On July 14th, Olive Riley, the world’s oldest internet blogger from Australia died at the age of 108. Riley posted more than 70 entries on her blog or “blob” as she jokingly called it since February 2007. She recounted her life during two world wars, raising three kids, and working as a barmaid. She carried with her an archive of memories -more than a blog could hold. And then she discovered blogging and its thrill, especially at her age!

A 2006 Pew Internet survey on U.S. bloggers shows U.S. internet users under the age of 30 (24%) constitute more than half of bloggers (54%). A tiny 2% of bloggers are 65 or older.

Earlier Trendsspotting reports that between the genders, more women (21%) than men (14%) are bloggers.

Olives demise sparked a buzz in the blogosphere. Trendsspotting tribute to Grand Old Blogger. Olive may be resting in heavenly abode, but her spirit and remembrance, are still alive on her blog.

Image Credit :Getty Images

A recent study conducted by KRC Research and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) found that US consumers of all ages have a voracious appetite for digital content. KRC Research conducted a national random telephone survey of 1,008 U.S. adults during last May. The explosive growth of content along with the rapid adoption of digital devices today is fueling the storage requirements of tomorrow - which Hitachi has dubbed as terabytes era or “Tera Era“. Consumers now are increasingly demanding for more digital storage space. The survey reports, 26% now wish they had “so much storage that it was never an issue.”

Other findings from the Survey :

• On average, U.S. consumers now store more digital contents on their digital audio players, digital cameras, camera phones, digital video recorders (DVRs) and desktop or notebook computers. Young adults (aged 18-24) store 2,065 songs (an increase by 874 songs) on their digital devices which is far more songs than all of the other adult age categories.
  

  Digital Contents	Avg Number	Growth from 2005
  Songs	907	+134%
  Photos	924	+128%
  Movies	25	+56%
  Games	7	NA

• Women value their digital content more than men. The survey found that half of the women who own digital devices (46%) said their data is either priceless or valuable, as opposed to 35% of men.
• Digital photos are the most commonly stored type of content. Around 82% of consumers with digital devices reported that they digitally archive their photos, representing a 9% increase over those surveyed in 2005.
• Around 32 % of the consumers reported storing movies, compared to 25% in 2005.
• Adoption of digital devices is on the rise :88% Americans now own some kind of electronic device with digital storage capabilities. Camera phones and digital audio players are the biggest gainer since the 2005 study. Six in ten Americans now have a cell phone with a camera, more than doubling the level from 2005. Stats on adoption of other digital devices surveyed :
  

  

• The average U.S. consumer now owns, on average, $1,660 worth of digital content, an increase of 46% ($525) over the $1,135 average in 2005. Furthermore, nearly 20% consider their content priceless.

Earlier Trendsspotting reported on five-year forecast for 15 consumer technologies & predicted Early Adopters Phase to decline from years to months. With the intersection of three dynamic elements - capacity, content and culture -that really seems happening.

I want to present two interesting discussions over online videos:

1. Online video search is dominated by music:

Matt Pace, analyst at Compete points out that Youtube searches can be attributed mostly to music: “28 of the top 40 terms searched on YouTube in June related to either a musician (if you can call some that) or a song title”

2.

New frontiers in online video: Online video as a shopping channel for new vehicles:


Google study reported at Clickz shows that searches for specific vehicle brand names coupled with the term “video” have risen 237 percent over the past year (In March 2008, 240,000 such searches occurred on major search engines). Moreover, the research revealed that 41% of shoppers in the market for a new vehicle viewed video on YouTube prior to purchase.




More on online video? Users stats, YouTube’s influence on purchase decisions (2007)

Coolest Nail House in China
Image Source : zonaeuropa.com

Last Tuesday, the response to the local authorities failure to demolish Yu’s Nail House in the heart of Beijing sparked colossal surges in query “Nail House” (钉子户) in China. “Nail House” is a fairly common phenomenon in China. It refers to a standalone house which stands out like a nail in the middle of a demolition ground due to disagreement with compensation terms.

Surge of the Query “Nail House” (钉子户) in Baidu Search

Yu’s refused to accept the 340,000 yuan ($49,900) compensation for the home they bought 60 years ago & the Beijing court issued a notice to the family to move by 13th July. On Sunday evening a few hundred people gathered around to see what would happen when the deadline expired. Time China blog has an extensive coverage on this.

Ever since last year Nail Houses are much into news when Wu Ping , another nail house owner, remained defiant after the expiry of a court deadline to demolish her house. A photograph of the house in question circulated on the Chinese Internet & the popular Tianya forum voted it as The coolest nail house in history .

However this time with Beijing Olympics on cards & 20,000 journalists plus a half million tourists in Beijing , Government is finding it difficult in bullying “Nail House” owners.

Only few days after Coca-Cola’s i9 campaign used local bloggers in Brazil, its P&G’s Pampers now recruiting as many as 15 top “mommy bloggers” or what Pampers refers as the “new influencers”. The company is hosting an all expense paid Mommy blogger event at the end of July, hence bringing the selected “mommy bloggers” to the company’s Cincinnati headquarter.

“It’s official: Mom bloggers are the new influencers,” said Bryan McCleary, director of external relations for P&G baby care.

A look at the growing list of Moms blogs over the net (see Alltop/moms) can come as evidence to this powerful segment of the population that is currently awakening.

How it is different from Coca-Cola’s rent-a-blog strategy?

The difference lies not in the company’s initiative to recruit bloggers, but on the way the bloggers would be expected to participate in the P&Gs marketing activity. In the Coca Cola case - bloggers received a dedicated i9 homepage as part of the campaign which attracted criticism across the globe. If P&G acts wisely - they would not enforce any form of organized reaction from the bloggers they invited. However initial reactions on the blogs seems upbeat & participatory.

“how exciting! If I was going, I would ask what Pampers has in the pipes for more environmentally friendly diapers, considering the impact diapers have on our landfills.”

Chris Brogan reacted to Coca Cola’s “rent a blog” strategy and suggested how influencer’s marketing should work? “The secret weapon: disclosure” Chris says

“The best of the word of mouth campaigns that I’ve seen, and the few opportunities I’ve had to be part of a promotion, are executed by using strong rules for disclosure, plus the opportunity for the blogger to take the product or service and do with it as they will (versus sticking very tightly to a message). By allowing the blogger to work within their community and communicate in a way that’s appropriate to the people around them, the campaign’s intent was still spread, but without any kind of degradation of trust or relationships”

According to MarketingVOX, more than $1 billion is spent a year on word-of-mouth campaigns targeting Influentials, an amount growing at 36% a year, faster than any other part of marketing and advertising. That’s on top of billions more in PR and ads leveled at the cognoscenti.

Now its up to Pampers and Moms to show how you can gain trust and at the same time enjoy what the big companies can offer.

Few days back one of our Trendfreaks reported she couldn’t access TrendsSpotting in china. We checked that out today & found it to be TRUE !

In fact we manage a good rapo with few other websites (as Technorati!!) and blogs are appearing on the “black list“. (To discover whether your blog is blocked - you can ping and check your domain here, or here, and here).

Why should China be bothered by TrendsSpotting?

TrendsSpotting is following China with great interest.

Few months ago - we questioned surveys that were pointing at Chinese internet addiction and suggested they had an agenda:

Chinese suffer internet addiction or China is witch-hunting internet use?

Looking behind surveys: misleading survey on Chinese online users

Recently we unearthed some facts around the South China Tiger Scandal

As China might not change its attitudes toward us near future - for our China Trendfreaks - we shall be posting our upcoming blogs in total in facebook trendfreaks.

Mobile Web Activities: iPhone, Smartphone and Total Market: January 2008

Six months after the iPhone’s launch, Apple is generating another peak for its leading brand. On July 11, gadget lovers around the world crammed into stores to buy the latest super-fast iPhone 3G.

What have iPhone have achieved is not only well competing with dominant mobile companies, but also leading the whole category of Mobile Web: According to M:Metrics
iPhone is already the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web, with 85% of iPhone users accessing news and information in the month of January.
M:Metrics found that 31% of iPhone owners watched mobile TV or video (versus 4.6% market average). Usage of social networking is also popular among iPhone users: 49.7% accessed a social networking site in January, 12 times the market average.

Among iPhone owners – YouTube, Google Maps and Facebook are much more popular:
30.4% of iPhone users accessed YouTube (versus 1% total mobile market), 36% used Google Maps (versus 2.6% total market) and 20% accessed Facebook (versus 1.5% of the total mobile market).

iPhone users and the music market:
74% of iPhone owners were listening to mobile music in January (compared to 6.7% of the total mobile audience). Not surprising is the fact that 84% of iPhone owners who use an MP3 player use an iPod.

iPhone users demographic profile:
The demographic composition of iPhone users are similar to the demographics of other smartphone owners: they are more likely to be male, aged 25-34, earn more that $100,000 and have a college degree.

Methodology:
M:metrics survey of U.S. mobile subscribers is based on three-month moving average for period ending 31st January 2008, n = 31,389.

July 8th Russia celebrated a new holiday, the Day of Family, Love, and Loyalty. In order to replace the western inspired St. Valentines Day, Russia’s first lady Svetlana joined up with the country’s Orthodox Church to organise a fidelity festival.

“Family, Love and Loyalty Day” on July 8 marks the 780th anniversary of the death of Saints Pyotr and Fevronia, a married couple persecuted for their love and, according to legend, buried in the same coffin. From this year onward Russia will celebrate this as shared holiday.

“Despite of the fact that the new holiday has Orthodox roots, ..I believe that this day will help Russians to learn more about family values and rely on our traditions in their married life” - Says Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and aliningrad

Last year, as president, Mr. Putin declared 2008 the Year of the Family.The new holiday emerges as an important attempt towards boosting the country’s drastically declining population by promoting family values.

While medals were presented to couples who made it through 25 or 50 years (..and were still together) at ceremonies held across Russia, bloggers took the holiday buzz to an astronomical high.

Yandex blog buzz for “Day of Family, Love and Loyalty” (День семьи любви и верности) & “Family Day” (День семьи).

Murom, a historic city around 300 km east of Moscow, was the center of the musical gala concerts.

Lets hope Russia could come out of this demographic crisis .

Image Source :BBC UK

The curtain came down on G8 summit in the picturesque Lake Toya, Japan. Global Warming was the most contentious topic at the summit - on which the 8 global leaders pledged to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.This surprisingly lacks targeted promise for action to evaluate the progress in the medium term. 2050 - A time frame by then all the current leaders will be long gone & the current generation will probably be gone. Is that what bothered Japanese most??

Yahoo ! Japan search log reports the surge in “Summit Lake Toya” query & reveals the Top 10 most searched keyword related to G8.

“Summit Lake Toya,” the second word Rankings:

1.Schedule (opening day, period) / 日程（開催日、期間）
2.Traffic regulation / 交通規制
3.Subject (theme) / 議題（テーマ）
4.Participating countries / 参加国
5.Hotel / ホテル
6.Patrol / 警備
7.Pachinko / パチンコ
8.wiki
9.Commemorative coin / 記念硬貨
10.Meeting place / 会場

Tokyo traffic can be crazy & frustrating as well. Search for possible traffic congestation areas seems much like a local ramification of a global meet.

Whats surprising here is “Pachinko” , a Japanese pin ball gaming device ,commanding around 40 % of Japan’s leisure industry. However the unexpected connection of “Patrol” & “Pachinko” is -whenever new machines are installed at a pachinko parlor in exchange for old, the police inspect them one by one to ensure they meet regulations. Due to shortage of police officers who were diverted to security assignments for the G8 Summit, pachinko parlor operators decided to “refrain” from installing new gaming machines.

Meanwhile 9th place “Commemorative Coins” are ¥500 and ¥1,000 commemorative coins to be minted over the next eight years.The pure-silver ¥1,000 coin shows Lake Toya and Japanese cranes, the symbolic bird of Hokkaido, in connection with G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit. A total of 100,000 coins will be put on the market from July at ¥6,000 each. The ¥500 coin features Lake Toya and the former Hokkaido Government Office Building.

The first set of coins were presented to G8 delegates to raise their awareness about environmental problems.Some breath of relief - may be thats Japanese way of reminding our Global leaders on Global warming!

As can be learned from the recent Coca-Cola campaign on Portuguese blogs, Coca Cola’s current marketing strategy is as follows: Manipulate social media to work for you the same way classical media did in the old days. Create your campaign, send it to the media and pay for your advertising.

According to a recent TrendsSpotting research, Brands on UGC websites: The Coca-Cola case study, Coca-Cola, the world’s most successful offline brand has little online power and suffers from low presence on UGC sites.

Trying to work their way up on the social media ladder, Coca Cola cultivates a new breed of bloggers who believe that as long as they “follow” their inner truth – allowing brands to control their content is legit.

Although Coca Cola did succeed in bringing awareness to their new i9 product, the social media game is now much harder to play. Coca Cola cannot manipulate the blogsphere without being criticized and coined a ‘briber’.

Has Coca Cola anticipated that the greater buzz will come not from its new i9 features but from the fact that the company is well compensating bloggers?
Having said that, think it through-doesn’t bad reputation count?