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12 Mar 11 Are Canadians Shunning Digital World?

If a recent research report released by comScore is to be believed, this appears to be the case. Or does it indicate something else? A mere shift in the preference, not a complete change of plan?

The research found that, the year on year (YoY) growth of e-mail consumption(unique visitors) in Canada is negative between December 2009 and December 2010. In December 2009, 12 million Canadians used one or another form of e-mail sites, whereas, only 10 million did so in the same month in 2010, which is a 28% decline (see image below to see the e-mail site usage trajectory).

canada-e-mail-use

The research has suggested that not only unique e-mail viewership has gone down, but the e-mail engagement has significantly fallen down. The total visits to email websites from Canada has fallen in the fourth quarter of 2010(500 million) from its position in the same quarter in 2009 (650 million). The total visit fell by 18%

The time spent on e-mail sites has also seen a decline. From 5.9 million in the studied period in 2009, it has fallen to 5.2 million in the same period in 2010, which is 11% decline in e-mail minutes. (See the image below for details).

canada-e-mail-engagement

It is hard to draw any conclusion from the above data, unless overall activity of Canadian net users is studied. It might be possible that people have reduced the use of e-mail sites and substituted it with social sites (read Facebook). I must add here that Facebook has also unveiled its own email program ([email protected]). Could it be responsible for the shift?

Not very unlikely! What is your view on this?

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21 Nov 10 Is Facebook Killing All Other Social Networks?

According to CompetePro data, Facebook has recorded a year-on-year growth (between October 2009 and October 2010) of 22% to take its unique users tally to 133.5 million from its previous 109.7 million mark. In just one month (between September 2010 and October 2010), Facebook grew by 2%.

This is the month where Twitter has witnessed a negative growth of 9.4% on its September number which was 28.3 million. If we see year-on-year growth of other two social networking giants LinkedIn and MySpace than we will see a similar decline in the number of unique visitors. MySpace has recorded a negative growth of 20.5%, and it has fallen from 73 million unique visitors to 58 million, and LinkedIn has recorded a 4.7% negative growth, taking its tally from 14.6 million unique visitors to 13.8 million uniques.

compete-socnet-figures-is-facebook-killing

Why I think Facebook is killing others?

We all have a finite 24 hours in a day, which we distribute (unevenly) on the works we do, and we have only so much time for social sites or Internet surfing. Seeing the average time spent by users on Facebook, which is in excess of 40 minutes a day, I think, people hardly get time left for other social networks.

Not only that, our habit of unevenly spreading time, also leaves us wanting for more time, which for many could mean cutting back on time spent on the Internet. And as people are more or less addicted to Facebook, time spent on other social sites drops down, which in the long term means, pulling out of these websites.

How they can survive?

For social networks like LinkedIn and twitter, which are not direct competitors of Facebook, developing a Facebook application could be a way, or may be not.

Tags: , 6 Million, , , , , , Million Unique Visitors, , Networking Giants, Sites Internet, , Social Networks, Tally,

06 May 10 Brand Loyalty Badly Hit by Recession

In a new study released by comScore, it has been revealed that in the time of the economic recession when people was losing their jobs and were uncertain about their future, they have stopped believing in brands.

Even the brands loyal have claimed to have stayed away from purchasing their favorite brands. In March 2010, more than 50% said that due to the recession, they did not buy the brand they wanted to.

buying-brands-most-wanted-by-category-comscore The categories that were already on the fall, before recession, did not see much of a change, but categories in which brand loyalty was paramount got hit by the recession. Apparels, OTC, and Health and beauty products saw the major decline. These are the categories that had most brand loyalty. See image above for detail.

Shifted to cheaper brands

While answering a question about what the consumers buy if not their preferred brand then they revealed their trading down behavior as well. Coupons, discounts, and freebies were said to be on the decisive factors in preference setting. See image for detail.

consumer-trading-down-comscore

Tags: Brand Image, Brand Loyalty, , , Coupons Discounts, Decisive Factors, , , Health And Beauty, Health And Beauty Products, , Otc, Paramount, , , Preferred Brand