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In the UK, consumers are spending more time with digital and traditional media. According to the second KPMG Media and Entertainment Barometer , the average monthly consumption of traditional media climbed from 11 hours and 40 minutes per month in September 2009 to 12 hours and 13 minutes in March 2010. For digital media, the increase was more dramatic. Consumption of digital media rose from 6 hours 14 minutes to 7 hours 28 minutes per month. At the same time, however, consumers now spend less on digital and traditional media. Even though more newspapers are putting their content behind pay walls, the number of consumers who paid nothing for accessing online news actually increased over the last few months. Sponsor People Spend More Time with Digital Media... With regards to new media, a growing number of consumers now spend time on social media and blogging sites (up from 47% in September 2009 to 50% in March 2010) and watch TV online (up from 19% to 24%). KPMG also found that younger Internet users in the UK between 16 and 24 are more likely to engage with new media. Those Internet users who use social media and play online games also tend to spend more time online than others. ... But Pay Less More Statistics from the KPMG Report The number of people who don't pay for print journals and magazines is also up (19% compared to 12% six months ago) 21% of print newspaper readers paid nothing in March 2010 (most likely due to the availability of free newspapers like the Evening Standard in cities like London) People in the UK spent an average of 29 hours in front of their TV last month. Men are more likely than women to engage in new media activities (83% vs. 75%) When it comes to paying for online content, most consumers in the UK continue to pay nothing (88%), though publishers will be happy to hear that younger Internet users between 16 to 24 are slightly more likely to pay for online content than older users. Today, only 3% of Internet users in the UK pay for an online subscription to digital content and about 7% pay for digital content. The number of Internet users in the UK who paid nothing for digital content actually increased slightly over the last six months. Only about 10% of these users who are currently paying nothing for content indicated that they would be likely to buy a paid subscription to online content in the next 12 months. This, according to KPMG's analysts indicates, that the market for paid subscriptions is "unlikely to grow greatly over the coming 12 months." KPMG also found that the average spend on digital media in the UK fell from £1.99 in September 2009 to £0.98 in March 2010. Some People Simply Prefer Traditional Media This doesn't mean that all consumers prefer to access media content online, however. Only about a quarter of respondents preferred online media over traditional media. Most of these users (89%) cited a preference for "reading something physical" over reading on a computer. About 60% of respondents also noted that they simply prefer the experience of traditional media over consuming digital content. Discuss
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Digital Media Consumption Increases - But Few Are Willing to Pay
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There is a question being bandied about by people in the game industry. It effects something you do, or, if you don't, your friend, roommate, wife or fencing opponent does. Social gaming. Is social gaming - games played on social networks, like Facebook and MySpace - actually gaming? Millions of users have already given their tacit approval that there is indeed entertainment value in those games. But what puts hardcore gamers' skivvies in a knot is the idea that there has been total sacrifice of gameplay in exchange for filthy lucre - that these "games" have been so neutered that they only outwardly resemble gaming. And so the more important question is this: Are hardcore gamers simply demanding that all cars on the road be sports cars, or are they a bellwether of a shift in social gaming from click-click-click, to quality? Sponsor "Social games are making tons of money," said Karen Clark, a Project Manager at Electronic Arts. "They are like slot machines made legal and web-accessible. There's a lot of investment. Most game people think these 'games' suck because they are more like exercises in clicking and monetization of customers than they are fun." It is a burgeoning area. In December, Digital Sky Technologies bought into Zynga for $180 million. EA snapped up PlayFish for $400 million and Playdom, whose "Social City" game racked up 10 million players in about a month of existence, scored a $43 million series B . Most social games as well as some casual games make use a business model of selling in-game "currency" for the purchase of anything from fertilizer to a straight-razor and combining that with player-privileges sales and advertising. "The business model for social games worked really well," said Mark Hendrickson of Big Fish, a Seattle-based gaming company, "because there were only a few companies who could harvest all the affiliate money and swamp anyone else's efforts by putting that money right back into the Facebook ad network. I really think they should have called it 'Facebook gaming.' Social gaming is only on the radar because it is a really, really cheap way to possibly make a whole lot of money, if implemented properly. "As Facebook goes, so goes social gaming." Tami Baribeau, the producer of Metaplace's Island Life game on Facebook, sees it very differently. "Games go where people go," she said. "Social networks are clearly a hot platform right now because it's where people are spending time on the web." She attributes the fiction that gameplay is compromised to hardcore gamer prejudice more than to any pandering to a lowest common denominator. "The fact that social games are whittled down to their basic core mechanics and feedback loop mean that they're instantly understandable, casual, and the fun is easy to find. This is why they open up the market to so many people, and such a different demographic than traditional console/PC gaming. Traditional gamers don't like to admit (or simply don't realize) that games do not have to be massive, 3D, scripted, deep, and immersive experiences in order to be fun and engaging and monetizable. " Alex Swanson, Project Lead at Playdom, also disagrees with the notion that good gameplay is stepped back in social gaming. "Initially computers themselves were extremely complex and difficult to learn, so the platform self-selected for people that were tolerant of (or even attracted by) complexity," he said. "Since then computers have be come much more accessible, creating a gap in the market between the average computer user and the average 'gamer.' "Part of the reason that games like these were never very successful prior to the existence of social networks is once again an issue of accessibility. These games are built around the idea that the user has a connected identity. Trying to ask users to build out their social graph as part of entering a game would create an insurmountable barrier to entry. Fortunately, Facebook has already convinced the players to do this by providing its own unique benefits." If you play social games, you probably do not care about this argument. You play because it's fun. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it's not for one group of gamers to tell another that they oughtn't love what they love. "All I know," said one social gamer, " is I've met the nicest people playing Mafia Wars." For another view of social gaming, see ReadWriteWeb's post on Armchair Revolutionary . Discuss
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Social Gaming: Legit Gameplay or a Play for Your Cash?
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Mplayit , a Facebook-based mobile app store, just released some interesting new data about people's willingness to pay for mobile apps. According to Mplayit's report, about one-third of users across all the major mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) are interested in paid apps. iPhone users are the most willing to pay for some of their apps (57%), followed by BlackBerry users (33%). Android users are the least likely to be interested in paid apps (16%). Sponsor While only a third of BlackBerry users are willing to pay for apps, it's worth noting that, with a median price of $5.99, they are willing to pay the most for their apps. iPhone users only want to pay around $1.99 and the average Android user is willing to pay up to $2.72. It's important to keep in mind, though, that these are just average prices and people's willingness to pay definitely depends on the quality of the applications. As we noted earlier this month , the average price for iPhone apps continues to fall, but the average price for the most popular iPhone apps is around $2.43 in the U.S. - which - judging from Mplayit's data - indicates that most users would like to pay less than $2 for their apps, but are more than willing to pay extra for the best and most popular apps. Bonus: Percentage of Games in the Top App Stores Discuss
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iPhone Users Are More Than Willing to Pay for Apps - But Don't Want to Pay a Lot
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According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project , 61% of Americans now get some of their news online, though local TV stations are still the most popular means of finding out about the news. Local print newspapers still reach 50% of Americans and 17% read the print versions of national papers like the New York Times or USA Today. While 38% of Americans still rely solely on offline sources for their daily news, only 2% of adults in the U.S. get their news exclusively from online sources. Sponsor The majority of news consumers in the U.S. (59%) now get their news from a combination of online and offline sources. News Portals Are the Most Popular Sources - Younger Internet Users also Rely on Social Networks When online, American Internet users generally rely on 2 to 5 different sites to get their news. Interestingly, 65% of online news users say that they don't have a favorite online news source. The majority of Internet users (56%) rely on news portals like Google News , AOL or Topix. Younger Internet users under 29 also tend to use social networks to look for interesting stories that their peers share with them (44%) and 13% specifically follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites. Only 4% of all Internet users follow Twitter updates from journalists and news organizations to stay on top of the news. News podcasts are far more popular than Twitter for getting news updates. About 15% of online news users over 18 listen to news podcasts from organizations like NPR or the New York Times. What About RSS? Sadly, the Pew study did not ask users if they used RSS feeds and feed readers to consume news ("RSS" doesn't even appear in the report). While a lot of Internet users probably use RSS to consume news on portal sites and news aggregators without knowing it, it would be interesting to see how many people use services like Google Reader to consume news. Sharing News Three-quarters of all adult Internet users in the U.S. say that they get news forwarded to them by email or through posts on social networking sites. A quarter of these Internet users, however, also says that they barely ever read these stories. Demographics Marketers and the advertising departments for online news sources will be happy to hear that news users tend to be younger than the average population (68% are under 50 and 29% are under 30) and are likely to be employed full-time (50%) and have at least some college education (67%). Their household income also tends to be higher than the U.S. average. These users are also have faster broadband connections (84%) than the average Internet user. The heaviest consumers of online news are between 30 and 49 years old and likely to live in a household with an annual income of over $50,000. What do they look for? The vast majority of Internet users goes online to find out information about the weather (81%). News about national events (73%), health (66%), business and finance (64%) and news about international events (62%) are also among the top 5 most popular categories among online news consumers . Tech news is the sixth-most popular category. Get RWW News on Facebook You can become a fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook and get our news and analysis about the changing web delivered directly into your News feed. Discuss
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Study: Only 2% of U.S. Adults Rely Exclusively on Internet for Getting News
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Earlier this week, Juniper Research published a report which said the market for location-based services (think mobile check-in games like Foursquare, social networks like Loopt, location-enabled apps like Google Maps, etc.) will bring in revenues of more than $12.7 billion by 2014. Spurring this growth are a number of factors, including the increased number of App Stores, handset improvements, access to high-speed mobile Internet and improvements to positioning technology. While it's clear that location-based services are on the move, pinpointing a dollar amount to their market is a trickier subject. Has Juniper overestimated? U.K.-based consultancy Broadsight thinks so. "These numbers are way overstated," says firm co-founder Alan Patrick , who concludes that's it's far too early to tell the market's true size at this time. Sponsor An Argument Against LBS's $13 Billion Market Forecast Presenting at a local event for digitally-minded professionals, Patrick's talk offered a dose of realism to what has been, until now, a well-hyped - perhaps overly hyped - technology trend. He claims that location-based services ("LBS") is one of those cyclical hypes that comes around every ten years or so. "Like all overhyped areas, it comes complete with way overoptimistic market projections," notes Patrick on the company blog . Although he doesn't call out analyst firm Juniper by name, he says that "$13 billion are the sorts of numbers being thrown around." (Juniper predicts $12.7 billion). So how much does Patrick think the market's worth? It's too early to tell, he says. Instead of focusing on what has influenced the market to grow thus far, Patrick examines the two determining factors that will impact the actual revenues LBS is able to generate: penetration and Average Revenue per User. Penetration of the LBS market can vary widely including everything from smartphone users all the way to consumer devices like cars and even low-cost "Internet of Things" devices. The " Internet of Things " refers to real-world objects getting connected to the web. It can also include other web-connected devices like sensors or those incorporating RFID technology . The point Patrick was making is that the actual market value will be greatly influenced by how many devices end up web-connected and using LBS over the next few years. If, however, only smartphone users are taking advantage of LBS, then the market retains only niche value. The second determinant is the Average Revenue per User. This also can vary between "free" - as when location services are given away as a part of something else - and those that are "paid for" outright. Users could "pay for" services either via subscription payments, software downloads or ad funding, for example. Based on these determining factors, the actual market value for LBS, as you can see, may vary widely. Assigning it the $13 billion price tag is "of the 'Panglos' school of forecasting," he says. That is, "assuming the best of all possible outcomes in the best of all possible worlds." Privacy Issues: A Limiting Factor to LBS Growth? Patrick also brings up the privacy issues inherent in using the types of apps that broadcast your location, an issue we discussed ourselves just last week . At that time, the potential dangers in location broadcasting were brought to the forefront of our minds when the new site PleaseRobMe launched , displaying real-time updates from members of mobile social network Foursquare who broadcast their check-ins on Twitter. Although the site's goal was simply to raise awareness of the issue, the news quickly spread until even local TV anchors were discussing it on the nightly news. Even among tech bloggers such as ourselves, there is disagreement as to whether or not these services represent a true danger. A discussion in our writers' chat room the other day had one writer positioning the services as tools for stalking, saying these types of apps "make it a heck of a lot easier for people" to do so. Meanwhile, another writer argued "well, having a knife around makes it easier to cut yourself, too." (Names withheld to protect the innocent!) The truth is, mainstream users will likely not jump on the LBS social bandwagon right away - unless Facebook launches something, that is. However, there's a reason they haven't done this yet - outside of the tech bubble, a good bit of the population is fairly concerned with protecting their privacy. You can argue that their fears come from an inherent lack of understanding about the realities of how LBS is used, but that won't necessarily convince them. Just like anything, true growth and acceptance will take time. And fears like these aren't exactly the sort that will go away over the next four years. All that being said, while Patrick presents his ideas as "rational prognosis" regarding this industry, it's possible that he's being a little too down on the market's potential. Maybe it won't reach $13 billion, maybe it will...but like he said, it's too soon to know. Discuss
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Location-Based Services: Hype or Hit?
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