Is Twitter Really a Late Boomer Technology?

Only 22 percent of Generation Y consumers between the ages of 18 ad 24 are using Twitter, according to a new survey by  the Participatory Marketing Network.

Separate data from Nielsen Online shows that the single biggest Twitter cohort is users between 35 and 49.

$99 iPhone Available Now, 2-Year Contract Required

The 8GB 3G iPhone now can be bought for $99. A two-year contract is required to get that price, and monthly costs for a package with 450 out of network voice minutes, 5,000 night and weekend minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls to other AT&T customers, with 200 text messages,will cost $88 a month after the taxes are added to the R75 monthly cost of service.

Sprint Offers Corporate Liable Customers $39.99 Mobile Broadband

Sprint is Selling a $39.99 mobile broadband service for "corporate liable" accounts, providing 500 MBytes of data monthly, a bucket Sprint says is two times what Verizon offers and 10 times what AT&T offers at the same price point.

In addition, customers pay only five cents per for each additional megabyte of usage, which is less than half what the competition’s $39.99 plan charges for overage. Verizon's $39.99 plan has a 250 MB cap and charges 10 cents per MByte for overage.

AT&T's $40 plan has a 50 MByte cap and $1.00 per MByte for overages. 

The AT&T "moderate user" plan is probably enough for users who basically only check email and do some light Web surfing. 

The Verizon plan probably is enough for traveling workers who use the Web pretty heavily on the road and check email. 

The Sprint plan probably is sufficient for traveling workers who watch streaming video to a certain extent. 

The assumptions are monthly email consumption of about a couple Mbytes a month and per-day Web consumption of a couple of megabytes a day a day when out of the office. 

The issue is video streaming, which will be the driver of overages for most users. Most enterprise workers who are not watching tons of video probably only require a couple of gigabytes of usage each month. 

If one assumes a worker at a desk most of the day, and really using the Web heavily, could consume 50 Mbytes to 100 Mbytes each day, you have some idea of how to estimate usage. Most workers probably do not consume even that much. 

On the road, most people are doing other things, so it wouldn't be unusal to see daily consumption drop far behow behavior seen at a desk.

Perhaps 5 Mbytes a day would be typical. Of course, every user is different, but most enterprise workers who travel a couple days a month, and are in meetings or doing technical support will not even use 5 Mbytes a day when on the road. 

Streaming video, though, will upset all those assumptions. 

Online Advertising Dips 5% for First Time

Some people seem to be shocked that online advertising, which has been growing for seven straight years, dipped about five percent in the first quarter. It wouldn't be the first time people have argued, or seemed to believe, that something related to the Internet can transcend the operation of markets.

At the turn of the century, new "Internet" business models were touted that seemingly defied the normal business rule that one must have revenue to be sustainable. Others argued that valuations of Internet companies were different from valuations of companies based in the physical world. 

Anybody who argued to the contrary was ignored with a direct or indirect "you don't get it" attitude. That belief was proved devastatingly wrong.

Online advertising is advertising. Advertising is a cost of doing business. Companies are being careful about the costs of doing business. So it is no surprise there is a bit of a dip. The Internet is part of human life. It is not immune from things that happen in the broader spheres of life. 

Nor is the delusion especially new. After 1917, the Soviet Union believed it could wall itself off from the global economy. After World War II it maintained the fiction of two global economies, one capitalist, one socialist. The Soviet Union was wrong. 

The Internet changes lots of things. It doesn't repeal or escape economic laws or human behavior.

IP PBX Line Shipments Will Dip for First Time Ever in 2009

IP PBX lines shipped in 2009 will decline for the first time ever in 2009, say analysts at Dell'Oro Group. Aside from the global recession, vendor instability (Nortel, in all likelihood) is causing a bit of hesitation.

“For 2009, we anticipate a degree of vendor volatility that will cause many customers to stay on the sidelines for a longer period of time than we would expect if downward pressure was coming only from the weakened economy,” says Alan Weckel, Dell’Oro Group director.

“In the current environment, some customers will hold on to existing analog and digital lines for a longer period of time,” Weckel says.

According to the report, Cisco, Avaya and Nortel had the most IP line shipments in the quarter. The eight largest vendors in the market, including Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens represent about 49 percent of total line shipments in the first quarter of 2009.

Notwithstanding, IP telephony penetration will continue to grow this year, albeit at a slower pace compared to the previous years.

Branch Offices Ripe for Cloud Computing?

At many enterprises, branch offices account for 20 percent of a company’s IT infrastructure, according to Forrester Research. Since IT departments are seeking to cut costs, branch office IT investments likely will be shifted to remote services provided by some sort of cloud computing infrastructure.

The potential impact on the service provider business is not so clear, but one might assume there will be greater bandwidth requirements at remote locations and in the backbone than presently is the case, as the traditional trade-off in computing is between local processing and bandwidth. One can compute locally, substituting cycles for bandwidth, or compute remotely, substituting bandwidth for cycles.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Branch-Offices-Ripe-for-IT-Consolidation-Forrester-239188/?kc=rss

Social Networking Explodes 83%, Facebook 700%

U.S. users increased their time using social networking apps 83 percent last year, according to Nielsen Online. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

One wonders what all those users are doing less, as they network more. Even if one assumes multitasking is going on, attention and time still are linear. People can't do more of one thing withoug doing less of another, or at least are attention sharing to the point where it is questionable how much actual attention is being paid to something that is "available and in use."

INQ Mobile to Launch Twitter Phone

Cell phone maker INQ Mobile plans to introduce a "Twitter phone" for the Christmas selling season. The device is intended for sale at prices less than $140, and feature an Internet-based Twitter client, says Frank Meehan, INQ CEO.

The phone will use Internet connections for sending Tweets, not text messages. The idea is to spur usage by eliminating the text messaging charges, and using the mobile phone's data plan, instead.

INQ in 2007 had introduced a mobile device optimized for use of Skype. The move indicates a developing niche in mobile devices and applications: social networking as a lead application.

In a sense, you can think of the BlackBerry as an "email phone" and the iPhone as an "Internet phone." INQ earlier this year also introduced what some call the "Facebook phone," as it is optimized for instant access to Facebook, Skype and other social networking applications.

And the optimization might be working. Traffic on INQ1 "Facebook phones" are three to four times higher than from other phones, says Marc Allera, 3 UK director of sales and marketing.

About 65 percent useFacebook on a regular basis while 50 percent use Windows Live Messenger regularly.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5513L820090602?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

AT&T Launches New Small Business Bundle

AT&T has launched what it calls the nation's first bundled offer targeted at small businesses,  including wireless, wired and high speed Internet services, starting at $99.99 a month.

The “All for Less” bundle is now available to small business customers with one to four lines at a single location, across AT&T’s 22-state footprint.

The wireless plan features 450 minutes of use each month for each wireless device.

The broadband service operates at rates up to 1.5 Mbps and comes with as many as 11 email accounts and AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity.

The local voice service comes with unlimited local calling, call forwarding and caller ID, as well as unlimited domestic long distance calling.

To qualify, customers must already have wireless service or purchase new wireless service from AT&T in addition to new or existing local voice, long distance voice and broadband services.

The offer expires Aug. 31, 2009 and requires a two-year service agreement. Additional bundles that include other high-speed Internet speed tiers and/or wireless plans are available at additional costs.

Fring Launches New Social Networking for Mobile App

Fring haslaunched a new version of its social community and communication service that combines each contact’s separate online social communities into one, manageable profile on the users’ mobile phone.

Fring enables users to talk and chat with their Internet instant-message buddies on Skype, GTalk, Facebook, Twitter and last.fm, among other services, from one integrated, searchable fring contact list. 

The new fring version combines a user’s multiple IM contacts into one dynamic profile, which shows each friend’s current availability at a quick glance and enables interaction, all directly from this combined mobile profile.

As social networking becomes a more-popular mobile activity, we are likely to see mobile devices optimized for social networking, much as iPhones have popularized the notion of a "Web" phone or BlackBerry essentially created an "Email phone."

In fact, the notion of a "smart phone" should at some point stop being a meaningful end user category at all, replaced by a lead feature corresponding to a lead app. 

Has the Recession Ended?

ADP’s jobs data is showing an expected jobs decrease of some 532,000 for the month of May. The data for April from ADP also showed that the job losses were revised down to 545,000.

If the Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirms the trend on June 5, 2009, it will add to other data suggesting the recession has ended. Unemployment claims are a lagging economic indicator and a rule of thumb is that recessions later are determined to have ended about 30 days after the peak rate of new claims.

The SurePayroll Hiring Index rose 26 points to 11,430 in May, up from 11,404 at the end of April. The uptick was 0.2 percent from the prior month, suggesting that on average small businesses were hiring.

Year-to-date, the Hiring Index is up 1.4 percent, which puts small business hiring on track to increase 3.3 percent for calendar year 2009.

The results suggest that the U.S. economy is in much better shape these days than many may realize, SurePayroll says. Small businesses often lead economic recovery, so it is good to see that small businesses are continuing to add new employees, the firm notes.

It might seem odd to call the end of a recession when the nation still is losing a half a million jobs a month. But if the trend is confirmed, the economy's direction has changed.

Apple Could Boost iPhone Sales 100%

Apple could boost sales of iPhones 100 percent by ending its exclusivity arrangement with AT&T and signing up Verizon Communications as an additional distributor. But Bernstein Research analysts Craig Moffett and Toni Sacconaghi  think the move also would cut handset revenue between $100 and $200 on each unit sold.

The issue is hot now because AT&T's exclusivity deal is set to expire in 2010 and AT&T wants to extend the exclusive deal until 2011.

A non-exclusive deal would reduce the value of the phone to AT&T and likely result in a reduction in the subsidy per phone from an estimated $450 to around $250 to $350.

More than 10 percent of AT&T’s post-paid subs already are using an iPhone, and Verizon is the largest U.S. mobile provider. Verizon Wireless now 86.6 million customers, compared to AT&T's 78.2 million.

Though Apple ultimately will abandon the exclusive relationship with AT&T, in the near term it might do what it must to maximize revenue, and that means negotiating for the highest-possible per-unit payments from the carriers, possibly even at the expense of faster unit growth.

Could AT&T keep the exclusive and drive penetration further? Yes, Moffett and Sacconaghi say.

Apple could add a lower-end phone or provide healthier hardware discounts, reduce service plan prices or launch a new device such as a tablet-based unit.

But Apple might wait to see the market response to Sprint's introduction of the Pre, intended to mimic the iPhone's user experience. If it takes off, Verizon will offer the Pre as well, within six months of its Sprint introduction.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/06/01/apple-a-verizon-deal-could-double-iphone-sales/#mod=yahoobarrons

22 percent of Generation Y consumers are using Twitter

About 22 percent of Generation Y consumers are using Twitter, according to a new study by the Participatory Marketing Network, an organization that helps marketers transition from push and permission marketing to participatory marketing.

In February the largest age group on Twitter was the 35 to 49 age demographic, representing almost 42 percent of the site’s audience, according to Nielsen Online. So much for the general rule that the younger demographics drive most of the use for new technologies.

When asked about social network usage, however, 99 percent of this same group reports having an active profile on at least one social networking site.

The May 2009 survey of 200 PMN panel members and consumers between the ages of 18-24 also found growing use of mobile social networking.

About 38 percent of respondents have an iPhone or iPod Touch. Some 53 percent play games, 35 percent use entertainment apps and 31 percent use lifestyle apps.

About 28 percent say they use free financial apps while seven percent use paid financial apps.

http://thepmn.org/pressreleases/060109

"All You Can Eat" is Dysfunctional, Phoenix Center Says

"All you can eat" broadband access plans are unsustainable and should be replaced by more-flexible plans that allow users to match what they pay with what they use, though a strict "per byte" metering would be a disaster, says Lawrence J. Spiwak, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies president.

Indeed, if the old long distance and dial-up Internet models are any indication, a strict “pay by the byte” pricing scheme would scare many low-income and low-volume users to overcompensate and change their usage habits, or even to drop their service all together, Spivak says.

Telling carriers to just “invest their way out” of the congestion problem is also a naïve solution, he says. "The network is a shared resource, and this approach would cause the price for all users of the network to rise," says Spivak.

And, as the price for everyone rises, some households won’t be able to afford broadband at all, he says. Publicly available studies show that these costs could potentially reach several hundred dollars per month, which would certainly put broadband out of the reach of many Americans.

The best, and most economically efficient, option is to let carriers develop plans that allow consumers to pick and chose the approach that best suits their needs and, just as important, let consumers be responsible for their choices.

In the end, efforts to prevent carriers from experimenting with different pricing plans for multi-product offerings is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to tax the many to subsidize the few who spend their lives online, Spivak argues.

However, in this case, the “few” are not the poor and disenfranchised who work hard to just to pay for their own broadband, but the Internet glutton next door, he notes.

When there is a congestion problem, there is actually a pricing problem, he says. "All you can eat" works when there are few users. It doesn't work when most people use a resource, and the usage pattern is highly disparate.

Like it or not, constructing broadband networks (wireline and wireless) is extremely expensive. Payback is difficult. But lighter users should not be asked to subsidize consumption by unusually high consumers.

The needs of the few are now often outweighing the needs of the many, Spivak says.

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/06/02/spiwak_broadband_congress

Cisco In, GM Out

Cisco on June 8 will be part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, General Motors will not. It sort of tells you something about what "industrial" now means.

I think Apple was a sentimental favorite for some, but congratulations to Cisco. Perhaps the thinking is that digital "infrastructure" makes more sense at the moment than "applications." One wonders how much longer that distinction will be important.