rxdxt: March 2008

March 27, 2008

On Vox: Luddites, recession, moral bankruptcy and stagnate innovation... - America how I missed you.

I've been back in the USA, in Los Angeles for about a week. I'm here to celebrate my 40th birthday (come to the party friday in BH if you are around) see some family (most of them are here or are drivable to here), attend a wedding Saturday in SLO, go to a Who Killed the Electric Car? premiere event in Seattle and basically visit our old hometown and see if we miss it. The answer, is a resounding NO.

Some signs that it's gonna be darker before it gets light..
1 - My friends house, down the street from our old house, down 30% in price/value and back on the market from his sale price.
2 - Neiman Marcus (the US equivalent of Harrods) is having a 2 for 1 sale in the middle of March (I've never seen a sale there and it's not sale season). Yet, it was empty. The sales clerk said they had sales off 50% from any month the past three months.. When rich people stop buying shit you are in trouble.
3 - In fact, retail wise EVERYTHING here is on sale.
4 - Gas is over $3.50 a gallon;
5 - The house we are renting has dropped in price 25% (brand new house on the canals in venice!)
6 - I went to a "future of television conference" which had really good panelists, (including me) and not very many attendees. There was NO frothy start-ups there. all big companies schmoozing each other for $$ and biz.
7 - Beaches are full, parking lots are empty.
8 - Liquor store said cheap beer sales were up, wine is down.

I could continue but lets just say, it's a recession. After Bear Sterns I think it's maybe a depression. The only light I see at the end of the tunnel is maybe at the end of it young couples will be able to buy a house!

On Vox: The status of the Internet today...

This is a shameless cross-post from my friend and collegue James Cridland, link below:

Just watched a presentation at the EBU from Michael Read, VP, ComScore Europe. These are quick notes.

ComScore collect statistics on websites. He boasts about a 90% renew-rate for their customers (people like ad agencies). Wow, that’s a business to have. Their panel is 2 million people, globally (171 companies globally, but they report on 36 countries). And here’s some of the information he gave in his stat-heavy presentation.

There are 75 million more internet users today than this time last year. The Asia Pacific region grew by 14%; Europe by 6%. Russia is up by 24%!!

29.8 million adults are online in the UK. That’s 60% of the UK.

Interestingly, 80% of Google and Microsoft’s traffic is non-US.

Pages viewed and time spent is growing at a faster rate than unique visitors. EU grew 12% in “minutes spent per Unique User”; but only 4% in Unique Users themselves.

The average user spends 23.4 hours online per month
Visits 42 web domains every month
Views 2,331 page impressions a month.

So - what does this mean for radio?

Radio’s outperforming total internet growth: there was a 34% growth for radio in US in the last year; and 31% growth for radio in EU.

The total marketplace (I think these are global figures) were:
Radio: 58,584,000 unique visitors in January 2008
TV: 97,601,000 UU in January 2008

Interestingly, in December 2007 (before the iPlayer had started in earnest), 43% of all video streams in the UK are from YouTube. Broadcasters only delivered 3.9% of all streaming video in UK.

Crikey. User-generated content is it, apparently…

James' blog

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

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