Tuesday
30th April 2002
ONLINE NEWSPAPERS FAVOURED
NEWS SOURCE
In a study likely to have strong
parallels in Australia, the Newspaper
Association of America (NAA) has found that people looking for local
news on the Internet are more likely to visit online newspapers than general
news sites; that seasoned Net users will have a greater likelihood of going
to newspaper web sites than Net newbies; and that consumers who read online
newspapers make more money than web users in general; are better educated;
and spend more time and money on the Net than the overall online population.
The NAA carried out almost 15,000 phone and online polls and found that 62%
of Net users go to newspaper web sites for local news and information while
55% visit Yahoo, 39% choose local TV station web sites and 37% consult AOL.
The NAA also found that Internet users are big fans of traditional newspapers,
with 55% saying they read the previous day's paper and between 65% and 75%
reporting they'd seen one in the past seven days. The most favoured reasons
for visiting online newspapers are breaking news (38%), searching archives
and/or classified ads (34%), greater detail of a story in the paper's printed
version (32%), and trying to find information not available in print (31%)
Monday
29th April 2002
DOMAIN SLIDE
CONTINUES
The fad of cybersquatting on
domain names in the hope of being bought out for a high price may be petering
out - and many participants may have been badly burned in the process. According
to domain registry
Snapnames (SN), the number
of global internet domain names continued to fall in March and early April
this year, marking almost six months of continuous decline in domain renewals
worldwide. Over the last half year, SN report, some 2.5 million .com, .net
and .org domain names - or roughly 12% of all domains registered in these
areas - have expired and not been renewed as squatters elect to surrender
the domains rather than pay renewal fees for them. This had led many US domain
registrars to face falling profits and workloads. Other factors affecting
cybersquatters have been the release of additional domain suffixes (such
as .biz and .info); numerous decisions taken by WIPO (the World Intellectual
Property Organisation) which tend to favour legitimate claimants over squatters;
and a growing awareness amongst both businesses and consumers that the content
located at a domain is more valuable than the domain name itself.
Friday
26th April 2002
HONESTY, TRUSTWORTHINESS
BEAT PRICE
According to a new study by
Cap Gemini Ernst and Young (CGE),
shoppers demand honesty and respect from retailers more than the highest-quality
merchandise or the lowest prices. CGE interviewed 6,000 consumers in nine
European countries and found that honesty and reliability mattered significantly
more than traditional notions of product and service to the majority of
interviewees (CGE report that consumers in the USA, Australia and Thailand
also returned similar results). CGE found that the 5 things that now matter
most to consumers are courteous and respectful staff, consistently good
merchandise quality, a clean and well-maintained store, unconditional merchandise
return and clearly visible prices. CGE also found that "honest price" was
more important than "lowest price" for the majority of both US and European
consumers and that consistently high quality mattered more than savings for
most interviewees.
Thursday
25th April 2002
ONLINE MAGAZINES NOT
POPULAR
In a new study that may have
strong parallels in Australia,
InsightExpress
(IEx) report that while online news sites may be popular, online magazine
sites are not. IEx found that 32% of Net users in the USA don’t read
magazines online because they consider them more inconvenient than traditional
magazines and 54% dislike the banner ads, pop-ups, and ‘general
distractions’ usually associated with online magazines. A further 47%
cite the cost as a deterrent to reading online, while nearly 25% claimed
that eyestrain was another reason why they disliked online magazines. And
in what may be the final blow to putative online magazine publishers, only
22% of respondents said that they preferred to read online magazines to print
versions while 73% said they wouldn't forego paper versions for online versions,
even if the online versions were half the price.
Wednesday
24th April 2002
AOL-TIME WARNER LOSES US$54
BILLION
New Economy darling
AOL-Time Warner announced today
that it had lost $US542 billion in the last quarter - the largest quarterly
loss in US corporate history. The loss was largely forced on the company
by changes to US accounting rules, slowed subscriber growth at AOL and a
31% decline in online advertising as lucrative contracts originally struck
by AOL during the dot.com boom failed to be renewed. However, the declines
suffered by AOL were not mirrored by the Time Warner portion of the business
which saw modest rises in gross sales and profits during the same period.
AOL acquired Time Warner in 2000 during the height of the dot.com boom for
US$106 billion, giving the combined new company a capitalisation of US$209
billion when they merged. Today, however, the merged company is capitalised
at around US$90 billion. Surprisingly, Wall Street investors were unmoved
by the epic loss announcement - having figured it into the company's share
price several months ago - and AOL Time Warner units rose slightly after
the announcement.
Tuesday
23rd April 2002
CHINA NOW WORLD'S 2ND NET
MARKET
China now has the second largest
number of home Internet users in the world according to a study by
Nielsen/Netratings
(NN). NN estimate that China now has around 56.6 million households with
access to the Net. While this is only equivalent to 5.5% percent of the Chinese
population, it still represents a significant jump from the estimated 22.5
million users China had online at the end of January 2001. The USA remains
the largest market with an estimated 166 million home users, while Japan
has now slipped into third place with an estimated 51.3 million. They're
followed by Germany in 4th position (32.2 million) and the UK in 5th (29
million). In the Asia-Pacific, China now ranks as the leading home usage
market followed by Japan, then South Korea (27.8 million), Taiwan (11.6 million)
and Australia (10.6 million). NN note that despite the impressive recent
growth there are some upper limits to expanded Net usage in China at the
present time. One is that only 36% of Chinese homes have telephones; another
is that there are very few Chinese language web sites; and a third is that
the level of broadband penetration in the country is currently negligible.
Monday
22nd April 2002
AUSTRALIANS LOVE THE NET:
NOIE
Australia is one of the leading
countries in the world in terms of Internet infrastructure, penetration and
use according to a new benchmarking study released today by the
National
Office for the Information Economy (NOIE). NOIE ranked 14 key countries
across 23 statistical indicators to determine that 67% of Australian households
now own or lease a PC; 52% of households are connected to the Net; 72% of
Australians aged 16 years and over have Internet access from any location;
73% of Australian males and 72% of females aged 16 years and over have Internet
access; and 80% of people aged 16-34 and 68% of people aged 35 years and
over in Australia have Internet access. NOIE also found that Australia has
a low ratio of users per ISP (generally 15,000 to 1 against 20,000 to 1 in
the USA and 2.1 million to 1 in Korea) and the third-lowest peak time connection
rates as well. Australia's worst score came in the area of Net connection
speeds, with only 5% of home users having access to high speed connections
compared to 87% of home users in South Korea.
Friday
19th April 2002
US SENATOR PROPOSES TOUGH
PRIVACY LAW
In a slap in the face to the
Australian Federal Government - which has largely followed the current loose
US approach to privacy and anti-spam issues rather than adopt the much tougher
position chosen by Europe -
C/Net report
that US Senator Ernst Hollings introduced an online privacy bill today
that would force US companies to obtain explicit permission from individuals
before collecting and sharing information about them and impose heavy legal
penalties on anyone flouting privacy law. The new legislation - if passed
- would make "opt-in" systems compulsory across the USA, effectively dealing
a gut blow to spammers and crooked corporations who remarket data without
user knowledge or permission. Sen. Hollings believes the legislation is necessary
to foster the growth of the Net and end growing US consumer frustration with
country's lax privacy laws. The Hollings' bill has been supported by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation but has been opposed by the US Direct Marketing
Association and the US Chamber of Commerce, both of whom prefer the current
self-regulatory regime. In Australia, current privacy laws provide no penalty
for anyone flouting them.
Thursday
18th April 2002
66% OF US ADULTS NOW
ONLINE
A new study by
Harris Interactive
(HI) suggests that the Net is beginning to grow again in the USA after two
years of negligible expansion. HI polled 2,038 adults in February and March
of 2002 to estimate that 137 million US adults (or 66% of the adult population)
now access the Net, up from 127 million in November 2001. HI attribute static
growth in the previous two years to the collapse of the dot.com bubble and
a slowing US economy, but note that penetration has nonetheless risen from
9% to 66% of the adult population in the last 7 years, showing just how integral
the Net has become to US society. In the latest study, HI also found that
women now outnumber men on the Net in the USA (51% to 49%) and penetration
is roughly equal across all age groups, though it tapers off rapidly in the
65+ age group. Penetration also remains poorest amongst low income earners,
blacks and Hispanics. HI found that 55% of US adults access the Net from
home, 30% from work and 20% from a school, library, cyber cafe or other location
(some people surf from two or more places).
Wednesday
17th April 2002
W3C APPROVES NEW P3P PRIVACY
STANDARD
After close to 5 years work
on the matter, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) announced today that it formally recommended that
the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) be adopted as a new web
standard to help consumers interpret web site privacy policies and make decisions
about whether to accept or reject them. P3P uses web browser software to
help consumers interpret privacy policies, and a limited form of P3P already
exists in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. The decision by the W3C seeks
to address growing concerns about how ecommerce sites use email addresses,
shopping preferences and other personal data they collect. P3P has been
criticised by a number of privacy groups who claim that it may provoke a
sense of false security amongst users and make it harder to get tough privacy
legislation passed offline. Privacy groups also complain that P3P won't prevent
sites from collecting data or sharing the information with marketers, nor
would it let users negotiate with sites on how information gets used.
Nonetheless, the W3C believes the new system will be an improvement over
the current situation and will push for its widespread adoption amongst reputable
web sites.
Tuesday
16th April 2002
ONLINE TRUST LEVELS STILL
LOW
According to a new study of
1,500 online consumers by US-based
Consumer Web Watch
(CWW), less than 29% of Americans currently trust ecommerce sites and barely
33% trust sites that provide advice about such purchases or services.
Surprisingly, this is lower than the number who trust the US Government (47%),
newspapers or TV news (58%). CWW found that factors which build consumer
trust include clearly stating who runs the site and how to reach those people
if there's a problem, a clear and easily-found privacy policy and an equally
clear statement about how the site deals with mistakes, whether informational
or transactional. CWW found that 80% of respondents say it's very important
to them to be able to trust the information on a web site - the same percentage
that say that it's very important that a site be easy to navigate. Consumers
also voiced concerns about the blurring lines between online advertising
and content on sites. More than half of users (59%) say it's very important
for news and information sites to label their advertising as such and distinguish
it from news and information on the site. In addition most respondents (60%)
had no idea some of the most popular search engines accept fees in exchange
for listing some sites more prominently than others.
Monday
15th April 2002
RBA SAYS BEING DUMB IS
OK
A
new research report by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)
suggests that the Australian economy may be benefitting from Australians'
high use of information and communications technology, even though the country
manufactures very little of it and remains a net importer of high tech. RBA
researchers John Simon and Sharon Wardrop suggest that Australia has actually
done well out of the "new economy" and that high business investment in
IT&T since the early 1990s has led to the country being amongst the highest
per-capita users of IT&T products and services in the world. Simon and
Wardrup say that they believe 50% of the gains from the use of IT&T can
be attributed to price falls while the other half can be attributed to higher
nominal expenditure. They suggest that Australia has experienced significant
output growth related to computer use over the last decade from IT&T
use and that there are substantial benefits to be gained from being a net
user of IT&T, even though the country remains completely dependent on
foreign corporations for most of it and consequently receives none of the
benefits of being an IT&T producer.
Friday
12th April 2002
TELEWORKERS RISING IN
NSW
Nearly 250,000 workers - around
8% of all employees - teleworked in NSW in the three months to October
2001,according to new data released by the
Australian Bureau of Statistics
(ABS) yesterday. In addition, a further 355,200 people (12%) worked at home
after normal business hours; and another 500,000 would like to telework if
they had the opportunity. The ABS report that most teleworkers are aged 35-44
years while those aged 45-54 years account for the largest proportion of
employed people who spend all day in the office and only work at home after
normal business hours. In addition, almost three-quarters (74%) of teleworking
employees work in the private sector. However a greater proportion of public
sector employees teleworked (10% in the public sector vs 7% in the private
sector). The main reasons for teleworking were "work commitments/job requires
it" (33%), "less distractions" (15%), "childcare/family considerations" (13%)
and "greater productivity" (12%). Not surprisingly, childcare and family
considerations were the main reason given by one-fifth of women, compared
to less than one-tenth of men (21% compared to 7%).
Thursday
11th April 2002
WORST OF DOT.COM BUST MAY
BE OVER
The spectacular implosion of
the dot.com boom may be coming to an end, according to US firm
Webmergers.com. The site
reported
today that while at least 18 US Internet companies shut down or were
declared bankrupt in February 2002, this nonetheless marked the lowest rate
of casualties in the sector since August 2000 - a sign, perhaps, that the
worst of the bust may be coming to an end. Webmergers report that there there
have been 806 dot.com collapses in the USA since January 2000 with more than
US$1 trillion going up in smoke. In other news:
Microsoft released a major
bugfix for its troubled IIS web server today following a string of embarrassing
security gaffes in recent months. The new patch allegedly addresses 10 critical
security flaws recently unearthed in the product. Microsoft has urged system
administrators running IIS 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1 to download and apply the patch
"immediately".
Wednesday
10th April 2002
SPAM CAUSES FEDERAL
ALARM
The growth in spam and its
potential to threaten the stability of Internet services has caused alarm
in the Federal Government. Research by the National Office of the Information
Economy (NOIE) suggests that as much as 20% of all emails now being received
by Australians are spam - largely originating from the USA and Asia - and
that spammers are now starting to invade other Internet messaging services
such as relay chat and instant messaging as well. NOIE is currently looking
into the issue and has extended the date for a responses to
a public
spam questionnaire to April 19th in order to gather feedback from
ordinary Australians about what they believe needs to be done to curtail
spammers. NOIE is currently consulting with community and industry groups
to assess the effectiveness of anti-spam measures. Solutions currently being
looked at include education campaigns, self-regulatory practices and codes
for ISPs and commercial associations - but tough anti-spamming laws may also
be put in place of enough people call for them. The results of the NOIE's
review are expected mid-2002
Tuesday
9th April 2002
LOOKSMART BUYS
WISENUT
LookSmart - the Australian
company which first introduced the idea of paying to be listed in search
engines - announced today that it had acquired US search engine
WiseNut in a share swap. Under
the terms of the agreement, LookSmart will issue 3,835,387 shares of its
common stock in exchange for all WiseNut's outstanding stock, valuing the
relatively young company at $9.25 million. LookSmart CEO Evan Thornley said
his company was acquiring WiseNut to integrate its "next generation" search
technology into the company's own offerings. "The combination of high quality
scalable search technology and strong listings revenue generation positions
LookSmart as a clear leader in search targeted marketing," he said. Ironically,
WiseNut draws many of its listings from Open Directory - a public search
engine where listings are compiled completely free of charge by volunteers.
Open Directory's database is now used as the basis of most major engines
including Google, Netscape, MSN and AOL.
Monday
8th April 2002
WORLD SLOW IN SWITCHING
TO BROADBAND
The hype surrounding broadband
web access may be far removed from reality according to
The Yankee Group (TYG). In
a soon to be released report, TYG forecast that high-speed Internet access
in the USA will grow from 10.3 million subscribers in 2001 to 41.1 million
subscribers by 2007. They also speculate that around 15 million US households
will be using a broadband connection by this time compared to 66 million
homes with dial-up access - or in other words, that broadband access will
still only be used by 18% of US households by 2007. TYG also believe
that cable modems will continue to dominate the broadband market in the USA
for at least the next two years. They forecast that 10.1 million US homes
will still be using cable modems by the end of 2002, which will account for
66% the entire US residential broadband market. In Australia,
a
report by the Sydney Morning Herald's ICON team also found that of
the three current broadband options (cable, ADSL or satellite), cable still
outperforms ADSL and satellite by a healthy margin.
Friday
5th April 2002
YAHOO STILL TOP SEARCH
ENGINE: NIELSEN
Despite the rapid rise of Google
during the last few years, Yahoo still remains the most popular search engine
according to
Nielsen/Netratings
(NN) new MarketView Web measurement reporting system. NN reported today that
during February 2002 Yahoo Search drew 35 million visitors. MSN came close
behind with 32 million and Google occupied 3rd spot with 27 million. AOL
(24 million) and Ask Jeeves (11 million) took out 4th and 5th search engine
positions respectively. NN also found that Yahoo Finance was the world's
most popular finance and investment site in February, drawing 8.3 million
visitors against Quicken.Com (7.8 million) and MSN Money (6.9 million).
Surprisingly, NN also report that Yahoo is now giving Amazon a close run
in the Multi-Category Commerce segment, coming in second with 25.7 million
visitors to Amazon's 30.3 million.
Thursday
4th April 2002
BIGPOND SHOWS USERS THE
WAY OUT
Australia's largest ISP Telstra
BigPond showed that it's taking Microsoft's "We Have The Way Out" message
to heart (see yesterday's story) when it admitted today that it had
accidentally erased more than 2,000 personal web sites from its servers.
80,000 of the company's customers who currently have Web Personal accounts
have been unable to access their sites since March 28th due to a "software
irregularity". And when services were finally restored, Telstra admitted
that several thousand web sites had been completely erased during the
"irregularity" and apologised for it. Affected users were sent an email
explaining the situation. The email went on to suggest that recipients could
reload their sites if they'd had the foresight to keep a backup, and offered
a credit of one month's subscription fee as compensation. Not surprisingly
- according to Netcraft - both
BigPond.com and Telstra.com operate Microsoft's IIS web server on an NT4/Windows
98 platform.
Wednesday
3rd April 2002
MICROSOFT GAFFES CAUSE
RED FACES
A new anti-Unix web site launched
by Microsoft and Unisys seeking to persuade customers to switch from the
Unix operating system to Microsoft software has been causing red faces all
round at Redmond this week. Yesterday server monitoring firm
Netcraft revealed that the site
was running on machines powered by FreeBSD (an open-source version of Unix)
and the Unix-based Apache web server. But when the site was moved to a server
running Microsoft's IIS web server earlier today it promptly ceased to run,
returning either a blank white screen or an "Error 403" authorization message
for several hours until the problem was rectified. The
"We Have The Way Out"
web site is part of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign being run
by both companies in an attempt to undermine Unix, the Net's dominant operating
system. One ad on the site describes Unix as "an expensive trap", saying
that it's inflexible; complex; and requires expensive experts to operate.
Unix supporters have responded that Microsoft's "flexible, uncomplex" IIS
server is both insecure and bug-ridden, pointing to a similar gaffe in March
when US domain registrar Network
Solutions moved several hundred thousand "parked domains" from Unix
to IIS web servers and - according to
Newsbytes -
had thousands of them defaced by hackers within a matter of hours.
Tuesday
2nd April 2002
AUSTRALIAN NET REMAINS
STATIC
After a major die-back in February,
the Australian Internet remained fairly static during March 2002 according
to the search engines we poll to construct our monthly
Australian Internet Growth
Index (which has been attempting to measure the number of
live Australian web sites - as opposed to the number of registered
domains - since January 1996). Most capital cities showed little change over
the prior month, with the exception of Brisbane which had a notable 4.1%
die-back. The April 1st figures (with March 1st figures in brackets) are
as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index March 2002
(Figures Show Estimated Live Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 11,594
(12,090)
-
Sydney - 46,315
(46,242)
-
Melbourne - 43,922
(43,907)
-
Adelaide - 8,484
(8,478)
|
-
Perth - 9,602
(9,622)
-
Hobart - 4,002
(4,048)
-
Canberra - 8,545
(8,555)
-
Darwin* - 10,890
(10,916)
|
NB: The Darwin figure includes
rural Australian sites |
|
During March 2002 Australian
Cybermalls hosted 66,558 visitors, a slight fall on February's 68,030
as we celebrated an early Easter. Our visitors viewed 336,347 page displays
from our servers, which in turn consumed 16.24 Gb of bandwidth. Our March
2002 traffic summary
can be viewed
here.
|
