mobile

Top-watched online videos in 2013: comedy, educational, and how-tos

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One in four US adult internet users has uploaded a video online, according to the Online Video 2013 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. One in five has posted a video that they created themselves.

The top-watched categories are Comedy, Educational and How-to videos, followed by Music.

Forty one per cent of mobile users shoot video on their phone, 40 per cent watch videos on their phone, and 21 per cent use their phone to post videos online.

Over the past four years, the percent of American adult internet users who upload or post videos online has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% today. That includes 18% of adult internet users who post videos they have created or recorded themselves—many of whom hope their creations go viral. The share of online adults who watch or download videos has also grown from 69% of internet users in 2009 to 78% today, and mobile phones have become a key part of the video viewing and creating experience.

Find out more about the survey and download the full report on the Pew site.

‘Readers with more mobile devices stay subscribed longer’

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This is an old post but I’m leaving it here for the hell of it. Failed links have been updated (where possible) or removed.

A couple of interesting notes in Sarah Marshall’s journalism.co.uk coverage of the 2013  Mobile Media Strategies conference in London. She quotes Chris Duncan, customer sales director at News UK, which owns The Sun and The Times. He said:

  • 67 per cent of sales completed on mobile devices, with a 50:50 split between those signing up on a smartphone and those using a tablet
  • “Actively encourage people to use as many devices as possible… The more devices people use, the less likely they are to churn.”
  • Track customer engagement to spot if readers are likely to cancel a subscription. If they see dwell time reducing, “they are at risk of churn”.
  • Newsletter bulletins sent by email result in a spike in traffic from mobile.

Read the rest of Sarah’s piece here.

We’re loving video on our phones: NZ mobile use in 2013

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This is an old post but I’m leaving it here for the hell of it. Failed links have been updated (where possible) or removed.

Some catch-up reading on mobile and tablet use in New Zealand in 2013.

Mobile devices now account for more than a third of TVNZ’s Ondemand service video streams | StopPress
Mobile devices now account for more than a third of TVNZ’s Ondemand service video streams and are a key part of the growth in video views. More than four million videos were watched using the service last month, an increase of 82 percent on the same month last year.

Over a third of Kiwis could own a tablet this year: Ericsson | StopPress
The [research] panel’s top uses for tablets were internet browsing at 66 percent, emailing at 58 percent and games at 53 percent. For smartphones, they were voice and SMS, internet browsing, using mobile apps, instant messaging and watching videos. “When asked about time of tablet use, most New Zealanders use their tablet at home in the evening, followed by while watching TV and in bed before sleeping,” says Chiastien. “Holiday usage is next on the list. Tablets are also commonly used as a time-killer as more than 36 percent use their tablets while waiting for something.”

Google’s 2013 ‘Our Mobile Planet’ research
A few out-takes from the research (which polled 1,000 New Zealanders aged 18-64 who identified themselves as using a smartphone to use the internet).

  • 54% search on smartphone each day
  • 27 apps installed on average (8 paid)
  • 69% watch video (17% at least once a day)
  • 74% have researched a product or service on their phone
  • 33% have purchased using smartphone (53% of those in the past month)
  • 88% of smartphone users notice mobile ads

But there are still barriers to mobile transactions, including size of screen, slowness, security concerns and difficulty comparing products and prices.

“The screen will shape our environment in the 21st century”

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I missed Wilson Miner’s talk at Webstock so I was pleased to come across this version of his talk online. There are some lovely insights here about change – and how profoundly the world our readers and customers inhabit is changing right now.

Wilson Miner – When We Build from Build on Vimeo.

The screen

What’s your time to screen in the morning? How long does it take you to go from being dead asleep to in front of a screen. 5 seconds? 30 seconds? 5 minutes?

… All these little gaps in our lives are slowly, or quickly, filling up with screens.

The car shaped our environment in the 20th century, in this huge, tectonic way.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the screen will be as important to shaping our environment in the 21st century.

What goes on those screens is pretty important.

The things that we choose to surround ourselves will shape what we become.

We’re not just making pretty interfaces. We’re actually in the process of building an environment where we’ll spend most of our time for the rest of our lives.

We’re the designers. We’re the builders.

What do we want that environment to feel like?

What do we want to feel like?

Change is profound

“All media are extensions of some human faculty. Mental or physical. Electric circuitry displaces the other senses and alters the way we think. The way we see the world and ourselves. When these changes are made, men change.”  – Marshall McLuhan.

Change is fast

It’s not enough to rely on what we know, or what we think we know, what we expect people to know.

If the environment is always changing, we need to be always learning.

To do that we have to let go of what we know.

“At times of change, the learners are the ones who will inherit the world, while the knowers will be beautifully prepared for a world which no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer.

‘I hate phone numbers’

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This Verge post about the shelf life of phone numbers resonates with me. A recommended read.

I hate phone numbers. They’re a relic of an outmoded system that both wireless and wireline carriers use to keep people trapped on their services — a false technological prison built of nothing but laziness and hostility to consumers. In fact, I can’t think of a single telecom service that is as restrictive as the phone number: email can be accessed from any device, Skype makes apps for nearly every platform, IM works across any number of clients, there are web-based messaging solutions that transcend platforms entirely — the list goes on. We expect modern telecom services to be universal, cheap, and easily-accessible, and those that aren’t tend to be immediate failures. Ask Cisco how Umi went for them sometime.

Yet the phone number remains stubbornly fixed with a single carrier and single device, even as consumers begin to move every other aspect of their lives to the cloud. And the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems: Why can’t I open a desktop app and use my wireless minutes to make VoIP calls? Why can’t I check and respond to my text messages online? Why can’t I pick up any phone from any carrier, enter my phone service information, and be on my way, just as with email or IM or Skype? Why are we still pretending that phone service is at all different from any other type of data? The answer to almost all of these questions is carrier lock-in — your phone number is a set of handcuffs that prevents you from easily jumping ship, and they know it.