Internet
World’s Fastest Internet: Korea, Japan and Hong Kong
Asia’s Internet speed is not surprising news, but the details of this recent report on the Internet by Akamai show how much Asia and South Korea dominate the world of high speed Internet. Korea is also increasing the average national Internet speed at the fastest pace of any country in the world.
Korea, Japan and Hong Kong have the world’s fastest connections
Although South Korea continued to hold the top spot as the country with the highest average measured connection speed at 14.6 Mbps, its fastest city (Masan) was ranked fifth among Asian cities, at approximately 1.2x the country average. South Korea, unsurprisingly, has six of the top 10 fastest cities in Asia, all with average speeds above 15 Mbps.
South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong are in global top 5 for increasing average speed.
As compared to the second quarter of 2009, South Korea saw a shift in the distribution of connections to higher speed buckets, with the 5-10 Mbps bucket declining from 35% to 29%, while the higher speed buckets all saw increases, with more than 10% of connections once again being made to Akamai at speeds greater than 25 Mbps.
The increased percentages of extremely high speed connections are in line with South Korea’s third quarter growth in both average measured connection speed and high broadband adoption rates.
While having a high broadband adoption rate that approaches just half of South Korea’s, Hong Kong has the second highest levels of extremely high speed connectivity among the top 10 countries, with more than 2.5% of connections to Akamai at speeds between 20-25 Mbps, and more than 5% at speeds in excess of 25 Mbps. The distribution of connection speeds above 5 Mbps remained fairly flat in the United States between the second and third quarters, and the United States remained #12 globally for this metric.
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Google Employees Earn US$302,314 (for the company)
Interesting chart from Silicon Alley Insider on how Google’s revenue per employee has hit a three year high, with a revenue per employee hitting US$302,314.
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Internet Trends Towards Cars, Toys and Green
Usage of the Internet in the US is turning more towards Green issues, Toys and Cars, according to July numbers just released by comScore Media Metrix.
Top 10 Gaining Site Categories* by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.)
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Facebook: WHO you know; Twitter: WHAT you know
Users clicking onto videos links sent via Twitter spend significantly longer watching those videos than those arriving from Digg or Facebook, according to a new study by video stats site TubeMogul.
The methodology (below) seems fairly robust, so it may offer a real insight into current Twitter usage: On Twitter you can follow interesting people, not just your friends.
The disparity of Twitter vs Digg is quite striking, with people spending less than a minute on the Digg-referred video. Perhaps this is because a link recommended on Digg could be posted with a misleading headline by someone you do not know.
With Facebook, you are more likely to know the person posting the link, but maybe your friends don’t post interesting links. Facebook video links get one minute and 14 seconds of viewing.
For video links shared via Twitter, however, users spend a full minute and 38 seconds watching them.
Why? Because Facebook focuses on who you know, while Twitter focuses what you know.
Twitter allows you to follow the millions of interesting people whom you do not know. These people will share great information, but you may never meet them.
Facebook, on the other hand, limits your feed to a more restricted circle. This may be interesting for intimate news (”Maisie is getting engaged”), but the open nature of Twitter allows you to peruse the best written feeds in the world on any topic you like.
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TubeMogul’s Methodology: For a three-month period, we recorded a sample of 6,763,690 video streams referred by links from Digg, Facebook and Twitter. For example, if someone sent a Tweet saying “check out this video” and provided a link, we tracked any viewers that clicked the link. The streams hail from six top video sites that average in the billions of streams per month (due to partnership limitations, we cannot disclose which sites).
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How Much Asia Communicates (Or Not)
TeleGeography’s map of intra-Asia Telecommunications Traffic Flows shows a few interesting things about how Asians communicate (or not).
The measure is millions of minutes of telecommunications traffic over one year on the public telephone network. (Total combined volume for Asia is more than 100 million minutes).
Squint hard and you can see arrows that show strong imbalances of traffic in one direction (more than 60 percent).
- Australians make significantly more outgoing calls than they receive from the Philippines (81%), China (76%), Japan (61%) and India (84%).
- India is the exact opposite, with inbound imbalance running high from UAE (91%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Singapore (61%) and Australia (84%). Someone must be running a highly profitable callback service from UAE!
Based on these figures alone, it is not difficult to see who has the more deregulated telecom market for international calls.
Since this data is from 2004, I would be interested to see how much impact the Internet, VOIP, Skype and MSN have on traffic flows.
Another point of - sad - interest is the effect of government-level conflicts: There seems to be no communication directly between India and Pakistan. The traffic between China and Taiwan, on the other hand, is huge with a 63% imbalance of calls from Taiwan into China.
Sadly, North Korea, Burma/Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Laos, Camobia and Vietnam apparently did not have enough traffic to even make it on the map.
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The Death of Email (yay!)
With the rising popularity of Instant messenger, Twitter-style status updates in social networks and other alternate forms of online communication, it is not surprising to see the continued decline of email usage among younger Internet users.
I first came across the trend about 3 years ago or so at Ola Ahlvarsson’s SIME conference in Sweden, where he cleverly had a panel of young people interviewed about their online habits. (The panel’s premise being that Internet usage is becoming increasingly segmented in style. A venture capitalist looking to invest in an Internet start-up can no longer assess it personally in terms of “I think I’d use that”. This is especially true of a VC older than 30 years old.)
On that SIME panel one of the students explained that email was so passe that he only used emails when communicating with authority figures, such as teachers or parents. Otherwise, the proliferation of new communication channels were the place to get in touch with friends. I got a similar response from a university student who attended a Blogger meet up in Malaysia two weeks ago.
To the older crowd (25+ years old) email remains popular, but the number of new channels is still growing. Twitter, status updates, IM and - soon - Google Wave. While the proliferation of new channels may annoy and depress some (”I have to sign up for ANOTHER service??!!”), I find it an exciting place to be.
We are now learning to communicate in ways that previous generations could not. Great time to be alive!
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Amazon’s forced buyback of purchased books
Amazon’s mass deletion of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle readers yesterday infuriated everyone who had purchased the books.
One reader lost his notes taken while reading the book in the deletion, thus accused Amazon of stealing his intellectual property:
Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he told The New York Times.
Those deleted were refunded, but the ability to remotely remove and refund the purchase of a book is so 1984-ish that the irony screams aloud.
“Once I buy a book from Barnes & Noble, I never have to worry about them breaking into my house and taking it back, leaving me a pile of singles on my nightstand,” said one blogger.
In the future, alteration or deletion of e-books could become a great Orwellian form of government control.
There are, however, rebel voices. Ever vigilant on copyright issues, BoingBoing-er expired on Orwell’s books so they can get free un-stealable electronic copies.
As for Orwell, he is one of my favorite writers, in particular his essays “Shooting an Elephant” is poetry disguised as prose and “Politics and the English Language” includes the best list of writing tips I’ve ever seen:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.
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Social Media Monitoring Tools for Asia
I recently answered a few questions about Social Media monitoring in Asia for Arun Sudhaman of Media magazine. Arun’s article was an excellent synthesis of many views (I cannot find the link!).
Here are my views:
Which are the key social media tracking tools (paid and unpaid) that you use, and why? How do they compare in terms of (a) price, (b) functionality and (c) ease of use.
Many claims are made, but I have looked at more than a dozen providers and not yet seen a satisfactory regional solution for social media monitoring in Asia, paid or unpaid. For now, the best solutions in many markets remains manual mapping of online conversations using free tools such as Google blog search, Yahoo or locally dominant sites such as Baidu in China, Naver in Korea, etc. We have gathered the best free social media search tools for easy reference at the website http://thedailyinfluence.com/.
What are the challenges and pitfalls involved in using tools to track social media?
Anyone trying to track social media across Asia faces numerous of issues starting at the simple and obvious level of language and culture, but then moving on to the wide range and variety of digital eco-systems across the region. In addition, geo-targeting can be highly misleading. A Singapore blogger user Wordpress.com will look like a US blogger to an unrefined geo-tracking system.
To what extent can you really automated tools? How important is the human element and can you provide any examples of this?
The ideal scenario is not built around any specific tool, but rather a rational approach that may or may not include specific tools. You want to obtain as clear a snapshot of online conversations about your brand and then measure the impact of tactics moving forward.
The most clear shortcoming in automated social monitoring comes with sentiment monitoring. This is not just about machines confusing a blogger’s use of “bad” to mean “cool”, but with many postings reasonable people could disagree about some sentiments expressed in posting.
Recent research shows that Asian CEOs are considerably less concerned about their online reputations. Why is this finding of concern - and why is social media monitoring important in this context? Do you have any specific examples?
Reputation monitoring for senior executives will only get more important over time. I would be curious to know how many of those CEOs who are unconcerned about their online reputations do Google searches after meeting someone new. For the vast majority of executives, Google search will affect an executives reputation far more than traditional media.
What are the key things for a client to remember when:
(a) selecting social media monitoring tools?
The tool is not the answer, it is the approach and strategies that matter most. Some of the best tools are free, so it comes down to how you use them.
(b) determining how best to put a monitoring plan into action?
You need to have a full understanding of your purpose for engagement. There is a great deal of danger in leaping to engagement tactics before seeing what conversations are out there about your brand.
Perhaps you should start a Facebook Group or Twitter feed, but before doing so, it is better to take a strategic look at how you are deploying your resources. Everybody has limited time and money.
What are the most common mistakes made when attempting to protect your online reputation?
Leaping to engage with bloggers and the blogosphere without understanding how to behave or join the conversation. Social media is like a global cocktail party and you don’t want to be the bore of the party, talking loudly about things nobody wants to hear.
How can social media help a brand’s reputation - do you have any specific examples?
So many examples! In the United States, some classic examples include Microsoft allowing Robert Scoble to become a corporate blogger, but many come as the result of a bad experiences online. Both ComCast and Dell built state-of-the-art social media teams following disasters they faced online.
We are helping brands putting together social media campaigns in countries across Asia all the time. A few weeks ago, for example, we completed a very interesting blind trial of facial creams with more
than 100 bloggers in China.
The bloggers, all influential voices within the target demographic for the facial cream, matched up their favored brand with a mystery sample sent to them. The results were stunningly positive throughout the process and by the time Ponds (Our client) was unveiled as the mystery brand, the bloggers had embraced the product they would switch to use.
Any other comments to add?
Brands need to understand that not having a social media strategy is equivalent to not having a media strategy. Many companies could not imagine failing to monitor what publications are saying about their
brands, but today consumers spend more time online than reading publications.
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US Air Force: Rules of Engagement for Blogs
Just came across these US Air Force guidelines for blogger engagement via a number of sources (though I could not find it on an official USAF site).
It has such a wonderfully military approach and even terminology: Rager, Troll, Misguided, Unhappy Customer.
For a military organization, the USAF is quite advanced with their:
- USAF blog
- Official Twitter Feed, along with a special Twitter feed for the USAF Space Command
- USAF YouTube Channel
- USAF Video MashupComptetition to combine videos of your football team with AirForce footage
- Blog Wiget and Podcasts
Two thoughts:
1- If the US military can Blog, Twitter and run a YouTube channel, why do some corporations think that these tools are too dangerous to risk?
2- Collaborative software platforms makes such eminent sense for communicating among a widespread community such as a military force that I am sure other militaries must be using these technologies. (I believe that ICQ, one of the earliest chat systems, was developed out of an Israeli military application.)
Anyone know of other examples of military usage of Social Media?
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World of Warcraft Used to Predict Pandemic Behavior
A highly reputable medical journal, The Lancet, published a study of a disease outbreak in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft to understand outbreak behavior.
This is particularly interesting in light of the H1N1 quarantining of 200+ people in a hotel not far from my home in Hong Kong.
A nasty disease outbreak in World of Warcraft…
On Sept 13, 2005, an estimated 4 million players of the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, Irvine, CA, USA) encountered an unexpected challenge in the game, introduced in a software update released that day: a full-blown epidemic. Players exploring a newly accessible spatial area within the game encountered an extremely virulent, highly contagious disease. Soon, the disease had spread to the densely populated capital cities of the fantasy world, causing high rates of mortality and, much more importantly, the social chaos that comes from a large- scale outbreak of deadly disease. These unforeseen effects raised the possibility for valuable scientifi c content to be gained from this unintentional game error, and it is this possibility that we will examine.
..shows how people act during a pandemic…
This human-agent model of disease dynamics can be used to provide reproducible empirical analyses, yielding greater insights into the behavioural reactions and individual responses of people threatened by outbreaks of disease. By using these games as an untapped experimental framework, we may be able to gain deeper insight into the incredible complexity of infectious disease epidemiology in social groups.
…demonstrating how selfless, well-meaning behavior can worsen an outbreak
Some players—those with healing abilities—were seen to rush towards areas where the disease was rapidly spreading, acting as fi rst responders in an attempt to help their fellow players. Their behaviour may have actually extended the course of the epidemic and altered its dynamics—for example, by keeping infected individuals alive long enough for them to continue spreading the disease, and by becoming infected themselves and being highly contagious when they rushed to another area.
Conclusion: The game-playing epidemiologists say they should go back and play some more WoW for better understanding. “Sure Prof, I’d be happy to!”
The image and quotes are from the original report by Eric T Lofgren BA and Prof Nina H Fefferman PhD, but hat tip to Andrew Marshall of Reuters for bringing it to my attention.
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Matt Mullenweg
Matt has one of the coolest URL’s around: ma.tt, and for that matter, one of the coolest website’s around. It makes sense, he is the founding developer of Wordpress and Automattic, the business behind it.
Matt has lived a classic Silicon Valley story: Starting by programming on a computer in his mother’s kitchen just six years ago, the 25-year-old college dropout turned Wordpress into a cultural phenomenon that has now grown to 13 million registered users worldwide.
He previously worked for CNET in San Francisco but now devotes his time to WordPress, along with others, including Sphere, Wegame and Rescuetime. He is one of BusinessWeek’s 25 most influential people on the web in 2009, PC World’s Top 50 and Inc.com’s 30 under 30.
Matt attended a visual and performing arts high school as a Saxophonist in his home town of Houston, Texas. He is an avid photographer, rarely seen these days without his Nikon D3.
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Sydney surf report gains global audience
Aquabumps.com is an excellent example of what would otherwise be a small and local business that now has a global audience. All this based on a weather report and thanks to the Internet.
Rebecca Simpson - a colleague who is one of the thousands of Aussie expats tuning in daily - explains:
The founder, Uge (pron Yooj), is a Sydney surf photographer who has risen to some serious fam with this blog.
His business has grown so much he’s been able to open a second gallery space in Bondi (shop fronts in Bondi are some of Sydney’s most expensive real estate).
This blog is the driving force behind his commercial success. Not only does he cater to east Sydney surf fans with his daily surf reports, but he shoots his AMAZING international surf retreats and about once a fortnight he delivers gorgeous women - what he calls ’swimmer cam’ - I know many men who subscribe just for swimmer cam alone.
Last time I spoke to him about his numbers (about 2 year ago) he had over 100K subscribers.
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
