Daily Bits

Profiling Americans Who Are Least Likely to Go Online

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Hot on the heels of carrying out its plans of providing high-speed Internet access to Americans, the FCC has just released an interesting report providing the profile of users who are least likely to adopt broadband subscriptions.

The report categorizes these users as either digitally distant, digital hopefuls, digitally uncomfortable and new converts. According to the report 20% of Americans are digitally distant and digitally uncomfortable.

Digitally distant users are described as those who are retired and say that they don’t subscribe to broadband either because they don’t know how to use a PC or don’t see a need to use the Internet at home or anywhere else. Around 10% of the American population falls into this category, and include those whose ages ranges from 63 and older.

Digitally uncomfortable Americans on the other hand are those who can afford high-speed Internet service but would rather not subscribe to because they lack the skills to use it. Around 7% of  Americans fall into this category.

The other two categories of U.S. population are the so called digital hopefuls and the Near Converts. Digital hopefuls are those who like to subscribe to broadband Internet but don’t have the money to pay for fees. They make up around 8% of the American population.

And then you have the Near Converts comprised of Americans  who are mostly dial-up users who are still thinking whether they would pay $40 for broadband Internet access. They make up 10% of the American population.

So, to which category do you see yourself belonging to? Are you currently subscribe to a broadband Internet access or if not, are you planning to subscribe to in the near future?

You can check out the full FCC report here.

Online Image Editor Aviary Joins the Free App Crowd

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I first learned about Aviary a couple of months ago, back then  I could only try out some of its features and wished that its other advanced features were free that time. A couple of months after, here’s Aviary finally setting its powerful suite of browser-based design tools free for anyone to use.

To set things straight this early, Aviary is not just online image editor. Like I said it’s a suite of web applications made specifically for creative people who want to create stuff and do more with their photos and creations.

Three key features of Aviary which has been added since it is now a free online app include:

  • saving private files
  • automatic addition of watermark
  • access to all the tutorials on how to effectively use Aviary’s suite of creation tools

If you’ve used Aviary before and actually  signed up for a paid  subscription in the alst 30 days, here’s a good news – Aviary will refund your payments.

As a creation tool, Aviary offers you six editing tools represented by various bird species. These include:

Phonenix – the main image editing tools such as layers, masks, effects, undo history and more.

Peacock – Aviary’s visual laboratory or the effects editing tools.

Raven – the vector editor.

Falcon – the image markup tool which you can use to capture images and web pages from your browser or desktop and crop, resize or mark them up.

Myna – audio editor which you can use to remix music tracks and audio clips as well as for applying sound effects and record your own voice or instruments.

Toucan – Aviary’s color palette that you can use in conjunction with other creation tools. It also lets you inject color into your creation.

Ready to exercise your creative talents? Check out the free Aviary tools now.

Facebook Allows PayPal Payment for Ads, Virtual Goods

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If there’s one important point that you can get from this news, it’s got to be the fact that Facebook wants you to advertise on the social network. And to make it easy for you to do that, Facebook is now accepting payments through PayPal.

With PayPal activated as a form of payment, you can now run your ad campaigns and get wide visibility through the this planet’s most famous and widely used social networking site. Like what the Facebook PR said, the site reaches 400 million people, 70% of whom live outside the United States. Can you imagine how huge your the audience for your ad campaigns would be?

If you’re running a small business which caters to exporting and importing, here’s your chance to expand your market.

In addition to accepting PayPal payments for ads, Facebook is also doing the same as a payment option for Facebook credits that ca be used for games and apps as well as for buying items from the Facebook Gift Shop.

“We want to give the people who use Facebook, as well as advertisers and developers, a fast and trusted way to pay across our service,” said Dan Levy, director of payment operations, Facebook.

And PayPal’s VP of Platform and Emerging Technology  sums up what this development is all about:

“Put simply, PayPal’s business is payments. We make it easier for customers to send and receive money online in 24 currencies and 190 markets around the world,” said Osama Bedier.

So, if you don’t have a PayPal account yet, now maybe the right time to create one and proceed with your advertising plan on Facebook.

Mobile Phone is the New Social Connector

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Ruder Finn, an independent PR company published some interesting findings of their new study – Mobile Intent Index. The study measures, well mobile phone users’  intent for accessing the Internet via their mobile devices.

According to the report, the average time spent by Americans on the mobile Internet is 2.7 hours. And what do they do during those times?  To socialize, manage their personal finances and push their advocacy.

Contrary to what we may have believed all along, mobile phone users do not access the Internet via mobile phones for educational purposes or for creative expression.  The study also found out that usage by gender and age differ. That is men access the mobile web to “escape” while women to “make others laugh.” Now that seems rather vague, right?

Another interesting finding of the report is the fact that immediacy is the major factor why users access the Internet via mobile.

“Our survey data shows that people use their mobile phones out of necessity for instant access to the Web whether it’s to conduct business with the most recent information or advocate on the spot on issues of pressing concern and breaking news,” said Marty McGough, director of Ruder Finn Insights

The study also highlights the fact that mobile phone apps are continously increasing with 61% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded an application at least once per month, and 36% of the respondents saying that they have downloaded applications from social networking sites at least once per month.

As a mobile connector, mobile phone access is used primarily to:

  • Instant message – 62%
  • Forward e-mails (58%), content (40%) and photos (38%)
  • Post comments on social networking sites – 45%
  • Connect to people on social networking sites – 43%

Interesting findings, right? So, which of these connectivity features do you do on your mobile phone?

BuddyPress Now Available for All WordPress Installation

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BuddyPress, a social networking add-on that previously worked only with WordPress MU installation is now available for all WordPress installs.  I’m really excited about this development as I’ve always wanted to try out BuddyPress for a long time now.

With BuddyPress 1.2 on your standard WordPress install, you can now start letting your blog readers create extended profiles, display activity streams, discussion forums, private messaging and groups within individual posts on your blogs.  What’s good about BuddyPress 1.2 is the fact that you can turn off some of its features which you don’t like to have.

Integrating WordPress on your current blog installs is easily done as well. It only takes three steps which you can follow here. After installing, you  may need to tweak it a bit to work well with your blog’s overall theme.

In addition to the features we mentioned BuddyPress also now includes permalinks for each action in the activity streams. Likewise, users will now be able to “favorite” activity items as well as send @replies to other users. Truly, a powerful social networking feature.

For requirements, you need to have at least WordPress 2.9.1 or better yet upgrade your install to 2.9.2 if you haven’t done so yet.

Social Network Users are Predominantly Young Middle-Aged Folks

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First of, I really have to commend the folks at Royal Pingdom for coming up with such a comprehensive study on the demographics of social network users. It’s a pretty good study with just about enough statistics that will really give you a good grasp of who are really into social networking today. So, what do they find out? Majority of the social network users are predominantly middle-aged folks who belong to the 35-44, not that tech savvy youngsters that we may all have thought before this study.

The study took stock of site demographics information for the United States which they gathered using Google’s Ad Planner service and then made additional calculations to come up with their final data. The report includes age data of members from 19  social networking sites including -Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Last.fm, Friendfeed, LiveJournal, Hi5, Tagged, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com and Bebo.

So, some interesting highlights of the report include:

  • 25% of social network users belong to the 35-44 age group
  • 3% of social network users belong to the 65-older group
  • 65% of the users are in using Twitter and/or Facebook
  • Bebo and MySpace are both widely used by users age 17 or younger

Those were just some of the key findings of the report. If you want to learn more, just check out Royal Pingdom.

Meanwhile, what really puzzles me is the fact that if  the predominant users of Facebook are age 35-44 how come I still see tons of Mafia updates, senseless trivia questions, virtual gifts and other utterly unimportant stuff from my Facebook contacts?  Does this mean that Facebook users are into the site not for business and social networking purposes but rather to while away time?  Where is the maturity there, friends?