As Netflix digs itself into a deeper and deeper hole, first hiking prices and then announcing that it would split its service in two, customers are becoming more and more disgruntled. According to new statistics from Frank N. Magid Associates, nearly one-third of Netflix users are seriously considering dropping the service.
The data-hungry among you may have noticed that Google Correlate, the research tool released by the Google team for experimentation in May 2011, has just graduated from Google Labs and can now be found on Google Trends.
The newfangled research tool finds search patterns, ready for analysis, that correspond with real-world trends (think Bird Flu).
According to the Google Blog, the idea for Correlate stemmed from a wish-list request made by researchers “who wanted to be able to enter the trend of some real-world activity and see which search terms best matched that trend….they wanted a system that was like Google Trends but in reverse.”
Correlate allows you to upload your own data series. Then, delivered to you promptly and magically is a list of search terms that have popularity to match the trend.
In one Google experiment, a few years of flu activity data from the CDC was uploaded. It yielded the finding that people searched for the terms “cold” and “flu” in a pattern that mirrored the actual flu rates. Very cool, no?
The masterminds at Google went on to use the correlated terms they discovered to build Google Flu Trends.
It’s worth mentioning that you can also use the Correlate research tool to identify which pattern of activity across the US matches the activity in your own state or the state you are studying (search terms can vary in popularity according to state).
“Search activity is an incredible source of data that may lead to advances in economics, health and other fields,” reads the Google blog, “but we need to handle that data with privacy controls on mind.”
Well said. As per the usual, new technological developments bring a whole new slew of challenges along with the nifty discoveries. And while relationships can be identified using Correlate, the tool is not able to determine causation (we’re nodding to you, scientists).
Go here now to try Google Correlate for free.
According to a recent data released by ComScore, both Facebook and Twitter showed a record number of unique visitors in July. The data revealed that Facebook and Twitter grew by 11% and 32% respectively in terms of unique visitors.
It’s obvious that the popularity of web videos has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years, but what about the videos themselves? According to a new report from Website Optimization, the size of the average video has grown quite substantially as well—both in video size and in duration.
A new infographic from YouTube reveals United States political statistics gleaned from YouTube Town Hall over the past couple of months.
Netflix is huge, but we had no idea just how huge it was until we saw this new infographic from GigaOM. Netflix By The Numbers illustrates just how big Netflix has become, in terms of business, bandwidth, devices and catalog.
According to a new Report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 71 percent of online Americans are now using video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
According to Allot Communications’ MobileTrends Report, “YouTube remains the single most popular mobile internet destination, accounting for 22% of mobile data bandwidth usage and 52% of total video streaming.” More stats after the jump.
Pew Internet has another fascinating report based on a recent survey looking at how college students use technology.
College students and technology
Undergraduate students, graduate students and community college students had the highest percentages of cell phone ownership (96%, 99%, 94% respectively) when compared to adults of all ages (82%) and non-students in the 18 to 24 year age range (89%). Tablet ownership, on the other hand, was able the same for all groups (5%, 5%, 4% for the three student groups) and 4% for both adults of all ages and non-student young adults. Ebook reader ownership was about the same (4 to 5%) for all adults, non-students and community college students. However, ebook reader ownership is higher for both undergraduages (9%) and graduate students (7%).
Internet and email use on cell phones was high across the board for young people (18-24) regardless of whether they were in school or not (60+%). Only (relatively speaking) 41% of adults access the Internet and email on their phone.
Social networking site use was highest for non-students in the 18 to 24 age group (88%). However, undergraduates, graduate students and community college students were not far behind (86%, 82%, 78%).
You may assume that the popularity of online video would go up over the summer. After all, during this time of year people have more time on their hands, with vacations from school and work. But according to new figures from Nielsen, the number of Americans watching online video, as well as the number of streams per viewer, is actually on the decline this summer. Except for the CollegeHumor network, which is up 23.2%!
