular networking site (Guardian)
  YouTube is now the most popular social networking website in the UK, overtaking the user-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia with 10.4 million unique users during January. The Google-owned video-sharing site saw a 56% increase in traffic from January the previous year, cementing the popularity of online video among web users, according to newly released Nielsen Online figures. Nielsen Online estimates that nearly two-thirds of UK web users - or 20.8 million people - visited at least one of the top 10 social networking sites.

• US - Mobile Access to Data and Information (Pew Internet & American Life Project)
  62% of all Americans are part of a wireless, mobile population that participates in digital activities away from home or work. Not only are young people attuned to this kind of access, African Americans and English-speaking Latinos are more likely than white Americans to use non-voice data applications on their cell phones.

Issue no. 384 - 24 February 2008

• CN - The internet in China (Economist)
  China will soon boast more internet users than any other country. But usage patterns inside China are different from those elsewhere. The internet fills gaps and provides what is unavailable elsewhere, particularly for young people. More than 70% of Chinese internet users are under 30, precisely the opposite of America, and there is enormous pent-up demand for entertainment, amusement and social interaction.

• EU - One person in eight in the EU27 avoids e-shopping because of security concerns (RAPID)
  In connection with the 5th Safer Internet Day on 12 February 2008, Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, presents a selection of statistics concerning internet activities, security concern and virus attacks. The Safer Internet Day is part of a global drive to promote a safer Internet for all users, in particular younger people, and is organised by Insafe, a European internet safety network co-funded by the European Commission. The data presented in this news release have been collected from the 2006 and 2007 surveys on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage in households and by individuals in the EU27. More data on Internet security and related topics can be found in the dedicated section Science and Technology/Information Society on the Eurostat website.

• US - Teens posting personal info: Study (NetFamilyNews)
  We now have further insights into teens' info-sharing practices in the Journal of Adolescence. According to this, 8.8% revealed their full name, 57% included a picture, 27.8% listed their school and 0.3% provided their telephone number. The authors concluded that "the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the web site." Personal information of adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace by Sameer Hindujaa and Justin W. Patchin.

Issue no. 383 - 27 January 2008

• CN - China Internet Population Tops 200 Million (IDG)
  China's Internet population stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53 percent from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use.

• Americans turn to online videos (BBC)
  Online video sharing sites are reaping the benefits of the ongoing writers' strike in the US. According to net measurement firm Nielsen Online, some online video sites have doubled their audience since the strike began at the end of October. The news comes as US-based Pew Internet Project highlights a more long-term growth of video sharing sites.

• CN - Bloggers in China surpass 47 million (People's Daily Overseas)
  China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) published the 2007 China blog survey report recently. The report showed that, by the end of November 2007, China blog spaces have totaled 72.82 million, and the number of bloggers reached 47 million. see also Blogs popular among China's youngsters, but many soon go blank (Xinhua).

• Flat-rate tariffs drive mobile networking (Guardian)
  Flat-rate internet tariffs are helping drive take-up of social networking tools on mobile phones, with some users spending more than an hour a day online, according to research. Singapore-based mobile communities firm BuzzCity polled 875 users of its MyGamma service, which offers discussion groups, photo sharing, calendars, mobile blogging and virtual gifts for around 2 million users in 60 countries.

• UK - Christmas online sales 'rise 50%' (BBC)
  UK online sales rose by more than 50% in the three months to Christmas, according to an industry survey. Internet sales between 1 October and 31 December hit £15.2bn, up from £9.61bn a year earlier, with electronics and clothing doing well, Capgemini said. Firms with both a High Street and online presence, such as John Lewis, did best, the survey said. For every pound spent on goods in 2007, 15 pence was spent online, pushing annual electronic sales to £30.2bn.

• UK - Life through a lens: how Britain's children eat, sleep and breathe TV (Guardian)
  A generation of "multitasking" children are living their daily lives - including eating and falling asleep - to the accompaniment of television, according to a survey of youngsters' media habits. The flickering of the screen accompanies most of them before they go to school, when they return home, as they consume their evening meal and then - for 63%, far more than read a book each day - in bed at night. The study of five- to 16-year-olds shows that four out of five children now have a TV set in their bedroom. So ubiquitous has television become that many children now combine it with other activities, including social networking online, flicking their eyes from laptop to TV screen and back again. Even if they are focusing on the television, young people are now reluctant to commit to one programme, with boys in particular often flipping between channels to keep up with two simultaneous shows at once.

• US - Researchers tapping Facebook usage for social dataset (Ars Technica)
  It's fairly easy to obtain demographic information - age, ethnicity, health status, etc. - from simple surveys. But researchers are becoming increasingly interested in how some of those demographic features interact with social connections, which are much harder to track. Those interested in studying social networks, however, are finding that today's college students are doing the hard work for them at sites such as MySpace and Facebook. In what may be the most ambitious effort of its type, a group of researchers at Harvard and UCLA is surreptitiously tracking an entire freshman class' social connections using their Facebook profiles.

Issue no. 382 - 6 January 2008

• Online, in touch, up to speed: UK's social network obsessives are European leaders (Guardian)
  One in four UK adults do it 23 times a month. And Britons do it more often than anyone else in world, except for Canadians. The obsession is with social networking, which according to a report from the regulator Ofcom. is categorically no longer the preserve of teenagers and students, and has been adopted by a growing army of older surfers determined to link up with old acquaintances. Thanks to their growing obsession and the widespread availability of broadband, the UK leads Europe in using sites such as Facebook and MySpace. See International Communications Market 2007 (OFCOM). Part 2 - Convergence.

Issue no. 381 - 8 December 2007

• Games content 'concerns parents' (BBC)
  More than 75% of parents are concerned about the content of video games played by their children, a survey suggests. Almost half of the 4,000 parents surveyed in the UK, France, Italy and Germany said that one hour of gaming each day should be the limit. Some 43% of the surveyed parents said they were not aware of ratings systems for games to determine suitability. The survey comes as Dr Tanya Byron conducts a separate review of games and their impact on UK children.

• JP - Japanese Poll: 87% Accept Manga Child Porn Regulation (Anime News Network)
  The Japanese government's Cabinet Office issued the results of its Special Opinion Poll on Harmful Materials, in which 86.5% of those who responded said that manga and art should be subject to regulation for child pornography, if they had to decide. 90.9% said that "harmful materials" on the Internet should be regulated, if they had to decide. The current child pornography laws in Japan do not regulate manga and art that depict children who are not real, or "virtual child pornography."

• US - Parent and Teen Internet Use (Pew Internet & American Life Project)
  Parents today are less likely to say that the internet has been a good thing for their children than they were in 2004. However, this does not mean there was a corresponding increase in the amount of parents who think the internet has been harmful to their children. Instead, the biggest increase has been in the amount of parents who do not think the internet has had an effect on their children one way or the other. Fully, 87% of parents of teenagers are online - at least 17% more than average adults. Parents check up on and regulate their teens' media use, not just in terms of the internet, but with television and video games as well. However, those rules lean slightly more towards the content of the media rather than the time spent with the media device.

Issue no. 380 - 30 September 2007

• Global study about youth and technology (Multichannel News)
  When it comes to influencing young people, friends are often the best brand marketers. That?s one of the key takeaways from a new global study about youth and technology called "The Circuits of Cool/Digital Playground" from MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, which used both qualitative and quantitative methodology to talk to 18,000 kids (8-14) and young people (14-24) in 16 countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In the study, MTV Networks and Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions studied 21 technologies that impact on the lives of young people: Internet, e-mail, PC, TV, mobile, instant messaging, cable and satellite TV, DVD, MP3, stereo/hi-fi, digital cameras, social networks, on and offline video games, CDs, HDTV, VHS, webcams, MP4 players, digital-video recorders/personal video recorders and hand-held game consoles. See also Teens establish community generation (FT).

• P2P responsible for as much as 90 percent of all 'Net traffic (Ars Technica)
  P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days, according to a new survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm. ipoque's "preliminary results" show that P2P applications account from anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic. Leading the way is BitTorrent, which has surpassed eDonkey as the P2P protocol of choice. During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. The wide variance in the figures is due to local preference, according to ipoque: in some parts of the world, eDonkey still reigns supreme when it comes to P2P traffic.

Issue no. 379 - 2 September 2007

• Half of employers restrict Facebook (News.com)
  Half of businesses are restricting employees' access to social-networking site Facebook, due to concerns about productivity and security. According to research by security company Sophos, 43 percent of workers polled said their employer blocks Facebook access completely. A further 7 percent said access is restricted depending on whether it's required for a particular job. The issue of security was also raised by the Sophos research. In a separate poll by the company, 66 percent of workers said they are concerned about colleagues sharing information on Facebook.

• Online Publishers Association - Internet Activity Index (OPA)
  The Internet Activity Index (IAI) provides a new way of looking at consumer engagement online, dividing Internet usage into four distinct activities: content, communications, commerce and search. The IAI is derived from a categorization of Web properties accounting for more than 90%, on average, of active Web users and approximately 55% of total usage time (excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains).

• Parents shaky about kids' safety online (CNET News.com)
  by Stefanie Olsen. The majority of parents say they've taken some action to ensure their child's safety online, but at least some will admit they're clueless about how to protect kids. According to a new study from research firm Harris Interactive, roughly a third of parents said they don't feel confident about teaching kids how to use the Internet safely and responsibly. Nevertheless, as many as 94 percent of parents have turned to Web content filters, monitoring software or advice from an adult friend to help shield their kids from harm on the Net.

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