Internet news
Friday, 21 December 2007
Last Updated: Friday, 21 December 2007
Buy or rent? Ask the internet
People trying to figure out whether they are ready to take the plunge and move from renting to owning – well, those who live in the US, anyway – might benefit from taking a squiz at a new online property site called HotPads.com .
VentureBeat reports that HotPads.com is a service that allows you to find and compare the cost of renting or buying a home or apartment in your preferred city, part of town, or even just street.
You simply pick the area you want and the amount of money you can afford and HotPads comes up with a map displaying available properties, with homes for sale highlighted in red and those for rent in yellow.
You can also play around with different payment options for a home purchase, such as size of down-payment, length of mortgage and interest rate. As you click on each property on the map, a bubble pops up showing pricing details.
TOP OF PAGE
Yet more evidence that Mac users are cooler than PC users
Mac users are much more likely to download music and listen to it on their computers than PC owners, according to an NPD Group study reported by InformationWeek .
The study found almost 50% of Mac users paid to download tunes in the three months to September 2007, well ahead of the 16% of PC users who did so. Unsurprisingly, given the popularity of the Apple iPod, they were also much more likely to transfer that music and listen to it on a portable music device.
Mac users are also much more likely to listen to music files on their computers, with 56% doing so compared to just 31% of their PC-using counterparts.
And it’s not just that Mac users are just more online savvy – they are also slightly more likely to buy music CDs, with 32% of Mac users making a purchase in the September quarter compared with 28% of PC users.
"There's still a cultural divide between Apple consumers and the rest of the computing world, and that's especially apparent when it comes to the way they interact with music," NPD analyst Russ Crupnick told InformationWeek.
TOP OF PAGE
Advertisement
Facebook sues dodgy p*rn hackers
Facebook has launched legal action against a posse of 17 hackers associated with a Canadian company that manages a portfolio of adult content websites, Infoworld reports.
The Facebook case alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used tricky computer hacking techniques to make more than 200,000 attempts to grab personal information stored by users Facebook sites.
Facebook says the “automated scripts” the defendants used to seek the information caused error messages to be generated by the Facebook site, but has not revealed if any user information was successfully collected.
The Canadian company named as a defendant in the litigation, Istra Holdings, controls SlickCash.com, a business that pays web publishers for referring internet traffic to its adult content websites.
Facebook says the hacking attempts cost it at least $5000 to investigate. As well as damages, it is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future.
TOP OF PAGE
Ad spending on social networks to boom
Ad spending on online social networks worldwide will nearly double, to $US2.2 billion in 2008 from $US1.2 billion this year, according to an eMarketer study, reported in Online Media Daily .
Most spending will happen in the United States where social network advertising is predicted to grow to $US1.6 billion next year, from $US920 million in 2007. Almost three quarters of the US ad spend will go to MySpace and Facebook.
That's still a fraction of overall US online advertising, which eMarketer estimates will hit $21.4 billion this year.
The ad growth is thanks to the growing proportion of adults visiting social networking sites. eMarketer estimates that 37% of US adult internet users visited a social networking site at least once a month in 2007. By 2011, almost half of adult users and 84% of teens will be on social sites.
Turning big audiences into big dollars is a challenge for social networking sites and they have responded by giving advertisers search display and widget opportunities.
Provided they can overcome the privacy issues, behavioural ad platforms where the advertisers get the benefit of the huge amount of visitor information stored on the site is next.
The eMarketer study forecasts that global growth of social network ad spending will gradually slow to 16% by 2011, for a total of $US4.1 billion.
TOP OF PAGE
Why do people shop online?
Online shopping is becoming increasingly popular, but why? According to WebProNews , two recent surveys suggest people are a bit confused over whether it’s convenience or cheaper prices that provide the best reason to get online.
A recent Nielsen survey of US shoppers found the ability to shop any time was the chief advantage of online shopping for 81%, closely followed by 77% who said they enjoyed the time-saving from not having to navigate the traffic jams and queues of Christmas shopping.
Low prices ranked fifth in the survey, with just 46% naming bargain prices as their primary reason for shopping online.
These findings are in sharp contrast to the results of another recent survey by market research firm Synovate. It found that 67% of shoppers feel lower prices as the main motivator for them to shop online, with the availability of free shipping the second most important factor.
Convenience, on the other hand, ranked way back in the pack, with only 8% citing it as a key motivating factor for shopping online.
TOP OF PAGE
Googling yourself is so hot right now
There are few online past-times more narcissistic that Googling yourself. It’s the sort of thing everyone does, but no-one admits.
Until now, that is. According to BusinessWeek , a Pew internet survey of more than 1000 US internet users managed to pursuade 47% to admit to looking up information about themselves on Google, up from 22% in 2002.
Mary Madden, a Pew researcher, said the increase in self-Googling could be explained by the explosion in personal information that is now available online thanks to the rise of blogging and social networking sites.
"It's still the case that there's a big chunk of internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines," Madden told BusinessWeek. "Certainly awareness has increased, but I don't know it's necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us."
People under 50 and those with more education and income were more likely to self-Google, in some cases because their jobs require them to maintain information about themselves online.
Most people said they had self-Googled only once or twice, which is surprising because most liked what they found – only 4% of internet users said they had been embarrassed by what they found about themselves online.
TOP OF PAGE
Where will interactive marketing dollars go in 2008?
The US Interactive Advertising Bureau has surveyed the readers of its newsletter on what’s going to happen in 2008.
More than half (53%) believe social networking will continue to explode in 2008; 35% believe the networks will remain popular but growth will slow. Only 13% growth rates will decline as web users will migrate to the next big thing.
Video is considered the sector of online advertising that will show the greatest growth in 2008; 45% are predicting video as the fastest growing sector, 23% believe it will be display, 18% mobile, and only 16% believe it will be search.
If these marketers responses are anything to go by, the internet advertising boom is set to continue. Three quarters of respondents say their spending will go up in 2008; for 7% spending will remain the same and spending will go down for 11%.
And keep your eye out for mobile marketing next year, suggests the editor: “Mobile marketing is going to be the next big thing in 2008. Leading search engine Google reportedly is hard at work on an operating system designed to operate on mobile devices, and in talks with mobile carriers to have that operating system included on approved handsets.
“It's only a matter of time before behavioural and demographic targeting are paired with the kind of precise geo-targeting available on high-tech mobile devices to create a perfect storm of ad relevance for marketers looking to reach busy, on-the-go consumers.
“There are some red flags in the distance, however. The regulatory environment for interactive advertising is very much in flux, and online privacy could emerge as a critical issue as the 2008 presidential campaign heats up. And it remains to be seen what will result from recent moves by major wireless carriers to open their networks to non-proprietary devices and content.”
TOP OF PAGE
Internet ad spending hits double digit growth
Internet advertising spending grew by over $US1 billion, or 17.2% in the first nine months of 2007, the only media category to achieve double digit growth over that time, according to TNS Media Intelligence research reported by ClickZ .
The total online ad spend for the year to September 2007 was $US8.4 billion, a record result but still a relatively small slice of the total $US108 billion global ad spend for the first nine months of the year.
Online is by far the fastest growing segment, however, its 17.2% growth dwarfing the 0.2% total sector growth.
In terms of who is doing the online advertising, non-dot-com advertisers now make up more than half of the online ad spend. A big share of the non-dot-com spend is coming from the financial services sector, where online advertising takes up an average 22% of media spending budgets.
And while blue chip advertisers are increasingly getting on board with online advertising – they now spend an average of 5.6% of their budgets on online advertising – they are still trail the industry average by 2%.
TOP OF PAGE
Why do online reviewers do it?
Thousands of people contribute online reviews of products, services, music, movies – in fact, just about everything – each day, and for the most part don’t get paid a cent. So why do they do it?
Yahoo! recently commissioned a survey to get an insight into the head of the online reviewer. It found that the reason internet users most commonly give for contributing reviews is to “help others though knowledge sharing,” followed by a “desire to promote the businesses and help the merchant succeed”. One in three of those surveyed said they felt more connected to the online community when they contributed reviews.
Unsurprisingly, the people who contribute reviews also tend to be consumers of them. Just on 80% say they are likely to be influenced by a review, and 71% find them of some help in making a purchasing decision. Almost 30% said their purchasing decisions are always or often influenced by a review.
TOP OF PAGE