January 2010

Nielsen: Broadband use up, users more social

A new study from Nielsen finds that more U.S. Web users are using broadband, going social, and checking out Web videos. According to Nielsen, of the 195 million active Web users in the U.S, 160.3 million, or 93.3 percent, access the Web with a broadband connection, representing a 16 percent increase over 2008 figures. Nielsen also found that more Americans than ever are consuming online video content. The research firm said 138.4 million unique viewers watched online video in 2009, up 11.4 percent from 2008. All told, they average 11.2 billion video streams per month. The typical U.S.-based Web viewer watches 200.1 minutes of video per month. U.S. Web users are also going social in a big way. According to Nielsen, 56 percent of active U.S. Web users spend an average of six hours on Facebook per month. The social network is also the third-most-visited site by users who are 65 and older. Nielsen said Twitter's growth has topped 500 percent year-over-year. All told, the amount of time Americans spent on social networking sites in 2009 increased by 277 percent.

Strategic Learning for Health Care in 2010

Connected patients spread new ideas, new treatments, and new ways of approaching a condition. Patient networks can help you anticipate change and innovate in the right direction. Social media can be a window into their world. Pew Internet surveys show that 8 in 10 Americans have access to the Internet. Social media use is trending up. Health is holding steady as one of the most popular activities online. E-patients are listening to each other, consulting hospital reviews and doctor reviews, and posting which treatments work for them. People living with chronic disease, your best customers, are less likely to go online. But their loved ones may fill in the gap. One-third of American adults care for a loved one and eight in ten of those caregivers go online. One-third of adults experienced a medical emergency in the past year, either their own or someone else's. They are online too. A medical crisis flips a switch in people. It makes them want to become superheroes and save a life if they can. The Internet is very often their weapon of choice.

PTC Blasts Sunday's 'American Dad'

The Parents Television Council is urging its members to file indecency complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about Fox's Jan. 3 episode of American Dad. The program aired at 9:30 pm ET/PT and 8:30 pm CT/MT, which falls during the hours when indecent content is prohibited on broadcast television. The program was rated aired TV-14 DLSV by Fox, meaning that in the network's opinion, this content was appropriate for 14-year-olds.

Obama 'Frustrated' By 'Slow' Confirmation For Nominees, Expected To Re-Nominate

President Obama is increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of confirmation for his judicial and executive appointees, according to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs expressed the administration's discontent with what he deemed a deliberate commitment to obstructionism by Republicans in the Senate. But he added that he was not aware of any effort by the president's legislative staff to draft legislative language to dampen the use or effectiveness of the filibuster. "We have put a number of people into government in the first year," Gibbs said, in a response to a question by the Huffington Post. "But at the same time we have seen a pacing in dealing with nominations, both for the executive branch and judicial nominations that, I think, by almost any estimation would be deemed slow."

Qwest shops its long distance network again (with local attached)

"We're agnostic about being a buyer or a seller," said Ed Mueller, CEO of Qwest Communications, at an investor conference yesterday, though he sounded much more like a seller as he continued. "We do bring a nice long-distance network," he pointed out, adding that those particular assets "absolutely" become more valuable as the need for more wireless backhaul capacity increases. Qwest already has signed contracts to string fiber to 2000 of its 17,000 cell cites and expects revenue from these five-to-10-year deals to start showing up later this year and escalate in 2011.

Google's 10 toughest rivals

The biggest tech industry news story of the decade was undoubtedly the dramatic rise of Google. But will the search and online advertising juggernaut continue its dominance over the Internet economy in 2010? Not if the tech companies on this list can help it: Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Hulu, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon, and Yahoo.

Doctors say their EMRs are ready to show meaningful use

Eighty-five percent of healthcare providers believe their ambulatory electronic medical record software will enable them to meet the 2011 meaningful use deadlines being considered by the federal government, according to a new report from KLAS. However, many respondents say their technology lacks adequate reporting functionality. Most respondents believe their EMR will help them meet the proposed government requirements, with Epic, NextGen and athenahealth customers expressing the most confidence and SRSsoft and Amazing Charts clients expressing the least. Providers also noted a number of functional areas that are still lacking. Foremost among these were EMR reporting tools, patient access to medical records and the ability to share key clinical data.

How Google (or Apple) Can Win the Great Super Phone War of 2010

Assuming that Google's Nexus One is a worthy competitor for Apple's iPhone, who will win the battle of the AppPhone or Super-Smart Phone? These SUPER communication devices represent intense, emotional and personal commitments. We don't just buy them, we adopt them. They are more a part of our identity than any previous digital technology. We are merging our own identities with Apple, Google, or whomever. That's right, this is a brand war as much as a technology one. Google will have to figure out how to compete with Apple on that level if they are to succeed with their mobile strategy. Apple changed the game, not just with their technology, but with the way they marketed the benefits of the iPhone software experience. Not only did Apple fundamentally shift the economics of the mobile phone business they fundamentally shifted the software marketing game as well, forcing everyone to compete with their app store juggernaut. Try to come up with a unique value proposition for your smartphone and it is likely that Apple offers dozens of apps that deliver that same benefit. Game over, right?

Rogue Marketers Can Mine Your Info on Facebook

Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each — such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you're looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list. But as Klein points out, a marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected — and upload those through a dummy account — which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook's ubiquity and most people's reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich. Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests.

Broadband Stimulus Lacks Bandwidth

The federal government's announcement of the first broadband stimulus awards is a terrific first step in extending the reach of broadband communications across the United States. However, the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) need to pick up the pace in awarding broadband stimulus funds, and take additional steps to ensure program dollars are deployed with maximum efficiency and impact. My firm, PRTM, has worked with public and private organizations to plan for and implement successful broadband networks since the early days of broadband technologies and businesses. Based on hundreds of such projects worldwide, we see three critical gaps in the government's current approach 1) Lack of a Clear and Cohesive Broadband Strategy, 2) No Clear Criteria for Prioritizing and Funding Projects, and 3) High-Risk Approach to Ensuring Efficient and Effective Deployment.

Benton

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