The Cloud, Collaboration and Polaroid Glasses

I was watching Richard Dawkins last night on TV and he made me ask some important questions about the Net.

He asked what is it when individual neurons act together – millions and billions of them collaborating to produce a person, with intelligence and the capacity for self reflection – and something that some may call a soul?

And following on from this I ask, what is it when tools of collaboration - such as a fluid for messages to flow through serves this function, permitting a physical, social, psychological and educational quantum leap for a group of individuals within a body, or for entire echelon within a social group. Each person plays the role of a neuron, and the body is an echelon otherwise known as the digerati or a part of it. The lubricant of collaboration (closing the gap between the synapse) is social media and tools like Google Wave, file-sharing and torrents or open source software.

As the Roman army well knew – the essence of social advantage arises from collaboration, genius and good communication. Over-stretching the supply chain leads to failure.

And I further ask: what is it when elements of human society take on (inherit), this advantageous, favourable gene – each neuron, both selfishly and generously, using it to their advantage, growing more influential, quicker and more efficient through the communication with other similarly favoured neurons (twitter/facebook through smartphones/mini-pc’s). And what becomes of this group of super cells when they exist within a milieu of similarly favoured or not so favoured ones? Do they become a cancer, a brain, or a new speciality organ charged with information, educational and development?

Is it true that access to information and learning together with the capacity to process, understand and reproduce that information – to appropriate it – gives advantage and success?

I suspect so, and this in essence, is what twitter and social media and Google wave are doing and providing for individuals within the digital society, and the power of these individuals is not their own access to information, (anyone who can search Wikipedia or Google has this), but their group access to a larger cloud of individuals who filter an even greater reach of information. In a world which truly is overloaded with data and facts, intelligent filtration is everything.



Seeking facts through a cloud brings clarity out of confusion, like looking at the bottom of a pond through Polaroid glasses. The better and stronger the glasses, the deeper and clearer you can see. So being part of a good generous cloud of bright people is more advantageous for information processing and finding the fish, than being a blind boffin in your own right, swamped by light from every angle, and without any dinner.

Experts and agencies remind individuals of their weakness and ignorance and dependency, and act as a source of disempowerment and alienation. For example, the days of adverts for household cleaners with an ‘expert’ in the white coat saying ‘It’s Vortex’ are long gone. His place is being taken by a cloud of product users who profile and report on product qualities. All are empowered, inclusive and seeking a better truth.

The net has always embraced the cloud and the multitude and its growth has been explosive as a result, since the days of Usenet and AOL, through to the likes of facebook, twitter, Linux and Wikipedia. These have grown more quickly, and been more successful than any individual or company could ever have hoped to be. The growth of the cloud has been simply exponential and collaboration is its fuel.

Clouds are now the source of news and truth and growth and development. Cloud members trust the recommendations of friends and colleagues above any other source. People always did, we just couldn’t see it, or measure it the way we can in a digitally mediated space. Collaboration takes place in social media, twitter, and file-sharing spaces, and through development tools like Google wave, open source software and open APIs. Fluency in the understanding and use of these collaborative tools gives advantage to the individuals within clouds in their access to information through and collaboration with the other larger ones.

In 1976 Richard Dawkin's wrote his influential book 'The Selfish Gene'. In 2009 the net and social media have shown that 'The Collaborative Gene' gives a model much closer to the truth.

5 Digital Developments in the Past Year

Too many blogs of this type are predictive. I, or they, generally say what will happen. The truth is that, for advertiser and researchers at least, many are more interested in what has already happened, and how many are doing it, whether that is to watch a show, visit a website, or use a new medium. Of course, you need both, but for me, who’s heritage dates pre-dot.com bubble days, the whole game has always been to work out what might happen next, and build it, service it, understand it. The Internet business developers’ answer to the land grab, or gold rush mentality. But in the recent past, many became wealthy doing exactly this. Then again, if you are a person who thinks of new businesses, and services, and offers them, you need to have both approaches running en train.

So, with that in mind, today, I’m taking stock.

Digitally speaking, here are five of the biggest things that have happened in the past year.

1) Social Networks - Personal Home-life Profiles
Social networks embody web 2.0 thinking, and have changed the way we use the net. In the past the Internet was used in several key ways, described in previous posts. Adding the truly social mechanics of Facebook, and latterly twitter, have helped it realise the potential as a truly digitally mediated social space that it always had, but which in the past, was the stuff of the geeks and the young, or both. Now using the net for building profile pages, and connecting with others is child’s play. Today, with 300,000,000 users (that’s 300 million, but the noughts help us remember that’s a really big number), there are twice as many people using Facebook than live in Russia and the FB population is at least doubling every year. Twitter’s growth is similar. In fact, 10% of all net time is spent tweeting, something discussed at length in previous posts. If social network use were to approach the popularity of similar Japanese social networks, proportionately, one in two people in modern western democracies would be using it. I don’t know what that number might be... but it’s in the billions (nine noughts). There’s an advertising and research opportunity if ever I saw one.



2) Personal Work Profiles

Linked in and similar sites provide all of us a simple, clean, pervasive mechanism for maintaining our CV and reputation, which, in the recent past, was controlled by undeserving employers. Imagine having to get a reference from the likes of David Brent? Lots had to. Now they don’t have to. A simple change, but it opens up a psychological power shift in the workplace. Staff can also work out what others are getting paid for similar work and search for and find fresh employment from the comfort of their existing desk, and job. Again, this leads to confidence, empowerment of a workforce, and control for the individual over their working history and their reputation. It’s also true that Linked in makes CV’s largely irrelevant. Let the prospective employer link to you, and they can see all they need to know. Balance!

3) iPhone and 3G
Despite similar functionalities in the past (my favourite XDA IIs for example), the iPhone has revolutionized digital communication. Soon, everyone will have one, or similarly fully enabled 3G devices, which will push broadband Internet penetration and use to equal that of mobile phones, at around 100%. The joke about the iPhone, is it’s not a phone at all. It’s a tiny, flexible, powerful laptop. It’s optimized though, and only does what you’d use a laptop for, not the other bells and whistles you never use, or which get in the way when you want to use something. Virus checkers and the many Microsoft programs rarely, if ever, opened, are a good examples. Virus checkers on an Outlook are a special bug bear of mine... But, of course, the iPhone is not stuck to a desk, it’s mobile. In star trek terms the iPhone is a communicator, the screen on the bridge, the location scanners (maps/gps/lbs), the character Data (Google), the simulator (roleplay and other games), the school (iTunes u), the contact with earth (email), and, of course, the captain’s log. It’s also much more, and, all these are included in this one tiny light communicator device, if you understand me. In my experience devices or programs that offer this sort of efficiency always win in the end, if not in the beginning - despite begrudgers and luddites that abound.

4) Shopping Online
Shoppping has changed forever. The Internet is the consideration medium. If you’re doing something big, or spending non-grocery money, it’s where you consider where you should send your hard earned bucks. Having quick unobtrusive access to your social set and industry sector, especially when times are tight, makes net access a must. This changes the way we shop, of course, but also the way we think about shopping. We never liked to have the wool pulled over our eyes, and be tricked into over spending, but now we can take steps to avoid this. And, if we are tricked, the over-charging or dishonest supplier can be punished, not by the courts, but by public opinion. Reviews, blogs and tweets that tear strips off this person, or that company who behaved in a less than forthright manner, are common place. So, watch out pedlars of shoddy merchandise, or poor service. What goes around comes around, and what may be going round is a tale about you. Ya crook!

5) Time Shift, Convergence and Content items



Convergence, a dreadfully over-used word, is now a digital reality. It kind of snuck in the back door without knocking. We did apply the word to hardware, and software, and media and all sorts in our three dimensional world, but never included the fourth dimension, time.

In the end of the day, winning the race of survival of the fittest often involves getting their first, so Time for humanity is everything. But, with so many media items and formats around, the solution is not so much getting all of the information immediately. It would be too confusing and distracting. It is more about getting all of the information, but in a manner that you can choose to consume it at a time that suits yourself.

Time shift requirements have been the key driver for convergence in my opinion, from the early days of the Tivo, a personal video recorder popular among the Sex in the City characters, to Google alerts linking to blogs, video and newspaper text, through to Sky +, stop, rewind, record, remind, series link. But actually, time shifted content consumption goes back to the early days of the vinyl record. We’ve always been after where we are today. It’s just digital makes content reproduction infinitely simpler and more successful than say wax rolls, or cassette and video tapes.

The growth in portable media, and podcasts make the point. And consequently, the digital language of formats, delivery and media buying have steadily pervaded all other media sources. The pervasiveness of twitter on the mobile phones has made citizen journalists out of all. I got the news about the Luas and Bus crash yesterday, in a twit pic four minutes after the collision. However, I could consume it when I chose to. I wasn’t going to miss anything, so it’s a stress free process to be open to a vast array of data inputs, or news, as we call it. And it’s a reality, here, today. In relation to the Luas crash, I could see, by refreshing the picture, that it was getting over 100 views every minute and the rate was growing steadily.

All the theories of media and political communications I studied at University (gatekeepers, agenda setters and the like) are largely obsolete and any new ones better be written and published quickly before they go out of date too. Unless the academic sets up an alerts system so other can see what they’re working on of course.

A rapidly changing landscape and too much news would cause a glut, if it weren’t for splitting away of news and content from the news source, or sender, and the chunking of it into podcasts, video casts, tweets, digital program downloads or similar content items. Content items are king. And almost all can be consumed on any device. iPod, iPhone, laptop, iTunes etc, etc. And look at the ‘i’s. That’s convergence. And Apple appear to be at its epicentre.

Moore Street on the Net. The Trader Segment of Netizen will Grow in Importance

A recent segmentation I ran on Internet behaviour showed several groups.

Dolittles (6%): This group don’t do much and could be termed low intensity Internet users. They report that they all use the Internet for email and chat and they will use all of the other Internet categories, but much less often than the other groups.

Media Consumers (31%): These are the consumers of net content in all its forms, and from all form of traditional media online (RTE, Irish Times, Sky etc), so I’ve called them the media net. Yes, but they’re net surfers with a purpose rather than aimless geeks enjoying the beauty of things digital. This group will go to read news of all sorts. They’ll be financially savvy and are well educated. They also have good jobs and incomes too. These use the net as an information resource and a career enhancing tool to aid decision making and economic communication.

Networkers (8%): Perhaps once considered the ‘sad’, depressive net addicts this group is now recognized as a growing segment of net activity, and they’re using the net tool to help extend their overt social nature... (or over compensated social phobia) and they love it.

These are the group who are into chatting and networking. They like to be linked and bring on the buzz of chit chat and juicy gossip. Yes, more girls in this group, but only just. They like chat, user generated content, bulletin boards and dating. These are the net socialites who get their fix of friendships and talk online.

I think this group are especially important as the trend towards a more digitally mediated social existence and staying in contact with ‘everyone you ever knew’ to feel part of the community is a strong one. It may just be a new stage in reaching maturity, or feed into broader psychological needs, but its there and will only become more prevalent in society and persistent in nature.

At an extreme, it gets silly. Is someone with 14 contacts less happy or socially or economically adept than someone with 100? Or 500? Doubt it, and studies would indicate that 50 is the max number of relationships people can handle at all. (For Lions its 30). Business contacts may be different of course and it will be quality not quantity that is important there too. Get this for a wheeze. There’s a cheat on Bebo so you can pretend you have 100s of friends. (Hope there’s one for LinkedIn L)

Mappers, Restaurants and Cars (42%): Then, there are those who use the net for restaurants, car trading and maps.

They might use email, but the net hasn’t impacted on this group socially or economically at all really. These tend to be older men who perhaps don’t have the time or the need to be chatting to their peers who aren’t that net savvy anyway. The net makes sense to them when they can print off a map or a timetable, but the rest of the stuff? Well, really! It’s more for the kids isn’t it, though he doesn’t understand what exactly it is that they do when they do it. But, he’s (as it typically a he) is proud of his net connectedness nevertheless. This group you won’t see on the web that much really except for newspapers, Google and main stream media.

Traders (13%): This is the group that are the main focus of this post. These use the Internet like an ATM... a ticketing machine for flights, banking and shopping. Functional stuff. 13% of Internet users are in this distinct group. Doing things without having to queue for less money, or when they need to upgrade their phone.

But, within this group are those that use eBay and Classifieds. The tech savvy ‘trotter’s independent traders’ of the great web boot sale in the ether. This is one of the most important sectors to Ireland Internet economy. The invisible spivs, the attic hunter gatherers, the ebayerati.

What exemplifies this group from the others is their need to make money from the net rather than spend time on it or buy things on it, though they will be include those who do. They ‘make’ money either in savings on goods purchased in other markets, or by selling and trading. And, I think in the current economic climate, this group is set to grow...

eBay consider people to be basically honest, and they’ve been proven right. Yes, there are always some people who’ll try to sell fake goods, but we don’t blame the platform, but rather the seller, and that’s the way it should be.

For example, I’ve always known that if I buy a €5 watch when I’m on holiday in Tunisia and it turns out not to be a real Rolex it’s totally my fault for being such a mean muppet – thinking I can take the piss in a third world country and even haggling him down from €20 and thinking I was clever. God, I so deserved it. (‘Wanna buy Rolex, Tag, Swatch? Reel Gold! Verry good price for you my friend. You Ireesh? My Mother she ees Ireesh. I write letter to her in Ireesh.’ And I thought I had the upper hand. what was I thinking?)

No, there’s is no such thing as a free lunch. And, the same applies online. But, on the other hand I also know that there are good carpets to be bought in Turkey, or art, or whatever, so I’ll have few qualms about taking that risk. eBay is a bit like that for me. Great bargains for the discerning purchaser. It’s just like the real world. There are millions of things to buy online, if you look and it doesn’t take long with a little practice. eBay should be a primary port of call before you shell out full whack for new goods with all the VAT attached. Very often, the only difference between an eBay purchase and a retail one is the box and Styrofoam it’s packed in, and even that can be an inconvenience to get rid of. Then there are tickets, brand new goods, antiques and all sorts of stuff you will only be able to buy online - if you look that is.

There’s a new breed of Irish seller to join the street sellers of Moore’s Street and Camden Street, and they’re waiting with their wares to sell to the highest bidder on the net.

This group don’t look like traders though. They are homemakers, women with kids, men who look for car parts online, fixers, menders and make doers. Oh, and a few petty crooks of course. These are the people who keep the family budget ticking over and make sure the car gets the kids to school. These are the head down and work hard bunch and these are the group I think are kind of recession proof, philosophically speaking anyway. It’ll be hard alright but they’ll manage, and if they don’t remember a recession themselves, their parents and grandparents won’t waste any time in reminding them.

And finally, I think we should all take a leaf out of the philosophy of the net trader. For the giant Irish middle class there’s no shame in saving money in Lidl any more is there. It’s a competition for how much you’ve saved, rather than being concerned about how much you have to spend. And to sell and trade things you don’t have to have a stall on the main street and the voice of 10,000 Woodbines - it can be done from your front room. I think it’ll catch on.

And Finally...

And finally, though these groups add up to 100% they are not ‘discrete’ groups. They cross over each other and almost all use email and Google etc to some extent (there are those that don’t believe it or not). So, there will always be exceptions, that is, groups that don't fit into these bands, but these groups represent a statistically valid generality with whatever insight that can provide. If you know a find a different group not described above they may reside within one of mine, or the Dolittles, or they are just new, or strange. Or indeed, they maybe have been so niche the weren't picked up by my sample. Gamers, for example, are omitted, and they are becoming steadily more important. But, they fall between stools in my breakdown... somewhere between social networks and chatters including behaviours of both. Why do they fall between stools? Well, because the stats told me they did. And, what does that mean? Well, if you think about it gaming is a social communicative practice after all, but there is no typical ‘gamer’ behaviour online on sites other than gaming sites that differentiates the gamer, as a type of Internet user, from the others. In other words, gamers are normal, just like the rest of us or there’s a gamer in all of us. Gamers don't use the web any differently to the rest of us... at least not yet with any statistical significance anyway. That will probably change in the coming years.

But tell me what you think? Do you know some groups that need exploration? Is there more to this than meets my eye? Let me know. I always listening, very interested and keen to learn.

And in the meantime why not get an eBay account and check it out. You know you want to and you could maybe save a bundle! J

How the Internet is Changing the World

OK. I’m indulging myself here... so, sorry if it’s boring. These are just some ideas, so skip this post if you’re looking for a quick hit of Irish net data.

Take yourselves back, 2300 odd years and Alexander's conquests have expanded the size of the known world from Europe east to India, Afghanistan and beyond. New trade routes, language, communication and the opening of the library at Babylon are the result. 2000 years and the Roman’s are building roads all over their Empire, and walls and aqueducts - paths for language, culture, post and armies to travel upon. 1700 odd years and Emperor Constantine’s coinage has the invincible sun on one side and the Christian holy labrum on the other.... (perhaps the first mobile marketing campaign) bringing together diverse peoples behind common symbols. The Renaissance and the Europeans re-discover the classical age after the desert of the dark ages, and printing begins. The 20th century and things speed up apace. Trains, planes and automobiles combine with post, telephone, Marconi’s radio and TV... all shrinking the world. And then comes the net.

The net may be more important to the growth, development and perpetuation of human civilization than all of the other changes mentioned combined. I’ll give five reasons, though there will be others...

1. Global communication of ideas, instantaneously... across media. No need for roads, or tickets, post or paper... and (almost) everyone can use the net. The democratic idea generation and dissemination much feared after Gutenberg almost 600 years earlier, has finally arrived
2. Central publishing and self publishing makes social and political control and ownership of ideas and knowledge almost impossible. Even powerful knowledge like how to make a neuclear weapon requires merely access to Google. Government propoganda has never been so difficult and may indeed become largely obsolete
   
3. Mobile internet makes idea generation and dissemination instantaneous and moves them from the post office to the pocket. 
   
4. Learning and idea generation speeds up by perhaps a factorial of 10, every six months. Wikipedia is 7 years old, has 10 million articles (at least) and it’s updated every day by thousands of authors. Brittanica takes a lifetime to write and the paper edition at least is a little bit out of date even before it goes to print. There’s a quality difference, but still...
   
5. Internet protocol takes the best from all the media that have gone before, and centralizes them seamlessly. The medium isn’t the message, and neither is the format. The message is the message and anyone can produce one. Listen, read, see online or on your mobile... regardless of whether the initial content producer worked for a TV station, radio, newspaper or was a blogger. And then readers can comment on the message for all the other consumers of the message and the comment... a whole new broadcast message. And with web 2.0 this is only the beginning...
   

The net is the warp drive for human exploration, idea generation and communication, where TV was merely a pulse. Blogs carry the Gutenberg revolution to its extreme, while mobiles democratize the moving images of TV, and turns them into moving images on the move generated by the mover. Need to see pictures from Mars? Need results from recent medical trials? Need to say I love you to someone on the other side of the planet? Need to secretly broadcast a war in some far off corner? Need to develop a new idea with experts scattered hither and yon? Need a pizza? Enter the net. And anyone can do these things all by themselves.

I really think we live in incredible times and we take them for granted because we’ve got too used to amazing changes in the way we live, how we learn, how we talk to each other and how we listen. We suffer from Internet exhaustion as it’s too difficult to keep bothering to pluck up the energy and see the implications of the newest gadget. The iPhone is the latest... but there’s another gadget along every six months. And most of us are just too busy with the buzz of everyday life to sit down and play with these machines and see what their very existence implies. But it is truly awesome, inspiring and humbling stuff and once in a while I think it’s just good to sit back and soak up some scale.

Broadband by Any Other Name Would Work as Fast

I was intrigued by recent figures from Comreg. They showed many impressive percentages, but in my opinion give a very unclear picture of Internet access and use in Ireland. The problems stem from three sources: − the definition of broadband, the obsession with ‘at home’ connections, and the research method (door-to-door).

These three issues combined lead me to the conclusion that we are significantly underestimating broadband use in Ireland and Internet use in general.
The report starts by stating that 54% have access to the Internet as do 48% of households.

Out of those who access the Internet, the percentage who connected with a home broadband connection is 52% (eircom broadband). 9% connect through wireless broadband, 9% with WiFi, and 6% with ISDN. 3% connect with cable (NTL) and 1% with a mobile broadband connection (3G).

The problem is that, with the exception of ISDN, all of the connections above are broadband, but by another name. (ISDN is midband). The term ‘broadband’ refers to the speed of the connection, (anything over 512kbps), regardless of the mode of connection. It doesn’t matter if the connection giving that speed is wireless, mobile, via a cable, Wifi or 3G. If they invent some new connection type next year, and that delivers data at more than 512kbps… that’ll be broadband too. Based on these figures, and with this more accurate definition, the total broadband connectivity of Internet users is actually 75%, − that is, 75% of Internet users use broadband, and this is out of 54% of the total population who have Internet access. Does this include broadband 'at work', cafe, schools and colleges...? These, in my opinion, will take care of most of the rest. In short, very few Irish Internet users will be accessing the Internet through anything other than a broadband connection. They may not be at home at the time, but that’s not the point, is it? It’s also true that mobile broadband has proved to be a lot more cost effective and efficient solution lately. If you’re a student, or you know which café to visit, it’s probably free! Other research shows that some are using the one broadband connection for TV, music downloads, Skype (VOIP) phone calls, radio and office/education purposes. And why not. It’s so much cheaper (NB/MIR 2007/1).

The report says that only 13% have dial up speed at home. I think that some of these may also have broadband at work, or university, or with Wifi through a laptop. The report doesn’t clarify. But, I’m more inclined to believe the number with only dial up access to the Internet is actually much smaller.

The report then says that only 4% say their broadband speed is 512 kbs or less, but this wouldn’t be broadband speed anyway. 28% say their connection speed is between 1 and 3mbs, which is a good workable speed, and 18% between 4 and 6Mbs, which is pretty fast. But intriguingly 51% of broadband users don't actually know the speed of their broadband connection at home. This begs the question − why do so many people not know the speed of their broadband at home? Are the researchers reaching the right people in the household? The ones who set up the connection? I think it’s a problem to be explored in more depth, and it may be a limit of door-to-door research. I’d have expected that more people would know their net speed, but this report suggests that that this is not the case. (Perhaps it’s simply the case that mobile broadband users aren’t at home.)

Growth, Drivers and the Future

Younger users’ consumption of online gaming, uploading photos, downloading videos and use of VOIP is driving increasing broadband speeds. An increase in the choice of connection vehicles, such as WiFi and mobile is also aiding penetration. Increasing levels of home broadband usage will soon affect bandwidth (contention) and home broadband speeds, though, currently most are happy with their home Internet connection. 3G is unlikely to encounter have such bandwidth issues in the foreseeable future, because there are no wires.

I predict the next year, especially with Christmas, will see an enormous growth in mobile broadband penetration nationally necessitated by poor home broadband access, and must have gadgets like iPhone and Vodafone / 02 3G. There will also be a huge growth in Internet access and use. The satisfaction levels with these modes of Internet connection are very high. Growth will happen mostly amongst younger groups, and those who don't own their own home. While such penetration is only at 1% currently, I think 3G could grow to as much as 10% or greater, bringing total broadband penetration/access among Internet users toward 85%, and total Internet use towards 65 or even 70% (taking into account the growth of non mobile access sectors). So many free Wifi hotspots have sprung up in Dublin in the last year and I’m sure the number will only increase. (This is huge, as, after all, Dublin is where half the county lives or works.) The online gaming industry will probably push Internet and broadband further, again, driven by the Christmas season. We can expect to see growth in Mobile Video and IPTV and these will increasingly be 3G enabled for many segments.

Some say that broadband speed is dropping, but this is a mistake stemming from the fact that they are only looking at individual cases of connection problems, and ‘at-home’ broadband. At-home broadband is becoming a largely irrelevant concept as laptops are increasingly prevalent and net enabled phones, or smartphones become commonplace. At the same time they note that dial up Internet access, and even fixed line telephone use is falling, while VOIP is growing. There’s a need to join the dots here. If 29% are making VOIP calls elsewhere and through other means... they are, of course, accessing the net elsewhere at broadband speed, and no doubt through the same mechanisms. It's the only way to get Skype to work properly.
iPhone and 3G, will push broadband and Internet penetration further in the coming year. Such must-have gadgetry has always driven technology take-up and net use just as the iPod made mobile music and related services like iTune super-popular. Downloaded mobile video and TV will also grow, and is gaining traction in countries such Denmark, Austria, Germany and Finland.

Irish Online Recruitment

After travel, recruitment is the most popular category of Internet use on a monthly basis by Irish Internet users. Irish jobs is the most popular Irish recruitment site, and the 6th most visited site by Irish Internet users, with 34% visiting the site at least once a month. Recruitment sites are much more likely to be visited weekly, or monthly, or less often, than on a daily basis.

This makes sense, as many will post their CV on several sites, and ‘see what comes in’. Around 20% of recruitment site users are apparently actively looking on a daily basis for a new job.

The second most popular sites is Jobs.ie, with 29%, and then comes Monster.ie, with 27%. Recruit Ireland comes in with 26%. There is then a drop off to the less mainstream and niche sites, with Publicjobs.ie with 13%, Nixers.ie 8%, Careersinhealthcare.ie 5%, Brightwater.ie 5%, Educationposts.com 5% and Salesforce.com with 1%.

The NB Report

Net Behaviour is pleased to announce the arrival of The NB Report©. In essense, this report tells us how Irish people use the web.

The NB Report© is carried out by Monitrack Internet Research (MIR), in conjunction with Amárach Consulting. It contains information on over 475 websites used by Irish consumers across all categories; from search engines and blogs to news and media sites, and even on corporate sites within key industry sectors.

The research gathers data on an ongoing basis from over 30 online sampling points and soon it will be imported into the MediaStar software where it will provide a range of coverage and frequency information for Net Behaviour clients.

The document below will give you a flavour of the research concerning the Top 20/30 websites used by Irish people, and more…

The NB Report© will further enhance our digital communications service for NB clients. If you would like to discuss The NB Report© please don't hesitate to contact us.
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The Top 20 Sites

The top categories are, perhaps unsurprisingly, search, airlines, shopping, recruitment, news, chat rooms/messenger, classifieds, and entertainment. Search is used most often and Google is the most popular search engine with a whopping 82% of Irish online users visiting the site every month. Yahoo! comes in second with 51% of online users; Ryanair (47%) and Aer Lingus (47%) come in with third and forth places on our monthly table of top 20 websites and eBay is in fifth position.

An impressive 87% of Irish Google users use the site on a daily basis, compared with 42% of Yahoo! searchers, and 39% of MSN searchers.

Recruitment sites are very popular with Irish people. Most classified Internet sites, such as recruitment sites, are used weekly, or monthly, rather than daily. The most popular recruitment site is Irishjobs.ie, with 35% of Irish people who use the Internet visiting the site in a given month, and 42% of these visiting weekly, it takes position 6 on our top 20 websites. Recruitment sites are well represented accounting for four of the top 20.

Myhome.ie is the most popular property website, with 29% of Ireland’s Internet users going to the site every month; coming in 12th and the only property website to make the NB/ MIR Top 20.

The most popular news source in Ireland is RTE.ie, with 35% of Irish people visiting the site in a month for news, 38% of these daily. In fact, RTE.ie news service comes in at an impressive 9th place on our top 20 Irish Internet uses table. The next most popular news source is BBC.co.uk, with 26% of Irish Internet users per month, and position 15 on our top 20. Skynews.com is in position 17, with 25% visitors per month.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia is very popular indeed with Irish people, 32% using it each month. It comes in at number ten on our top 20. Golden Pages.ie is in 19th position, with 25% visitors.

Three places on our Top 20 are taken up by some of Ireland’s newest Internet uses. MSN Instant Messenger (34% and position 8), YouTube.com (28% and position 13) and iTunes (24% position 20). For those who aren’t familiar with these, Instant Messenger is one-to-one real-time chat software, very popular among younger people, and users of social networks like Bebo.

In fact, Messenger is much more popular than email for this demographic. YouTube.com is the world’s must popular video site, where anyone can upload their own video for all to see, and iTunes.com is owned by Apple, and is Ireland’s most popular space for buying music for MP3 players and iPods.


Household names from 21 to 30

From 21 to 30 we had AIB / 365 Online (24%), Bebo (23%), Daft (22%), Amazon (22%), Argos (22%), Yahoo! Messenger (21%), Ticketmaster (21%), Pigsback (21%), eircom (news) (21%) and finally Tesco (21%). These fall broadly into the categories of banking, shopping, chat and news (eircom).

Internet Categories

MIR treats the Internet as a functional entity exploring website function and use from the users’ perspective, as well as the website address. The total number of people who use a site is easily found even if that site, for example, provides such diverse services as email, news, search, music downloads and radio. However, typically advertising will be placed on a single section of a multifunction site – the business news section, the technology news, or email login and MIR data can provide this basic categorical information, from the users’ perspective.

This approach gives the advantage of providing an accurate estimate, for example, of the total popularity of business news for Irish people on the Internet, whether they visit specific business newspapers online, the business section of a web portal or bulletin boards exploring the demographic breakdown of the audience along the way. Net Behaviour can then target advertising of behalf on clients knowing a lot about the business Internet audience, where they go online and frequency.

We also measure the total popularity of multi-function portals such as RTE.ie or eircom.net regardless of their use (this is not explored in the above table).


Methodology

MIR research is carried out by Monitrack Internet Research in conjunction with Amárach Consulting and is used by Net Behaviour, and Monitrack clients. The NB Report is a cut of this data. The MIR sample is gathered from over 30 websites and search engines visited by Irish people. The sample quoted above is 1,267 and was gathered between January and March 2007. MIR currently contains information on over 475 websites, search engines and web entities used by Irish people. It also explores research and purchase behaviour online, mobile phone usage, blogging, podcasting, bulletin board use and indeed all other Internet uses for Irish people. Sites are explored through a full set of standard demographic information in Media Star and Espri.

‘The Monitrack policy for MIR research is the same as that developed for the JNIR research. The data presented shows people who use the Internet, rather than ‘unique users, ‘impressions’ or ‘hits’, as the research is carried out with questionnaires, rather than with automatic technologies, like tracking software, cookies or server logs. MIR will typically show numbers which are much smaller than other methods but these are counting different things,’ according to Emmet Kelly. ‘Automated research tells a story of activity, rather than people. Researchers, marketers and media buyers need to know about the people who use a product or service online, as much as the activity surrounding that service,’ said Emmet.

In addition to the NB/MIR data, Net Behaviour employs ad-tracking software for ad campaigns, and buys advertising space with existing currencies such as CPM, CPC, CPA and sponsorship. Automated research data such as that provided by ad tracking software is ideal for optimising advertising spend, while MIR tells the story about how the Irish use the web, gives insight, and helps us make predictions.

All MIR research is carried out in-house and the research, and research methods are the property of Monitrack Internet Research

The NB/Monitrack Team

Monitrack is an Internet research specialist, and formerly carried out the JNIR research. The JNIR was originated by Emmet Kelly and Justin Cullen, who subsequently, with Sinéad Morris, also of Monitrack, founded Net Behaviour some 20 months ago. Net Behaviour is an Internet media buying agent for some of Ireland’s largest agencies and has carried out over 300 campaigns since it was founded in late 2005.

Turning Up the Volume

I wanted to turn up the volume, so I did. Nothing happened. I worked for the day in relative silence, but something struck me. Volume, no longer means what it used to. It's louder and bigger than ever before. I'll explain.

First, back to the beginning. I turned up the volume, and nothing happened.

Maybe the volume button the computer wasn’t working. I went into the sound
properties on the control panel, and clicked on the tab. There was a Volume
Control, Wav, SW synch and CD player. I understood the first and the last and
thought the second one was a .wav file, short for wave. Simple. I turned them
all up. I could have clicked ‘mute all’, or muted them all
individually, if I’d wanted no sound, which was what I had… so I
didn’t want that, so I didn’t do it.

Still no sound.

I went to the speakers attached to the laptop, and turned the knob on those to
full. I checked connections, and thought… I’ll reboot,
that’ll fix it. So I did. It didn’t.

Still no music!

And do you know what I thought? I thought… this is nuts. There are so
many layers and levels between me and the music that even turning up the volume
can be a bloody trial. I can do that on old machines in a jiffy and I
didn’t even like the music that much. I’d spent 10 minutes
foostering around for no sound, and all because of layers and layers of
software, hardware and options. Would I give up? Yes I would. For the
moment. Music isn’t that important. Is it? Ironically, I thought
having some background music would make me more productive? I’d have to
work pretty hard to catch up on the time I’d lost already.

Silence… kind of. I worked away for most of the day, to the irritating
clatter of my own keyboard, busses, ambulances and fire brigades, other
peoples’ radios and the odd screech from the kids scrapping at the bus
stop. I worked away to the sound of Dublin instead of music to give me
enthusiasm.

But there was volume after all. Lots of it. Just not a lot of music, or sound.

I sent an email to 3,000 people for research purposes, spoke to several more
through boards and chat, work related emails flying back and forth, another
mail shot, the mobile phone beeped with texts, and rang with calls while the
work phone bleeped every few minutes and the doorbell rang.

The ads we post on websites and search engines must have been seen by 20,000
people to generate the 2000 or so clicks we’d tracked so far and the
online videos… hmmm. 600 views? You Tube viral views? Thousands. By
5.30pm we’d generated maybe 25,000 communications, many through the
little laptop in front of me, in only 6 hours. Thats a lot of volume.

And the moral, (if there is one)? In this new digi-world, sometimes it can be easier to
ask 25,000 strangers to pay attention and click, or let them tell you all about themselves, than it is to sit back, on your own, and listen to a good tune. :-)

Web 2.0

So much has been written lately about this new concept. It’s a buzz term, true, but also a description of fundamental changes happening in ICT. Europe is far behind the Far East and America in terms of our Internet usage, and Ireland is at the bottom of the European scale of things… So, I’d like to discuss some of the philosophy and thinking surrounding the concept. I’m just going to chat about some bits now, as there is an on-going, endless and somewhat tedious debate going on about ‘What Web 2.0 Means?'. These are the bits of what it means that I think are most relevant and interesting. Hopefully they’re relevant to you too. Tell me what you think

Many people, from the head of Microsoft and Apple, to futurologists, have pointed out what should have been obvious, but wasn’t too many. Once the software and hardware is in place to a sufficient degree, people start to do business online. Once they’re doing that, the business winners will be the service companies. It’s a clear set of stages which can be explained by analogy with the train industry.

The first companies to do well out of the age of the train are the track builders, Cisco in terms of ICT. Then the engine builders, Microsoft and Intel etc, and then the various train companies. After that, the train companies that get the trains running on time, and quickest, post the best timetables and get you to the stations efficiently, these are the next wave of companies. On the Internet thats true too, and we’re on the third wave of new communication technology development. Service! The funky software and sites that set appointments and schedules, the widgets that help you manage chats, conversations and photos. The software that gets you communicating, gets you sending your data from A to B the in the most efficient manner, and reminds you when to send it. These companies are distinct from the utilities; those who build the machines, and the pipes that channel your information around the world.

However, we’ve gone beyond this stage too. The software providers now place value on their software not by what it can individually do, but by the fact that everyone else is using the same software, or that this software speaks will all the others types of software, regardless of who’s using it. So, the individual piece of software might be totally cool, but it’s better if it merely works well, and everyone else uses it too. Also, it’s better if the software is online, and free. This is a whole new model for software companies and a very risky strategy for the software company investor. If the software catches on, happy days, as long as you can get sufficient donations, and/or advertising, or its used by so many people it will be bought by Google, or Yahoo! or someone. (Unlikely to be Yahoo! at the moment.)

So, the loop has reached the stage where the service itself is more important than the software. For example, consider Plaxo, Del.icio.us and the millions of other free site soft wares out there, doing everything from your household accounts, to setting up a free shop.

Data That Grows with Use and Users
This comes out of the previous point. As more people use these free/cheap online services, the better they get. More people tag on Del.icio.us, the better it gets; more people use YouTube, or Bebo, it comes alive; the more people use friendsreunited, dating sites or geneology sites, the more opportunity they have to function.

Trusting users as co-developers

This is where the net development goes all commy. It always was in a way. The language of the net, with surfing, waves and nets. Its all symbolic of the watery, fishing land of the west coast. The America lingo, is there because that's where it all started. That’s where Silicon Valley is, and the people with that surf dude mind-set, the bright ones, made their millions. However, they made their millions out of IP. Shares, futures, and intellectual property… all that stuff.

Open source is a term for a movement where the developers of a peice of software invite users to develope that software. Most web and other software these days is open source, is seems to be in a stage of perpetual beta test. Indeed new free versions of the software seem to come out daily, rather than once every few years in the past. With open source and software stuck in beta test stage really taking on, BitTorrent is an example, software development and use comes together, software and sites become more popular, and the users more loyal.

The Power of the Collective

Remember the Borg? Well, Web 2.0 is a Borg concept, or vice versa. The power of Wikipedia is the users of Wikipedia, the power of Del.icio.us is the members of Del.icio.us. There was a time in the very recent past, where the database, and the time that had gone into its construction, and the data it contained was the valuable entity. Now databases are populated by the users of the databases, and their true value is in their popularity. The use of the database is free, and everything else follows.

The Long Tail
A great concept with a silly name. Think of a line on a graph. Starting big, and then petering out. The big companies are at the high part of the line, but on the internet, there are thousands upon thousands of smaller businesses. The tail of the graph is very long. 5 years ago, companies used to service the head of the graph, and not the tail… Now, the big business is being done servicing the needs of the long tail. Double click is a good example. Big expensive software which had to be bought by large publishers who wanted ad revenue from a few standardized formats on their site. Google arrives along with a whole new mechanic for buying ads, and anyone can ad a small bit of code to their site, and the ads are served. A completely different format, everything's changed, and it works. Google services tiny companies, and individuals with blogs. Google services the long tail.

Conclusion
The Irish Internet space has changed immesurably and irreversibly in the last few years and we have to understand it if we are to satisfy the needs of advertisers, advertising being the life blood of many of the sites and services discussed above. Net Behaviour is an advertising company that tasks itself with understanding the Internet the way it is today, and tracking the changes in Internet usage as they happen, to best facilitate advertising for our clients. This is an ongoing job. We've found in the last year that sites with user generated content are working better and better for our advertisers. We've also started working with clients on strategies that involve the new social movements and usages of Irish Internet users. In the past the Internet had the potential to be a two directional medium but content was coming much more from traditional content providers... the newspapers, TV stations and radio. In the last year the flow of content has come much more the audience. User generated content sites and services have also developed more audience than tradition Internet news and information providers. This will be more or less true as fashions change, but I'm of the opinion that the graph is only going one way on this, towards UGC, though these will progressively be owned by International conglomerates.

I understand of course that there are different types of content. If there's a war with Syria, traditional news providers will get the audience. But I feel there is a new segment of audience that will always like UGC, the get a buzz out of providing for it, and getting their friends and colleagues to view what they've provided, ,or sending funny stuff around the a gag group. Also, there will always be those who enjoy the un-constrained fun that can come from hidden video, jokes and pranks and studenty type films. Twink fell foul of this set. Does it matter who owns these sites, or where they are? No. Irish eyeballs are watching the web all over the world, and watching extremely local and international content, regardless of where the server resides, or who owns to company. NB will facilitate advertisers to reach this audiece, wherever it may be.

OK... Thats it. Those are some of the bits of Web 2.0 that interest me. I hope thei interest you too.

Buzz Marketing

I've been working on a presentation about Web 2.0 for the last while, and wondered if anyone had any insights as to what they think Web 2.0 means. Extensive research is pointing very much to the power of new participatory Internet us, and there are sites out there specifically to discuss the topic, (when they can agree what it is). But my question is, what does all of this mean for Internet advertising?

We already advertise extensively on MySpace, YouTube, and Bebo, and work closely with Google moving with the developments in pay per click and placement and we do ongoing viral and buzz marketing for some clients (it doesn't suit everyone yet), but I feel that this way of getting a clients message out there has only just begun.

The seed in this country, was Bebo. Suddenly, every kid could have their own website, and swarms of these gathered around the concept of schools and colleges. In a year there were 500,000 users of Bebo. The consumer had definitely caught up with business when it came to web development and activity, and passed them out.

But now, I think the sheen has gone off Bebo. It is still as popular and effective an advertising medium as ever mind. More so in fact. We've been optimising our spend accross a range of websites, and those, including Bebo, are continuing to improve month on month. No, I just think the faddishness has gone out of it. Viral campaigns abound now, and use YouTube and Bebo as their communication medium, their channel, rather than advertising specifically to users of these sites. Shamrog City, for Funda, is a great example. A great idea, carried out well, with fantastic results. This has been reported in all media, a first for the web I think. TV, radio, press and trade magazines, and lauded by all as a turning point in Internet advertising. NB helped seed this creative throughout the web, on video sites like YouTube, blogs, bulletin boards and everywhere else that such a concept can be linked. We learnt a lot, and its been fun.

Quo Vadis? Where to now? Well. I think this type of conversational activity and marketing is where. Where it leads us? Who knows... but we're going anyway.