INTERNET & TRENDS & FORECASTS

Global Internet use slowed between 1999 and 2000, but last year saw 7% growth in Internet users over 2002, according to Ipsos-Insight’s The Face of the Web. The annual study of Internet trends by Ipsos-Insight, the global survey-based marketing research firm, has been tracking Internet developments around the world since 1999.

The growth in Internet usage in 2003 was primarily driven by urban China, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, which have been among the fastest growing Internet markets in past years. Urban Russia and the Western European markets of the U.K. and France continue to grow steadily. However, Internet user growth in the United States has stagnated, partly because the majority (78%) of the U.S. adult population has used the Internet.

Canadian companies are growing confused and irritated over some of the grey areas in the federal privacy law around data collection over the Internet, according to the lawyers who counsel them.

Less than a month after the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) came into full effect, many firms have yet to appoint a chief privacy officer, audit their business practices or rewrite their privacy policies.

PIPEDA demands companies not only obtain consent from customers before using their PI, but that they don't collect it unless it's really necessary. Yet, many firms are moving towards a Web site model whereby users are asked to register before accessing what used to be publicly-available information. Social insurance numbers are often collected without reason, she said. There is also a lack of education around "spyware" that tracks users' surfing habits.

E-government is about making citizens' lives easier and more convenient. There is no greater service a civil servant can deliver than to save the time of a citizen.

Trusting employees to speak honestly is hard. But that's only the beginning. People used to get information either from company press releases or reporters who managed to get past Microsoft's public-relations firm. Now one person can accomplish things no marketing department ever could.

Blogging is making an impact in many arenas. Howard Dean is generating buzz and bucks via his campaign weblog. Amateurs are changing journalism and The New York Times is considering featuring weblogs on its site. But business blogging lags behind. Most companies are reluctant to turn employees into embedded reporters.

Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis, reports that senior citizens age 65 and older were the fastest growing age group online, surging 25 percent year over year to 9.6 million Web surfers from home and work in October 2003. Additionally, within the senior citizen age group, Nielsen//NetRatings found that the number of female seniors online jumped 30 percent, while male seniors jumped 20 percent.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, , Web users surveyed in the United States at home averaged 33 user sessions for the month of December 2003, during which they visited on average 55 separate domains whereas users surveyed at work averaged 63 user sessions, during which they visited an average 99 domains. Whether at home or at work, Web users surveyed spent about one minute per Web page.

Software makers have spent millions of dollars developing new tools for battling spam, and a new federal anti-spam law went into effect on Jan. 1. So are our e-mail inboxes any less cluttered?

In the week since the law took effect, spam-filtering company Brightmail Inc. flagged 58 percent of incoming e-mail as spam, showing no change from December. And America Online Inc. saw a 10 percent jump in spam from overseas, possibly from spammers trying to evade U.S. law.

I keep meeting communications managers lumbered with content management software that doesn't fit their needs. It was bought by someone in IT trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, they hadn't even considered the needs of the very people who would use the software on a day-to-day basis.

It's time to start thinking about the 'C'--the content. It's time to start seeing content as an asset, not a cost. And that means seeing the people who create your greatest content as your greatest asset.

Technology can be a great enabler. But remember, it is your writers and editors that you should be enabling.

According to Microsoft,a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate Web site in the Status bar, Address bar, and Title bar.

Why is this a bad thing? Well, InformationWeek warns that this flaw would make it appear to Internet users that they're visiting a banking Web site, for example, when that site is actually a front for fraudsters attempting to collect sensitive financial information.

In benchmarking Canada's performance against the top 24 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), we find that Canada places in the top 12 countries for five of the six indicator categories: Economy, Innovation, Education and Skills, Health, and Society. However, Canada ranks a disappointing 16th in the Environment category.

We continue to be the second most connected country among leading OECD countries, thereby achieving a gold-level performance, and we prove to be the country most open to foreign ideas. But several indicators suggest that Canadian businesses have been under investing … on R&D and formal training expenditures per employee.

Canada should pursue policies that promote competition, investment in machinery and equipment, innovation, education and lifelong learning, and further openness to trade and investment in order to boost our productivity.

While other forms of communication grow at explosive rates, chat room participation plateaus.

Mainstream adoption of the Internet was built largely on the popularity of chat rooms, but the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that interest in the medium has hit a plateau. According to the report, the number of Internet users who have participated in chat rooms has only grown a modest 21 percent between March 2000 and July 2002.

Mary Madden, author of the report and principal research specialist for Pew Internet & American Life Project, explains that the lack of interest in chat rooms is largely due to a tenured Internet population - including the "Tech Elite" - who prefer more focused online social interactions.

According to a new report from Jupiter Research, only 14% of consumers say that personalized offers or recommendations on shopping Web sites lead them to buy more often from online stores, and just 8% say that personalization increases their repeat visits to content, news or entertainment Web sites. This is in contrast to the majority of consumers who stated that basic site improvements would make them buy or visit Web sites more often -- 54% cited faster-loading pages and 52% cited better navigation as greater incentives. The report outlines why personalization efforts on Web sites often fail and suggests other alternatives.

Spending on search engine marketing (SEM) is rising dramatically, yet surprisingly few companies are measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns. In a short survey conducted by web analytics vendor NetIQ, more than 800 participants responded to questions about their search engine marketing efforts and their attempts to measure success. The survey responses provide interesting insights into the state of search engine marketing ROI.

By Chris Sherman, published in SearchDay
July 14, 2003