McKinsey’s new survey research finds that companies using the Web intensively gain greater market share and higher margins. Every new technology has its skeptics. In the 1980s, many observers doubted that the broad use of information technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) to remake processes would pay off in productivity improvements—indeed, the economist Robert Solow famously remarked, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”1 Today, that sentiment has gravitated to Web 2.0 technologies. Management is trying to understand if they are a passing fad or an enduring trend that will underwrite a new era of better corporate performance. Read more By Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui for McKinsey Quarterly, December 2010.
Tag Archives: Research
Internet explorer users have lower IQ says study
A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax. A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant. It later emerged that the company’s website was only recently set up and staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris. Read more By BBC News: Technology, 03 August 2011.
What they know about us
Marketers are spying on Internet users — observing and remembering people’s clicks, and building and selling detailed dossiers of their activities and interests. The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people’s computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an “exposure index” — to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring — by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use. Read more By The Wall Street Journal.
12 Ways to engage the "tech fast forward" family
Brand marketers, take note: There’s a new family segment called “Tech Fast Forward” (TFF) that represents new opportunities for the future. According to a just-released study by Ogilvy & Mather in partnership with Communispace, this emerging demographic is a household that uses more sophisticated technology than the average person and includes children ages 3 to 12. The study (download it here or here) was conducted with 1200 tech savvy American kids and their families with at least one child between the ages of 3 and 12. The report’s key findings indicate that TFF families have a more positive mindset overall and express less anxiety about the future than other families. Parents in TFF families believe technology is helping their children develop critical skills that will empower them to navigate — and … Continue reading
When’s the best time to publish blog posts?
Of all the data analysis that I’ve done, day-of-week and time-of-day data has been consistently the most popular. So in preparation for my upcoming webinar, titled Science of Blogging, I decided to combine all of my existing data on timing with my new research into one master post on the subject. The first time I looked at blog post timing was when I was analyzing retweets. I found that retweets exhibit a strong diurnal pattern, in that they’re more common during the day and less so at night. I noticed that retweet activity tended to peak around 4pm EST, suggesting that this might be the best time to tweet a blog post for maximum potential retweet reach. Read more By Guest Blogger for Problogger, 12 June 2010.
World statistics updated in real time
Worldometers is part of the Real Time Statistics Project, which is managed by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers with the goal of making world statistics available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world. Chief project coordinator is currently Sir Thomasson. Visit site
nma research uncovers kids’ digital habits
The internet is more important to 8-15-year-olds than either TV or mobile phones, with children saying they’d be lost without the web, according to exclusive research from new media age. In a online survey of 262 children by Lightspeed Research, commissioned by new media age, 29.8% said the internet was more crucial to their lives than mobile phones (28.6%) or TV (19.5%), with the figure at 38% for boys. Read More By Will Cooper for New Media Age, 24 Feb 2011.
What do customers want from travel websites
53% of UK consumers research and buy holidays online, though many could be deterred by unclear pricing, according to a survey commissioned by Econsultancy. The Toluna survey of 2,004 UK consumers found that 29% of respondents don’t find travel websites easy to use, and that unclear pricing is the most likely reason for abandoning purchases online. Some highlights from the survey after the jump… Read More By Graham Charlton for Econsultancy, 08 Feb 2011.
Does your mobile phone interfere with a flight?
The announcement over the plane’s speaker seems as much a part of the routine before takeoff as the demonstration of how to buckle a seat belt: Please turn off all electronic devices. But some passengers invariably ignore the request, perhaps thinking that their iPods or e-books do not count. And really, does it matter if the devices are left on? Read More By Christine Negroni for The New York Times, 7 Jan 2011.
The Educational Benefit of Ugly Fonts
A few months ago, I wrote a speculative blog post about e-readers. Although I love my Kindle, I worried that these new gadgets made the act of reading a little bit too easy, and that this visual ease might lead, one day, to a shallower engagement with our texts. It was a rather tortured argument, an awkward mash-up of McLuhan and fMRI research. I’m happy to report that a brand-new paper in Cognition by a team of Princeton psychologists (Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer and Erikka B. Vaughan) makes the same point I was trying to make, only much, much better. (They also have, you know, actual evidence.) Read More By Jonah Lehrer for Wired, 05 Jan 2011.