Most experts agree that Google won't make us stupid. Indeed, 76% of technology stakeholders and critics interviewed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University believe that the Internet and search engines will enhance human intelligence by 2020.
For this new report, the Pew Research Center conducted in-depth interviews with over 800 experts about what they think the Internet will look like in 2020.
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Here are some of the key quotes from the report:
Will Google Make us Stupid?
Just the Stats
76% By 2020, people's use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google).
21% By 2020, people's use of the Internet has not enhanced human intelligence and it could even be lowering the IQs of most people who use it a lot. Nicholas Carr was right: Google makes us stupid.
4% Did not respond
"I feel compelled to agree with myself. But I would add that the Net's effect on our intellectual lives will not be measured simply by average IQ scores. What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."- Nicholas Carr
"Google will make us more informed. The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world." - Hal Varian, Google, chief economist
"It's a mistake to treat intelligence as an undifferentiated whole. No doubt we will become worse at doing some things ('more stupid') requiring rote memory of information that is now available though Google. But with this capacity freed, we may (and probably will) be capable of more advanced integration and evaluation of information ('more intelligent')." - Stephen Downes, National Research Council, Canada
"The problem isn't Google; it's what Google helps us find. For some, Google will let them find useless content that does not challenge their minds. But for others, Google will lead them to expect answers to questions, to explore the world, to see and think for themselves." - Esther Dyson, longtime Internet expert and investor
"People are already using Google as an adjunct to their own memory. For example, I have a hunch about something, need facts to support, and Google comes through for me. Sometimes, I see I'm wrong, and I appreciate finding that out before I open my mouth." - Craig Newmark, founder Craig's List
"The Internet has facilitated orders of magnitude improvements in access to information. People now answer questions in a few moments that a couple of decades back they would not have bothered to ask, since getting the answer would have been impossibly difficult." - John Pike, Director, globalsecurity.org
Will The Internet Enhance and Improve Writing, Reading and the Rendering of Knowledge?
Just the Stats
65% By 2020, it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge.
32% By 2020, it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing, and the intelligent rendering of knowledge.
3% Did not respond
"Most writing online is devolving toward SMS and tweets that involve quick, throwaway notes with abbreviations and threaded references. This is not a form of lasting communication. In 2020 there is unlikely to be a list of classic tweets and blog posts that every student and educated citizen should have read." - Gene Spafford, Purdue University CERIAS, Association for Computing Machinery U.S. Public Policy Council
"This is a distinction without a metric. I think long?form expressive fiction will suffer (though this suffering has been more or less constant since the invention of radio) while all numeric and graphic forms of rendering knowledge, from the creation and use of databases to all forms of visual display of data will be in a golden age, with ordinary non?fiction writing getting a modest boost. So, English majors lose, engineering wins, and what looks like an Up or Down question says more about the demographic of the answerer than any prediction of the future." - Clay Shirky, professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University
"When I was a boy, homework consisted of writing a paragraph. Now, youth writing paragraphs in a blink of an eye. They are mastering language only to reinvent it. They are using it in new forms. Tags. Labels. Acronyms. And the game becomes a written game of who can use written word most effectively. Reading, writing, and communicating will become much more fluid as youth are more engaged in the practice of these skills, and have a greater motivation to practice their skills." - Robert Cannon, senior counsel for internet law at Federal Communications Commission
"When writing itself appeared, philosophers feared that it would weaken memory and degrade intelligence. But it allowed for a great, albeit externalized memory and an enlarged, albeit shared intelligence. [...] The Internet will have similar effects, with some losses but, on balance, more gains." - Mark U. Edwards, senior advisor to the Dean, Harvard University Divinity School
"More people are reading and writing, and in more ways, for more readers and other writers, than ever before, and the sum of all of it goes up every day." - Doc Searls, co? author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto"
Will Online Anonymity Have Gone the Way of the Dodo by 2020?
Just the Stats
41% By 2020, the identification ID systems used online are tighter and more formal - fingerprints or DNA?scans or retina scans. The use of these systems is the gateway to most of the Internet?enabled activity that users are able to perform such as shopping, communicating, creating content, and browsing. Anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed.
55% By 2020, Internet users can do a lot of normal online activities anonymously even though the identification systems used on the Internet have been applied to a wider range of activities. It is still relatively easy for Internet users to create content, communicate, and browse without publicly disclosing who they are.
3% Did not respond
"The privacy and civil liberties battles over the next decade will increasingly focus on the growing demands for identity credentials. New systems for authentication will bring new problems as more identity information will create new opportunities for criminals. Identity management companies will also go bankrupt and try to sell off their primary asset ?? the biometric identifiers of their customers." - Marc Rotenberg, executive director, Electronic Privacy Information Center
"Anonymity online will gradually become a lot like anonymity in the real world. When we encounter it, we'll take a firm grip on our wallet and leave the neighborhood as soon as possible ?? unless we're doing something we're ashamed of." - Stewart Baker,
"'It will be an archipelago of named users, who get a lot of value from participating in that part of the ecosystem, but still set in an ocean of anonymity." ?? Clay Shirky, professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University
"Anonymity will continue to have its place; that is the architecture of the web and it will be difficult to change that. Nonetheless, I believe that verified identity will come to be seen as an added value in transactions (including conversations) and as a way to recognize more value (reward in financial or ego terms)." ?? Jeff Jarvis, prominent blogger, professor, City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism
You can find the full report with almost 50 pages of quotes about a number of additional topics on the Pew Center's website.
YouTube is, by far, the most popular online video service, but we actually know very little about how bloggers use the service to embed videos on their own sites. Sysomos, the Toronto-based social media analytics and monitoring firm, just took a closer look at how the blogosphere links to and embeds YouTube videos. Overall, the company analyzed over 2.5 million YouTube videos that were embedded in blog posts between July and December 2009.
Bloggers mostly embed music videos (31%) and entertainment clips (15%). Sports (6%), animation (3.2%) and science videos (2.9%) rank at the bottom of the most often-embedded YouTube videos. Interestingly, the film (3.6%) and how-to (3.1%) categories also ranked very low in Sysomos' index.
We would have thought that how-to videos would have ranked higher, but while videos about how to make a BristleBot can be quite popular, they can't quite rival the popularity of Miley Cyrus and the Muppets.
Who is Embedding Them?
The study also looked at the demographics of bloggers who embed these videos. In general, 20-to-35-year-old bloggers embed most of the videos (57%), followed by teenagers (20%) and bloggers over 35 (20%).
While music videos are the most popular category across age groups, older bloggers tend to embed far more videos in the news and politics categories than younger bloggers.
A few more interesting YouTube stats from the report:
Videos about news and politics get the highest average number of comments (561), followed by sports (490) and entertainment clips (436).
Sysomos did not find any clear correlation between how high users rated a video and how often they were viewed. The most popular videos actually had rather average ratings (2-3 stars).
North American bloggers link to a lot more News and Politics videos with a specific interest in health care, global warming and U.S. political issues.
20-to-35 year old bloggers are most active in embedding and linking to videos within their posts with 57% of total videos coming from this demographic group.
The average length of a YouTube video is 4 minutes and 12 seconds.
The average number of views for the YouTube videos Sysomos analyzed in this report was 99,160.
European bloggers embed even more music videos than the rest of the world.
You can get paid to tweet. Average, non-celebrity users are making some decent pocket change using Twitter ad services like Twittad, Magpie, Sponsored Tweets, and Ad.ly. And while reports of $10,000 tweets abound, average users are pulling in much smaller amounts, usually three figures at most.
But aren't these programs rewarding scam artists who boost their follower count through artificial means or sneak in ads that look like regular tweets? Surprisingly, for the most part, the answer is no.
This is part 2 of a two part series on paid tweets. See part 1 here.
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Paid Tweets: Not a Gold Rush for Most Users
Janet Thaeler only has around 7400 followers on Twitter which puts her far from celebrity status. Occasionally she'll tweet a relevant ad to her engaged followers, averaging around two per month. They've never brought her big bucks, though. The most she's ever been paid is $20 per tweet.
Tim Kissane is in a similar boat. With only around 6000 followers, he's not tweeting to a massive crowd. The least he's been paid is $2 per tweet; the most is $38.50. Tim says that none of the services he's tried, which include Sponsored Tweets, Magpie and Twittad have earned him any "significant revenue" and dubs his payouts "chump change." Tim says that's he's disappointed with the services. "Unless I drop my price significantly, I will receive no offers," he laments. "For instance, Twittad estimates my ad value as ~$471/month." However, "the few offers I get average $8-$12/week. And even those are scarce."
But perhaps Tim, like many others, was expecting paid tweets to serve as a steady source of secondary income when it is, in reality, no more than the Twitter equivalent of an online display ad similar to those you would see on someone's blog.
In fact, that's the very model that Ad.ly hopes to reproduce with their system. Instead of promoting the whole "conversational marketing" mumbo-jumbo which purports that people will buy from companies their friends recommend, Ad.ly says their system is the Twitterized version of the already successful display ad model. As with bloggers hosting ads on their site, Ad.ly thinks that Twitter users should be able to monetize their content too. However, unlike display ads, Twitter CTRs (clickthrough rates) are much, much higher. Five times the industry average, says Ad.ly CEO Sean Rad.
Other Twitter advertising companies report similar high levels of engagement. Magpie even claims their average clickthrough is the unheard of 2%. Twittad says their click to conversions (aka "call to action") is well above 8-10%.
Rewarding Engagement, Not Just Numbers
A consistent factor among the majority of the companies is the use of systems and algorithms that take into account not just raw follower counts, but the engagement levels of those followers. Ad.ly's algorithms, for example, look at the quality of someone's followers to determine what prices to pay. Too many spammers and bots following you and the payout goes down. And if you're a spammer - in other words, tweeting out too many ads yourself - the price goes down even further. So far, in fact, that you probably won't even find using their system worthwhile. Magpie and Sponsored Tweets, too, say follower counts are not how they determine success. Twittad's formula also looks beyond follower counts to see how active a certain Twitterer is before determining their payout amount. In other words, you can't simply turn on auto-follow via a third party service and boost your follower count to high levels and then expect to start earning money. Only real, engaged users communicating to a real, engaged following are rewarded via these programs.
Disclosure: Are Ads Sneaking into Your Stream?
Another surprise is how strict many of the companies are about following the rules of disclosure - that is, making sure tweets are labeled as ads in some way, shape or form. Each company involved has their own method for this, however, some are more obvious than others.
Magpie requires their users to choose between #ad, #advert, #sponsor, etc. until a definitive recommendation from either the FTC or WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Assoc.) is established. Sponsored Tweets uses a disclosure engine that makes their users choose from a set of options, too, which includes #ad and many others. Ad.ly users have "(ad)" placed in their tweets for them and, even better, their ad messages can't be rewritten by their users - the system automatically sends out the tweets, disclosure and all. Twittad, on the other hand, doesn't require disclosure but uses a "sponsor URL" of http://spon.in. Click through on any Twittad link and a banner at the top of the page appears reading "providing disclosed sponsorship in updates."
However, there are still ways around some of these disclosure systems. For example, prolific Twitterer John Chow notes that with Sponsored Tweets, you can reword the ad however you want. Since they allow you to use "brought to you by" as one of the disclosure mechanisms, you could write: "Hey guys! I found this great $1.99 web hosting deal bought to you by bluehost. Go check it out. URL" and get away with it.
This tricky workaround to the disclosure requirements, not too mention the various methods employed by the companies to meet disclosure requirements, are one main area that needs improvement. Consistent guidelines for paid tweeting should be established and adhered to by all companies involved. Without standards, it's a lot easier to mistake an ad for a regular tweet if you're not paying careful attention.
Companies are Paying, but Issues Remain
Despite the grumblings in the Twitter community about how paid tweets will start mucking up the stream, advertisers haven't been afraid to get on board and give pay-per-tweet ads a shot. The Twitter ad companies have all worked with major brands including Sears Holdings (Twittad), Hershey's (Magpie), Sony Playstation (Magpie), LG (Sponsored Tweets), Volvo (Sponsored Tweets), Talbots (Sponsored Tweets), Sony Electronics (Ad.ly), Ralph Lauren (Ad.ly), Bing (Ad.ly) and Bookrenter.com (Ad.ly), just to name a few.
Still, not everyone is happy with their results. Deborah Blake with IntroSpectrum has just started using Sponsored Tweets and Magpie. With Google AdWords, she's seeing right around $.50 CPC (cost-per-click) but through Magpie she's seeing about $3 CPC. Sponsored Tweets is about the same, she says. Also, Magpie reports 0.65% CTR for the campaign, but the company's own analytics indicate a much lower rate. She can't be sure if their internal analytics are missing some clicks or if Magpie is over-estimating, though. However, the CTR is much lower than Magpie's claimed average of 2%.
However, even Blake is willing to give the Twitter ad agencies the benefit of the doubt. "I want to emphasize...this is a pretty small sample size so far, and besides that our AdWords campaigns have been optimized over the course of many months...," she notes. "We can't draw any firm conclusions yet, but my expectations are that quality traffic through Twitter advertising will be significantly higher cost than traditional online channels."
In the end, it's probably still too soon for advertisers to truly get a grip on whether the quality traffic from Twitter ads is worth the price. While it's one thing to track clickthroughs and conversions, it's much harder to track the positive or negative feelings generated by ads that may impact sales further down the road. For now, though, it seems some advertisers are willing experiment, some Twitter users are willing to tweet for pay and surprisingly, some Twitter users are willing to follow those that do.
With each new milestone in technological evolution we've seen a company emerge as the clear leader. In the current landscape, we observe this happening in several key parts of the marketplace including networking, search and operating systems.
Cloud computing is a new disruptive force that makes us ask the question whether we'll see the future of the cloud dominated by a single company. In this multi-part series, we'll take a look at a handful companies and envision what the world might look like, if, in fact, they win it all. We'll also analyze what it will take for a new company to rise up and claim the leadership role in this chapter of computing.
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Dominance Happens: A Bit of Recent History
There has been a love/hate relationship with companies that dominate markets. On one hand, it's us consumers that make it happen. But when they become giants we cheer as governement regulators and competitors knock them down.
Microsoft has faced this issue perhaps more than any company in the past few decades. When the browser battles were in full swing in the late 1990s, Microsoft was taken to court by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations.
In this note released in 2000 - Technology, Market Changes, and Antitrust Enforcement -Microsoft evaluated the idea of whether it was consistent with public welfare for a company to "win" a technology market, and what it means to have a network effect in technology.
Microsoft makes the point that no technology company will hold a dominant position for long if it doesn't innovate and expand the market definition. Additionally, if a company doesn't find the right balance of trust and pricing between its customers new technologies will find a way into the market and cause customers to defect.
Point: A Dominant Vendor Will Emerge in the Cloud
Taking these factors into consideration, we believe there are several points that can support the argument that a dominant player in cloud computing in the future. Due to the nature of market forces a single vendor will emerge as the clear leader in offering cloud solutions.
First mover advantage: We're already seeing amazing things happen at first-movers like Amazon that are defining product and pricing. This gives them an advantage in fueling further growth and by learning and iterating the solutions in the market. Being first in an infrastructure-driven business will help them reach scale that others just can not reach easily - and potentially price it where others can't match.
Vendor lock: Once you get started with an infrastructure provider it becomes interwoven into business operations. By the current nature of the cloud (e.g. little standards, a lot of innovation) being first with leading solutions adds more momentum to the first-mover that wins strategic customers.
Strategic synergies: When we look at the combination of cloud computing and collaboration, we see a natural fit in services that meet more needs and take more market share. It may just work out that bundling works also in the cloud and creates the network effect that Microsoft is famous for. Cisco is also partnering across the landscape, with a focus on preparing the network for the cloud. By making it easier to manage your cloud with Cisco gear, it will provide IT leaders a reason to expand their relationships today, and stay tomorrow.
Acquisitions and Partnerships: Companies that buy their way into the market will be a big factor in putting momentum behind their offerings. Companies to watch: VMware, Cisco, Oracle. These companies are already showing that the race is on to win the cloud through aggregation of capabilities. Cisco has a blog dedicated to Cloud Computing, Oracle is going on tour sharing its ambitions for the cloud
Counterpoint: A Dominant Company Will Not Emerge in the Cloud
Perhaps no single organization will have the ability to create a dominant foundation in cloud computing. Instead, we'll see many types of solutions as equal peers in the market.
In a way, this runs against the grain of existing technology landscape and our history with successful innovations. Maybe that is why we love the idea of the cloud itself?
It's too big to own: One big reason to doubt a single dominant force in the cloud is that it feels like owning the Internet. Even Cisco with its strengths can't make such a claim. Perhaps the cloud is the perfect market, where the barriers of entry are low enough that continual evolution will occur.
It's a movement, not a layer: Another argument against the cloud having a dominant player is its fuzzy definition. There are many parts and pieces to it, and it's not clear today what it would mean to "win" the cloud computing market.
Portability will keep vendors in check: If customers demand solutions where they can move from vendor to vendor freely, it will impact the landscape. Companies with cloud solutions in the marketplace could be required by these customers to remove barriers to moving data and services between different entities. Additionally, standards and best practices may emerge that allow companies and individuals to move freely between providers. In this world, it will become a fluid market that prevents vendor lock and promotes pricing and trust as brand differentiators.
A Glimpse at Potential Futures
We've compiled a list of companies worth reviewing as candidates as possible dominant players in cloud computing. We'll be looking at their brand and the available assets that could be leveraged to achieve this position. Finally, we'll take a fresh look at what it might feel like if they succeed and shape the brave new world of cloud computing.
The list of candidates we're analyzing includes: Google, Microsoft, Apple, VMware, IBM, HP, Cisco, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, and our favorite, Insert new startup to our list by adding a comment below.
Please let us know what you hopes and fears are with the cloud computing marketplace. Any companies we should we add to our list (or remove)? What's your take: Is there one company today that is best positioned to win the cloud?
Yesterday we posted a video from the Teens in Tech conference, looking at how teens perceive technology. Today we’re co-launching a survey which aims to find out how children 12 years and younger use web technology. We’ve partnered with Boston research firm Latitude, who provided the survey tool and will help us analyze the data. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, after which ReadWriteWeb and Latitude will list and analyze the results.
If you’re the parent of a child 12 and under, then we invite you to participate in the survey by clicking here.
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The study is open to all children aged 12 and under.
It’s important to note that you DO NOT need to reveal the identity of your child. We’re super conscious of the privacy issues regarding children on the Web, so you may enter a nickname into the survey instead of your child’s real name.
In a nutshell, here’s how the survey works. With you (the parent) always at the controls, the survey will ask your child to draw his or her response to a question. There is a special tool for you to upload the resulting drawing, in JPEG format. The survey will then gather some general information about the child’s computer use, which should only take 5-10 minutes.
As explained in a background post by Latitude’s Kim Gaskins, the survey aims to discover how children use and understand Web technology, the environmental factors that contribute to these understandings, and the extent to which children can think ‘innovatively’ about web technology. The study also intends to deduce real-world applications from the drawings that the kids create.
Latitude is a research-driven consultancy for technology and media companies. It works with clients to discover and develop opportunities for next-generation content, software, and communications technologies through a combination of web-based applications and innovative research methods. Visit life-connected.com for other Latitude studies, or email ischulte@latd.com to learn more about working with Latitude.
Yesterday we posted a video from the Teens in Tech conference, looking at how teens perceive technology. Today we’re co-launching a survey which aims to find out how children 12 years and younger use web technology. We’ve partnered with Boston research firm Latitude, who provided the survey tool and will help us analyze the data. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, after which ReadWriteWeb and Latitude will list and analyze the results.
If you’re the parent of a child 12 and under, then we invite you to participate in the survey by clicking here.
Sponsor
The study is open to all children aged 12 and under.
It’s important to note that you DO NOT need to reveal the identity of your child. We’re super conscious of the privacy issues regarding children on the Web, so you may enter a nickname into the survey instead of your child’s real name.
In a nutshell, here’s how the survey works. With you (the parent) always at the controls, the survey will ask your child to draw his or her response to a question. There is a special tool for you to upload the resulting drawing, in JPEG format. The survey will then gather some general information about the child’s computer use, which should only take 5-10 minutes.
As explained in a background post by Latitude’s Kim Gaskins, the survey aims to discover how children use and understand Web technology, the environmental factors that contribute to these understandings, and the extent to which children can think ‘innovatively’ about web technology. The study also intends to deduce real-world applications from the drawings that the kids create.
Latitude is a research-driven consultancy for technology and media companies. It works with clients to discover and develop opportunities for next-generation content, software, and communications technologies through a combination of web-based applications and innovative research methods. Visit life-connected.com for other Latitude studies, or email ischulte@latd.com to learn more about working with Latitude.
IDC reported today that the majority of business workers use the social Web at least once a week.
Social computing and the cloud are becoming equally integral in the enterprise. IDC makes the point that if social computing represents the new business process then cloud computing is the delivery mechanism.
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Mike Fauscette oversaw the IDC survey. Here is how he sees the connection between social enterprise and cloud computing:
"The group I run includes cloud research and most of IDC's enterprise apps research. From the survey and just my general perspective I'd say cloud and social are very connected concepts. Social business to me is about cultural shift and transformation facilitated thru technology. Cloud is a key component to that. Cloud supports ubiquitous access and is very important in mobile as the new enterprise desktop."
Salesforce.com is a good example of this new breed of enterprise systems that pulls together real-time communication, applications and content. The company's new product, Salesforce Chatter, is a platform for creating internal social networks. The appplication makes it possible to collaborate in a real-time, secure environment: You can update your own real-time feed. It sees updates from applications. It integrates information from third-party service providers. You can see updates from other people in your network.
Salesforce.com makes the argument that the collaborative nature of the cloud makes this possible. Traditional, desktop applications require a user to go through a lengthy process, where, for instance, a document is created in an application like Sharepoint and business applications are separate from the communication process
A cloud-based service bring these services together into one environment. In a cloud-based environment, API's can be used to integrate third-party applications such as Twitter.
For most of the world, a desktop system is limiting. The enterprise is fast becoming an extended system that reaches out to partners and customers. Those people may be in distant places. They can't access your desktop but they can interact with you in a social, collaborative environment that embraces the open Web, as delivered through the cloud.
During Google's Q4 earnings call, a lot of the discussion focused on the mobile web. Google clearly thinks that the mobile web is poised for massive growth over the next few years and projects like Android show that Google wants to control as much of this market as possible. One of the most interesting comments during yesterday's call came from Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice president for product development, who said that "with all the capabilities these phones that are coming out have like GPS, cameras, we think there is the potential to actually make this mobile web better than the PC web."
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For Google, It's All About Ads
Google, of course, is mostly interested into turning the mobile web into a lucrative market for its advertising products. For Google, making the mobile web better than the PC web means that you can call advertisers directly from a mobile ad and increase conversion rates.
For most users, however, the ability for ads to let them make calls on their mobile phones is probably not very high up on their wish lists. In the broader context of recent trends on the mobile web, however, Rosenberg's comment does ring true.
Using Sensors to Personalize the Mobile Web
Just a week, ago, for example, Google introduced location aware searches for mobile phones. If you go to google.com on your phone today, Google tweaks its search results based on your current location. Google's regular browser-based search can't do this.
Thanks to the sensors in today's mobile phones and the potential for adding more complex sensors in the near future, the mobile web has the potential to give us a more personalized user experience than our current laptops and desktops are able to.
What do You Think?
Does the mobile web have the potential to be better than the PC web on your desktop? Isn't the small screen a serious impediment for making this experience better than the desktop experience? Or will Apple's mythical tablet solve all these problems and give us a mobile web experience that's somewhere in between the user experience a phone and on the desktop?
According to a new study, enterprises continue to deploy social networking tools at an increasing pace. At the same time, though, this Cisco-sponsored study also found that a surprisingly small number of businesses have implemented formal processes and policies related to their use of social media. IT departments have also been left out of the loop when it comes to the adoption of social media tools. Only 10% of the respondents currently involve their IT departments as primary decision makers when it comes to choosing technologies for externally facing social networking initiatives.
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This study was sponsored by Cisco and carried out by the IESE Business School in Spain, the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the U.S. and the Henley Business School in the United Kingdom. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 100 companies in Europe, Asia and Africa. These businesses were selected because they were early adopters of social media tools.
Most of the interviewed companies are using social networks (75%) and micro-blogging tools (50%) as their primary tools to reach their audiences. The study found that social networking tools like blogs, Yammer, Facebook and Twitter are now being used by almost every department in these businesses.
The Honeymoon is Over
As Neil Hair, assistant professor of marketing at Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the lead researchers of this study told us yesterday, it is also important to note that "the honeymoon period" for social media in the enterprise is coming to an end. Early projects were often led by one or two early adopters who were enthusiastic about the possibilities of using social media tools in their companies. Now, more and more companies are seeing social media as an integral part in how they communicate with customers and vendors.
Missing Pieces: Governance and IT
Only 1 in 7 companies have formalized a process for adopting and deploying these tools, however. Only 1 in 5 of the interviewed companies have created internal policies that govern the use of these tools by their employees. As the researchers noted, quite a few companies struggle with finding the right balance between "the social and personal nature of these tools while maintaining some amount of corporate oversight."
Very few companies (1 in 10) report that their IT departments are directly involved in their social networking initiatives. As these tools become more important, however, the the demand on IT to integrate these tools into the existing infrastructure will surely rise as well.
The 2010 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) gets into full swing today and already we're seeing a big trend emerging: web applications being ported to consumer electronics, from the technology inside cars to Web-enabled TVs.
Yesterday we noted that online music service Pandora will be made available in cars, courtesy of a new Pioneer device that will begin selling in March. The pricey $1,200 device detects users' Pandora settings via their iPhones. Other evidence of this trend can be found in Ford's announcement of a new in-car system and Samsung's latest Internet-connected TV.
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Web Apps in Your Car
This morning Ford CEO Alan Mulally delivered an opening keynote address at CES, unveiling Ford's latest car technologies. One of the things he announced is MyFord, an Internet-enabled "cabin tech" system. As reported by CNET, MyFord will include two 4.2-inch color LCDs: one for vehicle information such as engine speed, temperature, and trip data; and the other for audio, phone, and navigation information. A third LCD screen is added if the system is upgraded to 'MyFord Touch'. Check out the Motor Trend website for more detailed information.
The online music integration in MyFord is one example of the slick smartphone-like functionality becoming available in cars. MyFord will include HD radio with song tagging, which lets users find more information about an artist or song on the Web.
MyFord also has a unified music library, which lets users browse music from a variety of onboard audio sources.
In December Ford announced that its SYNC-enabled vehicles will become rolling WiFi hotspots - enabling passengers to connect to the Internet when a cellular modem is plugged into the car's USB slot. At CES, Ford announced it will include a Web browser that displays on the MyFord Touch 8-inch LCD.
Web Apps on Your TV
The car is just one of many consumer products being Web-ized. The TV has been a focus of innovation for Internet technology for a few years now.
At CES Samsung has announced its new LED 9000 model TV, using Samsung's Internet@TV technology. This television is connected to the internet via Wi-Fi and is able to hold up to 100 apps. Consumers will receive a handful of free web apps when they buy the TV set. Other apps will be released by vendors and may cost money. An early example is one Napster announced at CES - a free Napster TV widget which provides access to the Napster subscription music service.
We know that more and more real world objects are being connected to the Internet - a trend that we track closely called Internet of Things. But this is slightly different.
What we're seeing at CES this year is more and more mainstream consumer items, such as cars and TVs, having web applications integrated. These are apps that we've become familiar with in the Web 2.0 world - Pandora, Napster, iTunes and others. Music and entertainment especially is making inroads, but we're sure to see web apps from other sectors integrated into consumer electronics too.
Most experts agree that Google won't make us stupid. Indeed, 76% of technology stakeholders and critics interviewed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University believe that the Internet and search engines will enhance human intelligence by 2020.
YouTube is, by far, the most popular online video service, but we actually know very little about how bloggers use the service to embed videos on their own sites. 
You can get paid to tweet. Average, non-celebrity users are making some decent pocket change using Twitter ad services like 
A consistent factor among the majority of the companies is the use of systems and algorithms that take into account not just raw follower counts, but the engagement levels of those followers. Ad.ly's algorithms, for example, look at the quality of someone's followers to determine what prices to pay. Too many spammers and bots following you and the payout goes down. And if you're a spammer - in other words, tweeting out too many ads yourself - the price goes down even further. So far, in fact, that you probably won't even find using their system worthwhile. Magpie and Sponsored Tweets, too, say follower counts are not how they determine success. Twittad's formula also looks beyond follower counts to see how active a certain Twitterer is before determining their payout amount. In other words, you can't simply turn on auto-follow via a third party service and boost your follower count to high levels and then expect to start earning money. Only real, engaged users communicating to a real, engaged following are rewarded via these programs. 
Magpie requires their users to choose between #ad, #advert, #sponsor, etc. until a definitive recommendation from either the FTC or 
Yesterday we 
During Google's 
Thanks to the sensors in today's mobile phones and the potential for 
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The 2010 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (
The online music integration in MyFord is one example of the slick smartphone-like functionality becoming available in cars. MyFord will include HD radio with song tagging, which lets users find more information about an artist or song on the Web.
MyFord also has a unified music library, which lets users browse music from a variety of onboard audio sources. 