Chuck at AgWired points to some stats on net use by age demo (eMarketer):
“Although Internet penetration within the 40-and-over crowd is lower than among younger demographic groups, boomers and seniors outnumber younger adults in the general population—so that lower Internet penetration still translates into greater numbers of older Internet users, according to comScore Media Metrix.”
I don’t know if I enjoy reading Terry Heaton because he’s smart or because I usually agree with him. In his latest essay he looks ahead to what he believes are the real challenges for media companies in 2009. It’s a very hope filled essay. Here are a couple of my favorite graphs:
“Whereas the Industrial Age forced the creation of powerful city states (the labor force had to be centrally located), the Information Age allows us to be where we want to be. Watch for movement to friendly, peaceful surroundings, where the locals have been smart enough to build hubs along the information superhighway. Contrarians will argue that people working from home will be isolated, but from what? What new businesses will spring up to cater to American workers in the future?
Whereas the Industrial Age brought us corporate marketing, the Age of Participation heralds the world of personal marketing and personal branding and a time of influence in expanding circles, rather than top-to-bottom. The time to gain traction in this world is today, for today’s action will determine your place in tomorrow’s culture.”
I did the sign-on shift for most of my time on the radio. And on days that it snowed (not that often in southeast Missouri), the phone would ring off the hook from parents (and students) asking about school closings. The superintendent would get out early to check the roads and then call the radio stations.
Even though we gave the closings every 5 minutes, the phone never stopped ringing. It was madness.
We got a little snow here in Jefferson City overnight and while Shawna was bringing me my oatmeal, she got a text message from the Jefferson City school system, alerting her there would be no school today.
The school uses texting to communicate a variety of things, even providing updates throughout the day.
I assume the local radio stations still get a call and many people rely heavily on the on-air reports. This is just one more instance of disintermediation. The people with the information (schools) communicating directly to the people who want/need the information (students/parents).
I’m guessing most folks don’t give their mobile numbers to just anybody. And how valuable is it to the schools to have the mobile number of every “customer?”
Do most radio stations have the mobile numbers of the listeners? I would hope so. And are they using those numbers to provide something as valuable as school closing information?
This showed up in my in-box and I don’t know the source or the author but will be happy to properly attribute if anyone knows.
“Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide.”
“Hank Paulson now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal. Meanwhile, Hank’s buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.”
Mama always said: ‘Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest’.
Quote of the day from a fund manager: ‘This is worse than a divorce… I’ve lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife..’
And one more perspective:
“Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?”
I have difficulty eating unless I am reading something. It can be anything. The back of a cereal box I’ve read 100 times before, a phone bill, anything.
I used to buy USA Today each morning but stopped a couple of years ago. Since then I have book with me or stories from the web, printed out the night before. When eating breakfast at home, I sometime just flip open the Mac. Not practical at the Town Grill.
But the iPhone… with Google’s News Reader app? Hard to resist. Flip the phone to landscape orientation and the stories are easy to read and flip through.
Only marginally related…
I’ve been making more phone calls since getting the iPhone. Old friends I haven’t spoken to in years. I’ve been thinking about why I didn’t call them on the tracfone (which expires today, I believe). The reason, I’ve concluded, is that it was too hard to enter all those phone numbers. I just never got around to it. Since the iPhone syncs with damned near evertything on the MacBook… there’s very little data entry on the phone. And you know what, I love associating a photo with each contact. Yeah, this is old stuff to long-time mobile users, but still new and fun for me.