Today’s lead article at eMarketer states that 3/4 of US teen Internet users have streamed digital content online, and the trend is growing rapidly. Right now, a lot of that content is in movie previews, news, amateur video, and music videos. I believe if they had more access to good gospel-centered video, they would watch it a lot.
According to a January 2007 study of 500 adults ages 18 and older conducted by InsightExpress, the following are the types of content that U.S. consumers say they are likely to watch online:
48.6% watch news clips
47.4% watch music videos
32.6% watch movie trailers
25.7% watch TV shows
20.5% watch user-generated videos
19.9% watch movies
11.2% watch sports clips
“The US remains the single largest Internet market in the world with 181.9 million Internet users in 2006, but China is likely to take the lead before the decade is out.” That’s the lead line from a recent eMarketer report.
Although the U.S. Internet population continues to grow, the rest of the world is growing even faster–particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. China is growing quickly as its middle class grows and home Internet access becomes widespread. India is also a country of great growth potential.
Morgan Stanley estimates that by the end of 2007 there will be over 1.3 billion Internet users worldwide.
55% of the U.S. teens surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project use social networking sites, and 85% of them use MySpace most often. About half visit a social network site at least once a day.
Reasons to visit a social network site:
For more on social networking, read eMarketer’s Social Network Marketing: Carving Out Some MySpace report.
There are now more than 100 million active Web sites on the Internet–double the number we had in May 2004.
In 2006, we saw dynamic growth with 27.4 million new sites — 3.5 million in October alone!
Blogs and small business Web sites drove the explosive growth this year, with huge increases at free blogging services and strong demand for low-priced domain names and shared hosting accounts.
Read more about the explosive growth of Web sites at Netcraft.
The US population recently reached 300 million, according to the US Census Bureau.
63% of the US population (180 million people ages 3 and older) uses the Internet at least once a month according to eMarketer.
51.4% of the US Internet users (92.6 million) are women; 48.6% (87.5 million) are men.
26% of all US Internet users (46.8 million people) are 50 and older. That percentage has grown quite a bit in the last few years.
40.1% of children (ages 3-11) and 73.7% of teens (ages 12-17) use the Internet at least once a month.
14% of the US population (42 million people) is of Hispanic origin, according to the US Census Bureau, and 16.7 million of them are Internet users, comprising 9.3% of all US Internet users.
As the Hispanic population in the US grows in size and influence, their use of the Internet also grows. A recent study found that there are more than 16 million Hispanic Americans online (55% of the total US Hispanic population), and 77% of those online have broadband access.
They use the Internet heavily for shopping: 77% use it to learn about brands and 72% go online to compare prices.
Beyond shopping, 43% of Hispanic US Internet users use it for social networking, 68% use instant messaging, 63% share photos, 52% read or post blogs, 40% talk on a phone using the Internet, and 48% visit news sites.
For more information on this subject, see eMarketer. They also have a more extensive report Hispanic Youth Online: Language and Culture Define Usage.
“The content of the Internet, and who is creating it, is changing.” That’s the lead sentence from today’s eMarketer story.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, user-generated content sites comprise five out of the top 10 fastest-growing Web brands. “User-generated content sites” include sites for photo sharing, video sharing, blogging, personal Web sites, Wikipedia (5 billion page views monthly), and even Mormon Wikipedia. This is increasing evidence that users expect to contribute content to sites as they consume content, both increasing the value of the site and drawing more participants. Most of these increases are due to viral (word-of-mouth) marketing.
Note the huge growth rates in the following sites from July 2005 to July 2006: ImageShack 233%, Heavy.com video site 213%, Flickr image site 201%, Artist Direct music site 185%, MySpace 183%, and Wikipedia 181%.
So, how do we capitalize on this trend in a way that provides good content about the Church on the Web?
The latest Nielsen//NetRatings release on podcasting reports that 6.6% of the US adult online population — 9.2 million users — have recently downloaded an audio podcast; and 4% — 5.6 million users — recently downloaded a video podcast.
To put that in perspective, the figures put the podcasting audience on a par with US Internet users who publish blogs (4.8%), and online daters, (3.9% of the adult online population).
Internet users between the ages of 18 and 24 are almost twice as likely as the average user to download audio podcasts, followed by users in the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups. Video podcast downloading, however, trended slightly older, with 25-34 year olds indexing the highest.
For more information, see eMarketer.
According to the latest figures from comScore Media Metrix, blogs are not merely becoming mainstream, they are turning into a flood of information. Or, as iMedia Connection put it, “blogs are now as ubiquitous to the web as reality shows are to television.”
Traffic to blogs continues to grow, up 56% over the past year to 58.7 million visitors, and that represents 34% of the total Internet audience.
Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004072
The article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/17/HN$100laptop_1.html explains the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to produce a $100 laptop computer for distribution to children in developing countries. It features a hand crank that generates the two watts of power the machine needs to operate, it uses a Wi-Fi mesh to connect to the Internet, and runs open-source software. The machine can be folded in different ways to serve as a computer, electronic book or media player. All of the components are chosen for low power usage and low cost to make the portable computers as inexpensive as possible.
If this laptop project gets off the ground, it has interesting possibilities for the Church. Remember President Kimball’s 1974 talk to the Regional Representatives (“When the World Will Be Converted,” Ensign, Apr. 1984, p. 3) where he talked about the enormous potential of the transistor radio and how the Church should use it to broadcast the gospel message? This is light years ahead of the possibilities of the transistor radio. Have we, as a Church, even tapped the potential use of the transistor radio, let alone the possibility of rich media delivered over a $100 laptop?
In 2005, more people in Japan accessed the Web with cell phones than with a computer.
Learn more on InfoWorld.