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October 2007 social site rankings from TechCrunch.

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Information Week has an update on the state of broadband connectivity in the US, relative to the rest of the world. Some highlights:

• Broadband growth rates are much higher in other countries
• OECD: the US is 12th in broadband adoption rates
• ITU: the US is 21st in broadband penetration rates
• We pay more for less

Thankfully, the reporter included criticism of the rosy FCC report from July 2005. That report defined “broadband” as 200 Kbps in at least one direction and considered a zip code to have 100% penetration if it had only one active broadband line. This is inflating the data.

But why is 200 Kbps a bad measure of “broadband”? From InfoWeek:

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Online demographics are changing — and lots (about a third of the audience) of 40-somethings are trotting around MySpace, YouTube and the like, according to the SF Chronicle. Among the surprises, based on September data from Nielsen NetRatings, is the percentage of under-35s listening to NPR podcasts… 54 percent, compared with 25 percent of its traditional audience. (tip)

The San Jose Mercury News, February this year, asserts:

• Two-thirds of the 108 million US households have a computer connected to the Internet (71 million)
• Two-thirds of those have broadband (48 million - 44.4% of all US HH)
• Approximately
  three-fourths of Americans (adults?) are online at either home or work
  … leaving 25% not connected (by choice). The author says 90%
  penetration is needed for a technology to be considered "ubiquitous."

Broadband
access in the US differs from most of the rest of the world (Canada
being the exception) — most of us use cable and the rest of the world,
DSL. December 2005 data: the US ranks 12th in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants — 6.5 with DSL and 9.0 with cable … 1.3 "other" for a total of 16.8 or 49 million subscribers.

Now
– let’s compare this with those industry numbers from SJMN. OECD data
say "49 million subscribers" and industry data say "48 million
households." If the terms are equivalent, then this looks pretty sound.
But the math makes it look like OECD is talking about people
(inhabitants) - which brings this far fewer than 48 million households.
(Headache!)

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Courtesy of one of my COM300 students -> The BBC reports aForrester assertion that the podcast audience is primarily "tech savvy, young males" … "despite the hype surrounding [podcasts]."

Harrumph. We are in still in the early adoption stage of this technology! I’m certain that I could examine popular press reports less than two years after Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP (and, thu, the web) and find equally dismissive headlines/research/forecasts.

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According to Park Associates, 71 percent of US households have a computer and 42% of US households have broadband access. The report says 7 percent have a computer but are not connected to the Net. THe report concludes that Internet penetration in the U.S. will increase from 63% to 64% in 2006.

A new study from ACNielsen Europe suggests that only about 10 percent of the world’s population (more than 627 million people) has shopped online at least once. Books appear to be the most commonly purchased item (thank you, Jeff Bezos) followed closely by DVDs. It’s no surprise that first world countries would have the most online shoppers. What is a surprise is that the study ranks the US eleventh with "only" 89 percent of those surveyed saying that they had bought online. In Germany, Austria and the UK, the tally was more than 95 percent. 

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About one-third of British youth aged 14-21 who are online at home have their own blog or website, according to The Guardian. This age group spends about eight hours a week online, with about half that time spent in online communities or IM; another hour is spent on e-mail. The poll suggests six in 10 have net access at home. They download an average of three ringtones per month for their cellphones and spend five hours a week on video game consoles. Tip to SmartMobs.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, US wages (adjusted for inflation) for non-management employees in private industry peaked in 1973.

Last year, these average weekly wages were $116 lower (~$6,000 less a year) than they were 30 years ago. What’s keeping the average family above water is having two wage earners.

The boom years of the bubble led to a bust for CEOs as well rank-and-file workers (many still out of work). Forbes reporeted this week that CEO compensation for the top 500 companies in the US was up only 8 percent last year; average compensation was $16.5 million. The range was $39 million to 148 million with seven unreported (including Cisco, Apple and DirecTV).
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ClickZ just published its latest chart showing the Permalink No Comments