901am

New Media News Every Morning

U.S. watches billions of online videos; Google provides most of it

By

comScore has released its March 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, indicating that U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during the month, representing a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007.

In March, Google sites remained dominant, ranking as the top U.S. video property with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 477 million videos (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (2.9 percent) and Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2 percent).

Originally posted on May 12, 2008 @ 1:47 pm

Online advertised job vacancies fall sharply in April to mirror U.S. job market

By

Is online job posting reflecting the state of the job market? In April, there were 3.6 million online advertised job vacancies, a 16.4 percent decline from the April 2007 level, based on a report by The Conference Board-Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. This is the second consecutive month of year-on-year declines for the nation as whole. Even for the six states that posted gains, the pace of growth has slowed.

Alaska posted the highest ads rate in the country for the eighth month in a row while Delaware led the nation with the lowest supply and demand rate.

Originally posted on May 1, 2008 @ 11:10 pm

Study shows today’s generation losing touch with nature on family vacations– Travelocity

By

A recent family travel poll conducted by Travelocity revealed that families with children are visiting national parks and other nature sites much less frequently than previous generations. Twenty-five percent of the Silent Generation (born between 1925-1945) report that all of their childhood family vacations included some interaction with nature compared to only 15 percent of families traveling with kids today.

Today’s families take less time to participate in outdoor activities. Instead of hiking, biking and camping, more than twice as many families today focus on activities like shopping than did earlier generations (now 20 percent of family vacations – up from 8 percent during the Silent Generation’s childhood years).

To address what’s being called a nature deficit epidemic, Travelocity launched a “micro-site” offering tips and advice to parents on getting their kids back into nature through travel. The micro-site can be accessed at www.travelocity.com/nature and provides itineraries for nature-oriented family vacations, tips on getting kids excited about nature, and vacation activities for parents and children. The site even features a special tips section from best-selling author Richard Louv (Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder).

Travelocity’s poll also found that instead of camping trips, the largest group of respondents (families with kids), frequent major cities (19 percent) and amusement parks (13 percent) as destinations. In contrast, as children the Silent Generation visited major cities 8 percent of the time and amusement parks only 6 percent.

Originally posted on April 26, 2008 @ 6:11 pm

Global enterprise Web 2.0 market to reach $4.6 billion By 2013

By

Despite a long-term future marked by commoditization, enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will surge over the next five years, growing 43 percent each year to reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013, according to a new report by Forrester Research, Inc. The five-year Forrester forecast includes a breakdown of future business spending on technologies such as social networking, RSS, blogs, wikis, mashups, podcasting, and widgets, as well as an analysis of enterprise Web 2.0 spending across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Forrester believes that Web 2.0 technologies represent a fundamentally new way to connect with customers and prospects and harness the collaborative power of employees. Large enterprises such as General Motors, McDonald’s, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, and Wells Fargo have all made heavy use of these tools, and 56 percent of North American and European enterprises consider Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008 according to a recent Forrester survey.

The key question for software firms is who pays for Web 2.0 in the enterprise? Three challenges face vendors: IT shops are wary of what they perceive as insecure, consumer-grade technology; ad-supported Web 2.0 tools on the consumer side have set “free” as a starting point; and Web 2.0 technologies enter a crowded space dominated by legacy software investments.

Currently, large businesses are spending more on employee collaboration tools than customer-facing Web 2.0 technologies, but Forrester expects that trend to reverse by next year. By 2013, investment in customer-facing Web 2.0 technology will dwarf spending on internal collaboration software by nearly a billion dollars.

Originally posted on April 22, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

March marks the month of American Sports

By

comscore-data.gif
When it comes to growth in online traffic, American sports like baseball and online gambling related to these games played a big factor for the month of March.

Based on the data from research company comScore, baseball spring training and fantasy team drafts prompted a flood of earnest fans to MLB.com, which jumped 50 percent to 9.8 million visitors.

“American sports factored in prominently for the top gaining categories and properties in March,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “The NCAA tournament drove substantial traffic to online gambling sites during the month, while the start of spring training made MLB.com one of the top gaining properties. Both events also contributed to ESPN.com’s surge in the top properties rankings.”

Moreover, the NCAA basketball tournament has lured many gamblers thus gaining 14% increase in the online gambling category. Sportingbet PLC increased 35 percent to 975,000 visitors, UPICKEM.net jumped 174 percent to 396,000 visitors and SportsBetting.com rose 114 percent to 145,000 visitors.

Read the complete study here

Originally posted on April 14, 2008 @ 8:04 pm