Categories
Social Media Tech Twitter

Conversational aspects of retweeting..

Some of you may have heard of Danah Boyd before, she’s a fairly well known researcher in all this new media malarky. When I was doing my dissertation a few years back now on social networking and it’s value to business, I got in touch and asked her a few questions. This was before that thing called Twitter, which everyone talks about now. My research focussed partly on how people and brands were using Facebook and considering it was for an academic piece of research for University, it was something I actually quite enjoyed doing.

Now, I’m living and breathing it all daily and Danah is part of the research team in New England at Microsoft and has written a hugely scientific yet interesting and informative paper on the conversational aspects of retweeting. It’s currently in draft form with the finished copy to be published in January 2010, yet still already spans 11 pages. The other researchers involved are Scott Golder and Gilad Lotan.

The report is based on analysis of over over 700,000 tweets (440,000 or so users), taken in samples of five minute chunks between January and June 2006. This, I feel is a problem when undertaking such research. Because of the enormity of the numbers, it is expected that this kinda thing isn’t conducted and written over night. However, samples taken in 2006 will have only been focussing on the VERY early adopters. Usage patterns will have changed since then. Although I signed up on Twitter in April 2007, it wasn’t until mid to late 2008 that I really started using and understanding the service. My uses, habits and processes for using Twitter have changed since then. It’s impossible to be able to follow everyone back now for starters and I now use services like Twitterfeed which pushes new posts out that I publish here on to Twitter. It’s a lot deeper than a simple Facebook status update (which is what most compare it to who haven’t tried it out).

If ever you wondered why people retweet and what they do it for, wonder no longer!

Highly recommend checking out the rest of it here and also follow Danah on Twitter here. Scott is @redlog and Gilad is @gilgul.

A few quick facts from the research via Antony Mayfield:

  • 36% of tweets mention a user in the form ‘@user’
  • 5% of tweets contain a hashtag (#)
  • 22% of tweets include a URL (’http’)
  • 3% of tweets are likely to be retweets in that they contain ‘RT’, ‘retweet’ and/or ‘via’
  • 9% of retweets include the users own handle – dubbed “ego retweets” (though as Antony notes, the paper acknowledges sometimes this can be “a way of giving credit” or saying thank you.)
  • ‘RT’ is very much the predominant form, with 88% of the retweets using this (Tweetie please take note and change your app’s retweet function).
Categories
Retail Tech

My take on Snow Leopard for the BBC.

I was asked by the nice people over at the Beeb what my thoughts were on Snow Leopard after getting a copy on release. In a nutshell, I alluded to the fact that it’s an evolutionary but not revolutionary step forward. If the wheel ain’t broke then there’s no point in majorly fixing it. They’ve further refined the already nicely oiled and fully functioning wheel I should say, with some good old fashioned elbow grease.

You can check out the article here.

Excerpt below screen grabbed.

BBC News

Categories
Mobile Tech

BBC iPlayer is mobile’s most wanted

According to recent research by analyst house CCS Insight, the BBC’s iPlayer came out on top in a poll of what the most desired mobile service is with users saying that they want to get access to the TV and radio programmes on their phone.

BBC iPlayerThere are a handful of handsets out there which currently have the ability to play programmes from the iPlayer through 3G and Wifi, for example, a whole host of Nokia’s like the N85, N96 and N97 phone, Samsung’s, Sony-Ericsson’s and the iPhone. The iPhone can however, only stream over Wifi. Considering the amount of storage available on the iPhone, I’d love to to be able to download a programme in an evening and watch it while travelling in to work in the morning. I’d like to think over time, it will be possible!

Consumers’ mobile internet usage is on the increase due to phones like the iPhone coming with ‘all you can eat’ data packages. I use my phone more for web browsing and emailing than I do for actual phone calls. That’s something the telco’s will have noticed as a growing trend and it represents an opportunity for mobile operators to revitalise their ARPU (average revenue per user) and create new data-oriented business models as voice revenues continue to decline.

iPlayeriPhone

In the poll as mentioned above, navigation/maps and unlimited music are the next most desired mobile services after iPlayer, according to the analyst’s report, with around 20% of the votes on each. Maps have been ever present on the more top end of phones for the last few years, I was using an N95 and it’s ‘Maps’ programme about 2 years ago now but it’s becoming more commonplace and a standard feature.

Voda 2005Multiplayer games and other mobile TV were desired by four per cent of the vote apiece, with video calling being requested by just three per cent. Video calling was once a key feature for some top end phones on Vodafone a few years back in 2005. It was expensive, you were prohibited by others needing a front facing camera and well, it never did catch on did it. Picture to the left is Vodafone’s Christmas 2005 handsets which were heavily pushing the 3G technology, increased download speeds and mobile TV.

Interestingly, the respondents of the survey showed that gender informs hardware choice, with Samsung mobiles being twice as popular with women than men – but the reverse being true for the iPhone and BlackBerry. 90% of the users questioned had visited Facebook on their mobile with only 14% having visited Twitter. This for me would be a clear indication of the age of the large majority of users polled, where it was said that 18-35 year olds were polled. I’d think they were mostly of the younger age bracket as it’s well known that Twitter is more widely used by 35+.

Categories
Search Engines Social Media Tech

What’s your website good for?

Great stuff from Dirk Singer.

Here’s a presentation from a while back now that looks over some of the recent crop of social engagement sites. It looks at the increasing trend for websites to be socially based. This was particularly interesting coming from Dirk as Cow have made the transition from a site which was originally based on Flash to one based on WordPress.

I was a fan of their previous site because it stood out from the rest of the pack but I can entirely understand why they made the change as sites based on Flash invariably are much more of a static, portfolio type showpiece and can sometimes be a case of form over functionality. WordPress is easy to keep current and up to date, loading times are cut to a minimum and SEO’ing is much more useful. Flash is static and needs specialised expertise to keep it up to date, which invariably takes a bit of a back seat to the day to day work.

What’s your website good for? Feast the eyes and the mind.

What’s your website good for?
View more documents from Dirk Singer.
Categories
Goodies Social Media Tech

The social discovery of content

Great presentation from Simon Cross and Ben Smith at the BBC which goes in to pretty technical and extensive detail about what the BBC as a corporation does with the masses of content it has, how people find it and ending with ‘6 steps to heaven if you too want to work this way’

I liked the point they made that the best recommendation engine on the planet isn’t Bing, Google or Yahoo, it’s people. It’s all about the social discovery of content (slide 20).

It’s a very technical slide deck for the most part but it’s interesting how they talk about the social discovery of content without building yet another social network. It’s about linking users to content through activity (slide 47).

Categories
iPhone Mobile Tech

The evolution of mobile

Kyle Bean - MobilesKudos to Kyle Bean for this.

Pretty interesting really, seeing the evolution and the miniaturisation from 1985 to the present day and how the rapid innovation, technology has allowed for size to no longer be a prohibitive issue when it comes to ‘real’ portability. Size is no longer the major challenge, nor is it about packing the phone with more hardware features, such as bigger and better cameras, or music, or screens. It’s more now about how the features are being used. I’ve noticed a shift over the last year or two where it’s now all about the software and the tight, seamless application of it as proved by Apple and the App Store, Google and Android. If it was a hardware race, no one would be buying the iPhone. 2MP these days is unbelievably poor (yes I don’t have a 3GS because I’m still locked in with my ‘old’ iPhone 3G for the duration of the contract.) My even older Nokia N95 had a better camera than that at 5MP. Clearly, my purchasing decision wasn’t based on the power of the camera. I was mesmerised by the potential of the App Store. The software then.

A present day example of this for me is the Nokia N97. Hardware wise, I think it’s actually highly impressive. The fold out keyboard really feels good to use on a regular and prolonged basis which is one thing that annoys and frustrates me about the iPhone. It’s quicker for me to write something down that it is to load up the ‘Notes’ application and hammer out the letters on the on screen keyboard. What lets down the N97 is the software. It’s simply nowhere near as intuitive, logical or easy to use than what has to be the benchmark for everyone now, the iPhone. The amount of times i’ve seen new handsets come out and the term ‘iPhone Killer’ being banded about is amazing.

Talking of iPhone Killers, the HTC Hero is one to watch which I’m keeping a keen eye on..

The models which Kyle selected to highlight above are:
1985 – motorola dynaTAC
1988 – nokia mobira cityman 1320
1991 – AEG teleport
1993 – ericsson GH198
1996 – motorola micro TAC 650
1998 – siemens C10
2001 – nokia 3210
2005 – motorola razr V3
2009 – samsung tocco

Borrowing a quote from the legendary Nigel Powers in the film Goldmember, perhaps better known as Michael Caine when he said:

“It’s not the size mate, it’s how you use it.”

You could say the same for the current state of mobile.

Categories
Funny Tech

Social media cushions (seriously)

I don’t know what’s worse. That they exist, or that I just bought the bottom 3.

You can buy them here if you think you’re as much of a nutter.

social-pillows

Categories
Funny Tech

The latest ad in the ‘Get A Mac’ campaign?

Can your PC do this? Ok, my Macbook can’t either but wow, just wow.

I have absolutely no idea how this works but I had to re-watch it and pick my jaw up from the floor the first time round. I wonder what the keyboard shortcut was to do this? 😉 It’s ok, you don’t need to understand French to appreciate it’s brilliance, keep watching..

Categories
Digital Funny Social Media Tech

Mapping Holiday Makers With Twitter

On the face of it this looks like a really innovative and forward thinking use of tech, providing another way that some clever people are using Twitter for yet another mash-up. This time it has the clout of Vodafone behind it, itself speaking volumes for the medium with some actual investment behind it and solid rationale. Vodafone want to make a song and dance about abolishing roaming charges and by making itself front of mind when thinking about holidaying, it’s doing just that. Clever.

There’s been a lot of buzz about hashtag spamming, most famously used (and abused to horrible effect) by Habitat. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then see more here, here and here. I hope this also serves as a case study for any brand looking to get in to the dark and dangerous waters of the social web of how NOT to do it. When did anyone at Habitat think that using irrelevant messaging would target the relevant and targeted customers who would shop at Habitat.

This, on the other hand, makes brilliant use of the hashtag #ukhols. Check it out and see what you think.

Vodafone Twitter Map

However, it’s almost as if you’re putting a sign up outside you’re house, “Hello Mr Burglar, just letting you know that I’m off on holiday for 2 weeks so during that time my house will be empty. Feel free to take whatever you like, no one will be here to stop you”

Granted, I’m being a little facetious in so far that you don’t give out your exact address, just providing the first half of your post code but by providing your name (which most people do on their Twitter page) it wouldn’t be hard to find out more if you wanted to.

What I do like though is the ‘Top Destinations’ part of the site which is where you can see which part of the world holiday makers are heading to using #ukhols. Perhaps predictably, considering the people the site would interest, the US was ahead of the curve, with at the time of writing New York being the top destination to be heading to. Paris followed in 2nd place with Vancouver in 3rd.

While the idea for me is more a showcase of the technology and what can be done with it more than it’s something of real value and use, Vodafone have to be applauded for taking a further leap in to the social space.  Over the past year, they’ve really made a push for getting involved. Their ‘Live Guy’ campaign, which saw people tracking a man across the UK via GPS and Twitter in order to win a netbook was hugely innovative, engaging and interactive while they recently ran a ‘Twitter Hunt’ to advertise the HTC Magic phone. This is going to be the way of companies looking to engage with savvy internet users who love some shiny new way of engagement, myself included. Thumbs up here.

Categories
Digital Tech

6 Rules for Viral Marketing

This follows on rather brilliantly to my previous post on the Samsung NC310 viral from earlier and illustrates just why it works.

Viral - Dare

Originally by Nick Emmel over at Ewar Woowar and looking forward to his follow up fleshing out posts on each of the 6 things.

Categories
Digital Funny Tech

Samsung NC310’s Coming To Life

I was hesistant to call it a Samsung Viral because I think the dreaded V word is over used and often out of context.  However, this to me is the very essence of a brilliant viral ad. I watched it, it captured my attention and thus I felt compelled to share it. That to me is pure and simply the desired end conclusion when making any video content to be distributed online. If it makes me want to show it to others, it’s done the job it set out to do.

It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s something a bit different and it’s entertaining. All at the same time.

Categories
Tech

Track Swine Flu with Google Maps Mashup.

Via Shankrila

News channels have been completely taken over by the news on the H1N1 swine flu in the last few days. Swine flu is caused by a new flu virus strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses.

The US has declared a public health emergency on Sunday. Mexico where the virus seems to have first been found have their businesses, schools, etc shutdown for days together. The World Health Organization has activated its 24-hour war room command center.

With so many news outlets reporting various numbers, it is easy to get the wrong notion between the number of ’suspected cases’ vs ‘confirmed cases’.

It is important to stay informed with the right facts. At times like these misinformation can spread like a wildfire.

Swine Flu Google Maps Mashup

This Google Maps mashup shows the global swine flu cases with different colored markers.

swine-flu-google-map

  • Purple – Confirmed or probable
  • Pink – Suspected cases
  • Markers with no dots – Deaths
  • Yellow – negative

BBC Swine Flu Map

BBC also maintains a swine flu map showing the history of cases reported as the days progress. This is being updated everyday with number cases per country.

H1N1 Swine Flu FAQ

Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN has answered the most frequently asked questions on the h1n1 swine flu. And NDTV has a FAQ section as well.

In spite of it’s name, this virus now spreads among humans and eating pork doesn’t infect you. In fact, this virus spreads just like a common cold – when an infected person near you coughs or sneezes or if you come into contact with the virus via eyes, nose or mouth. Simple hygiene like washing hands could help protect yourself to a certain extent.

Stay informed. Stay healthy!

Categories
Online Shopping Retail Social Media Tech Twitter

#Amazonfail and a coincidental job advert

This post was originally going to be entitled ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ and simply put up the image below but felt like it deserved a bit more than that..

Reading this is probably the best place to start.. then come right back..

I’ve been keeping half an eye over the weekend on the steadily building #Amazonfail which is incidentally the top trending topic on Twitter and there are this minute more mentions than even Easter. (For an example of it’s talkability factor, in the past hour there’s been a further 700+ mentions since I carried out the original search.)

Amazon PR Week Job Posting

It’s starting to also garner mainstream coverage now as the traditional press catches up but it is something as far as I know started on Twitter and then made it’s way through the blogosphere shortly after.

What’s happened since then? #Amazonfail was being mentioned 4 times a second barely an hour after the first tweet. A petition was started (which over 15,000 people have signed) a Google Bomb took place, and no I formerly had no idea what one of them was either but it sounds pretty damaging. A Facebook group ‘Boycott Amazon’ has been started. A poll was created with the question being ‘Can Amazon redeem/repair their reputation after #amazonfail?’ A list has popped up featuring all the affected titles – here. Some internet hackers are claiming it’s all their doing whilst the names and numbers of the Board of Directors at Amazon HQ have been published. The CTO has been also been ‘unmasked’ (and remains quiet on the whole debacle). Clearly, this is an issue that’s not going to just disappear overnight.

I’ve rounded up a few posts below. One question that everyone at one stage appeared to be asking was do Amazon have a PR manager in the UK or otherwise to deal with freak happenings like this? The advertisement to my right that I coincidentally spotted in the back of the most recent issue of PR Week would suggest otherwise. I put up the picture on Twitpic and soon after @girlonetrack (an affected publisher) retweeted it to her followers.

A few questions for you..

Do you think this is going to affect Amazon’s reputation at all? Has their silence thus far helped or hindered the situation? What do you think their response should be?

Roundup –

Blogs and Twitter coin Amazonfail by Wall Street Journal

Amazon feel the web’s wrath by Zoe Margolis

Amazon sees censorship decisions magnified through the social web magnifying glass by Becky McMichael

Amazonfail – Easter PR Disaster by Matt Churchill

Amazon = FAIL by Alas, a Blog

#Amazonfail – Timeline of WTF by Anastacia

Amazon Follies by Mark Probst

AmazonFAIL discussion thread at Metafilter

Amazonfail: A call to boycott Amazon by Edward Champion

Amazonfail – Malice or Bumble by Jessica Gottlieb

Amazon has removed it’s customer based reporting of books by Brutal Honesty

Amazon blames a glitch by Los Angeles Times

Categories
iPhone Tech

8 reasons why an iPhone Gmail app would rock.

via CNET

Tuesday’s release of a much-improved Web client for Gmail on the iPhone and Android handsets was nice, but it’s still got me salivating at the idea of a native application for the iPhone. Over the last year we’ve hounded the Gmail team on whether one was on the way, and the answer is–in typical Google fashion, that there will be no discussion of products that have not been announced.

But that doesn’t mean one isn’t in the works.

So let’s take a look at what a native Gmail application could give us over what Apple is currently offering and is set to release in the upcoming 3.0 firmware.

1. Push delivery/Push notifications
Gmail for Android does something no other client of Gmail does: push notifications. This means that the second you get a message it lets you know with a pop-up. The fastest you can set the iPhone’s Mail application to refresh Gmail is every 15 minutes. So could a native iPhone application do the same thing as Gmail for Android? Probably.

An official Google spokesperson told us that no other platform has this push service (including desktop clients), and the other official Gmail native apps simply auto-refresh every few minutes. With the upcoming firmware 3.0, Google could offer the push notifications of new messages through Apple’s push data stream either in the form of a badge that updates on the app’s icon, or with a small preview that pops up with the first line or two of the message.

2. Offline/Gears
The new version of Gmail for Android has offline reading and composing, meaning you can go through your mail and get work done even when you don’t have a connection. While the iPhone’s Mail app lets you read, save, and compose messages, it doesn’t download a big chunk of your in-box or all of the attachments that come with it, which means you can be out of luck if you can’t get online to view a work document or spreadsheet. Which brings us to…

3. Attachment handling
The attachment viewing of Gmail on the desktop can be an absolute joy. PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and PDFs can be viewed in an HTML viewer that cuts down on the start-up time and the requirement for any special software. While the iPhone can natively view these, it doesn’t include search or the option to save the file locally. A local app could offer both.

Likewise, when composing an e-mail in the native Mail app, adding attachments is limited to photos, which with the upcoming firmware is much simpler with systemwide copy and paste. However, if you’re using the Web client, it’s incapable of accessing your local files, which means you’re stuck using the native app if you want to add or take a quick photo as an attachment.

4. Smarter archiving
Not all Gmail users archive their messages, probably because they don’t understand what it does. Archiving takes a message out of your in-box while keeping it in your account, letting you search for it later. It’s a handy feature, yet the iPhone native mail client gives the impression that we’re deleting messages we don’t want to see in our in-box, something which goes against the very principle of having 7GB of mail storage.

If you’ve set up Gmail using the iPhone’s Gmail setup wizard you can in fact archive messages by selecting them and moving them to your “All Mail” folder. Alternately, for native app users who have set up Gmail using the special IMAP instructions the delete function does not actually delete the message but archives it. Confused? A native Gmail app might make a better differentiation between the two, and let you control what you want deleted and archived from the get-go.

Gmail’s task list

5. A standalone task list
Gmail’s task list is not the most full-featured to-do list app out there, but it’s simple and handy. Having it as part of a native app would let you access it and make edits when offline. Google could even give users the option to create hard due dates for each item, which could be synced up to your phone’s calendar and give you a buzz when they had to be done.

6. Combined contact look-up
Here’s a problem: I have one contact list on my phone and another on Gmail. Sure Google has an official solution that will sync up both and combine them into one massive contact list, but what if I want to keep the two separated to keep my iPhone’s phonebook a little smaller?

A native application would help sort that out by making use of the contacts I have on my phone and giving quick auto-complete-as-you-type suggestions for people on my Gmail contact list. Right now, typing addresses from the native iPhone will only bring up auto-complete suggestions if that person is on my contact list, or if I’ve recently sent them a message.

7. Built-in chat
Chat has become a big part of Gmail’s desktop version, yet on the iPhone it’s relegated to a finger-friendly browser version that will sign you off when you close your browser or switch tabs. That’s not a good solution. Why not build it into a native version of Gmail on the phone like there is on Android?

8. GPS and location awareness
Location is becoming an increasingly important part of mobile apps, and Gmail is no different. When Google puts advertising into the mobile version of Gmail you can bet there’s going to be a play on location. Contextual information from inside of your e-mails is one facet, but if Google can figure out where you are and offer something more targeted, you can bet it will.

More importantly, it will open things up for some fun extras, like being able to announce your location in your signature. This is a feature that’s available in the desktop version, but would be a whole lot more useful when your messages are coming from a mobile phone.

These are just a few reasons the iPhone is long overdue for its own native Gmail app. If you’ve got any of your own, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Categories
Funny iPhone Tech

So you think you’re an iPhone fanboy?

How about a set of 16 coasters lovingly crafted in to iPhone icons? It’s a reasonably extravagant purchase to spend $60 on iPhone coasters but I tried, they were sold out. Massive iFAIL.

iphone_drink_coasters

Created by the guys over at Brazil’s Meninos these icon coasters are clearly a must for any self discerning iPhone addict. All your favorite applications are present from Calendar to Safari, from Stocks to YouTube. No there’s no Copy & Paste.. Yet.

Categories
Search Engines Tech

Google Insights for Search

Hands up who’s heard of Google Insights for Search? My hand is staying down which as a discerning tech lover I probably shouldn’t freely admit? It had apparently launched last August though fact fans which in Google world is a long time ago. So what is it? Let’s essentially think of it as a stripped down version of your very own Google Analytics but for search. It’s actually pretty useful on getting a more detailed picture on what people are searching for, where and when.

Much like Google Trends, you can use Insights for Search to analyze search volume patterns over time, as well as related queries and rising searches. You can also compare search trends across multiple search terms, categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges. Insights can help you can analyze everything from interest levels in rival football teams (I’ve chosen my home town team of Nottingham Forest Vs bitter rivals Derby County but you see how it works. Take note @tim_whirledge) Or maybe even the relative popularity of politicians? (In this case Barack Obama Vs Gordon Brown)

In the last few days, additional features have been launched that allow you to see what the world is searching for beyond Google Web Search, by adding new data sources including Google News, Image Search, and Product Search. The new Insights lets you break down search data in several ways. For starters, you can take a look at the rising News searches over the past 7, 30, or 90 days

You can also view the popularity of a given query across different geographies, from country-level down to individual metropolitan areas. For journalists and newspapers, this feature could be a useful tool to gauge interest levels in different subjects among a reader base.

For example, with the Formula 1 season coming back in to action at the weekend kicking off in Melbourne, Australia, I was curious to see where in the world interest in Formula 1 was highest. I initally thought it would be highest in Australia with all the mentions stemming from the fact that the first race is in Melbourne and everyone would be really excited about it. I was wrong. Australia was down in 8th place for regional interest. How did I find that out?

I tried a search for “Formula 1” and used the ‘Google Web Search’ filter over the past 7 days. Interest was found to be highest in Spain, passionate and vocal F1 fans, with Costa Rica and South Africa running closely behind as you can see on the map below:

Regional Split

Of course, Insights for Search can’t quite explain these search asymmetries, but they’re interesting to note nonetheless!

Interesting stuff I’m sure you may well agree. It’s not a revolution, more an evolution. It might just give you that bit more granular level of detail when you’re doing a search so for that, it comes highly recommended. Start exploring right away on the Google Insights for Search homepage or head on over to the Inside Adwords Blog to find out more.

Categories
Analysis iPhone Mobile Retail Tech

Mobile phones are the most searched for consumer electronics product; Apple the top brand

Below is a guest posting on the Hitwise blog by Richard Seymour, their UK intelligence analyst and resident gadget expert.

I found the below a pretty interesting read so hope Hitwise don’t mind me reposting. The hot consumer electronics list is full of insights so the webinar linked to below is a recommended click.

We have developed a tool to analyse the consumer electronics search data – The Hitwise Hot Consumer Electronics List. For the most recent week’s data (week ending 14/03/09), we can see that mobile phones are the most searched for products online, accounting for almost 30% of all consumer electronics searches. The top phone is consistently the Apple iPhone, with approximately 1 in 12 mobile phone searchers currently searching for all variations of the iPhone. The iPhone has so far only been surpassed on the odd week or two during the launches of new phones. For example, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic which launched on 23rd January 2009, took top spot during w\e 14th Feb, picking up 6.6% of all mobile phone searches. However it fell back to second spot the following week, where it remains with 4.7% of all mobile searches.

Mobile_phones_video_Games_computers_software_televisions_cameras_game_consoles_mp3_players_sat_navs_toys_hobbies_hitwise.png

1 in 10 searches are for video games – over twice as many as for games consoles in seventh place – with Resident Evil 5 the most searched for video game last week. Computers and software sit in third and fourth places, and televisions are the fifth most searched for gadget with 4.5% of all searches last week. Cameras, Mp3 players, Satellite Navigation systems, -dominated by TomTom – and Toys complete the top 10 most searched for consumer electronics product types.

Lego is the top Toys and Hobbies brand, accounting for almost 1 in 8 Toys and Hobbies searches. However, the Danish company doesn’t make it into our list of the overall top 20 most searched for consumer electronics brands. These are highlighted in the treemap below, which shows the most popular brands in the Hitwise Consumer Electronics List. The size of the box represents its relative size to the top 20, with the top 10 represented by their logos.

apple_nokia_samsung_dell_sony_sony_ericsson_lg_hp_panasonic_nintendo_hitwise.PNG

We can see that Apple leads the pack, with 12% of all branded searches – almost twice as many as Nokia. As we saw above, Apple’s iPhone sits ahead of Nokia’s phones in the mobile phone market, but it is iTunes and their iPods that really sets the company apart from the rest of market in terms of searches. In the top 10, Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic all compete amongst multiple product ranges (most notably televisions), whereas Dell and HP share their involvement in the computers and printers categories. As we can see, the Hot Consumer Electronics List allows us to compare brand share amongst brands that would never normally be compared based on their niche product ranges, such as Blackberry, Dyson, TomTom and Nikon.

Another great use of the tool is to identify and gauge interest in new products, brands and fast-moving product areas. For example, we were able to track the increase in searches for netbooks in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the continued interest in them as more models enter the market. The chart below, made up of portfolios of search terms for netbooks extracted from this consumer electronics search tool, allows us to see that not only is the Samsung NC10 clearly the most searched for netbook, but also that the new Archos 10 has shot from nowhere to be one of the most searched for netbooks, and the 6th most searched for computer overall.

samsung_nc10_acer_aspire_one_archos_10_hp_2133_mini_note_asus_ee_hitwise.png

We have also been able to identify seasonal consumer behaviour. For example, there was a 31% increase in searches for garden products last week, with lawn mowers and especially the Bosch Rotak 34 the products of choice. There was also a 10% increase in searches for vacuum cleaners, lead by the Dyson DC25 as the Spring cleaning bug starts to hit.

The question is, are retailers and manufacturers already optimised for these products as we approach Easter? If you want to know more about the Hot Consumer Electronics List and see how it can help you, we’ve put together a short webinar describing how it works in more detail which you can watch here. If you have any further questions, please feel free to use the comments box below.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter.

Categories
Tech

What does your Youniverse look like?

I found out about Youniverse through Dom Whitehurst’s blog over at Pr-otagonism so cheers for that Dom!

Youniverse gives you questions in which you don’t have to give an actual text answer, it’s all about the choice of images that best represents your thoughts and emotions towards the question. In turn, it anticipates that you’ll have a better idea of the type of people you will get on with most if they answer similarly to the questions. Going a bit deeper, it tells you more about yourself. It’s one of those fact finding, personality questionnaire types.

If you look past the ever so slightly off putting dating and relationship finding type vibe the site gives off in abundance it does offers a few good nuggets of wisdom.. Is it useful though? It may tell you things you already know about yourself but at the same time, it’s only as accurate as the answers you provide!

So for me, within the ‘Personality’ test the following characteristics ran true.. You can do as little or as many of the tests as you like and report back on the details but let’s go with the ‘Personality’ test for the moment..

I’m going to tag Adam Lewis, Jed Hallam and Tom Chapman in this as I’d be interested to see what it says about them through the images they choose.

What does your Youniverse say about you?

Categories
Tech

Facebook overtakes the BBC..

I was actually a bit surprised by this when I first heard about it, but Facebook has for the first time ever overtaken the monolith that is the BBC to become the fifth most visited site in the UK.

With an impressive 18.4m uniques in September it’s quite incredible, seeing an 80% YOY increase in traffic whilst BBC fell nearly 3% over the same period.

Although that looks negative, BBC has been hugely successful with it’s rollout of the iPlayer over Christmas last year and it’s subsequent updates improving on an already great platform with the ability to use the iPlayer on such devices like the iPhone / iPod touch and the Nintendo Wii and has definitely changed viewing habits for some, myself included. It’s always good to know if you miss a BBC programme it will more than likely be on there for downloading / streaming when convenient.

When it comes to Facebook, personally I started to see a downturn in my usage from June onwards this year, most likely due to graduating from University and getting on the job ladder. I presume due to the lack of free time it lost it’s stickyness for me as I wasn’t part of the University / Student bubble. For a period I stopped using it so much, as I didn’t have as much time and it wasn’t drawing me back on such a regular basis. I’d check it for a few minutes in the evening and that would be it.

What it lost in it’s stickyness it has gained more recently through it’s chat application. It’s by no means perfect, it’s horribly buggy and says you are offline when you are clearly not for example. It has however taken my time more away from MSN Messenger to using FB Chat. Anyone and everyone is on Facebook so it’s a lot more broad and diverse who you might chance upon talking to..

Back on track –

The top 5 most visited sites in the UK now look like so (over the same period, Oct 08) :-

1. Google 36m uniques

2. Microsoft 32m

3. Yahoo 21m

4. eBay 20m

5. Facebook 18m

It’s probably no surprise the names listed, predominantly search focussed. Facebook is impressively even gaining on eBay though, quite something when you think about it. eBay, the golden child of the dot com boom being caught up by the new kid on the block! Those that thought Facebook was starting to see it’s demise in recent months appear to have been silenced but the golden question still lies unanswered, how are investors going to see some real returns.

It would appear that the almighty Zuckerburg doesn’t have a direct answer to that either instead reiterating the value of building up the brand and the network of users. Nicely deflected! He did however recently mention that Facebook’s global userbase has risen to over 100 million and is also one of the top destinations online for photo sharing.

With that in mind, it would appear that there’s life in the old dog yet!

What do you think? Is Facebook here to stay?