Got a case of information overload? You're not alone.
A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day.
Over the course of 2008, Americans as a group gobbled up 3.6 zettabytes of data. (In case you missed the definition of "zettabyte" in your daily data binging, that's a million million gigabytes.) For all you visual learners out there, the researchers helpfully point out that 3.6 zettabytes is equal to the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."
Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.
Here's how TV and the Internet stack up in the "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers."
(Credit: University of California, San Diego)Dubbed the How Much Information? project, the study measured data consumption both at home and away from home. It includes several information sources, "including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper."
Besides bytes and words, the study also noted the number of hours spent consuming information.
In terms of time, traditional media still has a strong hold on the U.S. The study reported that "a large chunk of the average American's day is spent watching television." On average, 41 percent of an American's day is given over to watching television shows, viewing recorded TV, or watching DVDs.
Noncomputer sources, the study says, account for more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time.
But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.
"Games are almost universal, but most of the gaming bytes come from graphically intensive games on high-powered computers and consoles, which have the equivalent of special-purpose supercomputers from five years ago," report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, said in a statement. "Games today generate their bytes inside the home, rather than having to transmit them over cables into the house, but gaming is increasingly moving online."
The study found that 16 percent of daily information consumption comes from the Internet. A staggering 79 percent of all American two-way communications is done through the Internet.
If you want to see what else UC San Diego found in its study, click here.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Retailers have a love-hate relationship with social media, according to a study set to be released next week.
The E-tailing Group, which specializes in retail sector trends, surveyed 117 companies--from small to large--to assess how retailers and brands view the social Web.
The biggest concern among respondents is that consumers will "trash their products in front of a large audience," according to E-tailing Group. At the same time, companies very much want to partake in the social Web.
Ninety-three percent of companies surveyed said they are seeking greater customer engagement through social-media efforts. And 76 percent want to use social networks to "mobilize advocates through word of mouth."
"Brands are especially worried about negative comments hurting a brand, but they also know that they need to go social. That's why they're using Facebook and Twitter with some success," E-tailing Group spokeswoman Lauren Freedman said.
Of all social media, Facebook drew the most interest of respondents, followed by Twitter. Tying for third place were customer reviews and blogs. Viral videos took fifth.
Eighty-six percent of respondents already use Facebook Fan pages to deliver a social experience to their customers. Only 1 percent of those companies have no plans to deploy a Facebook Fan page.
Sixty-five percent of companies are using Twitter as a tool to market their brands. However, 9 percent said they don't plan to open a Twitter account or market their brand through it.
Fifty-five percent said they allow customer reviews on their sites and feature blogs. And 50 percent have used viral videos.
Company marketers aren't testing the social waters just for the fun of it, though.
"They don't want to do this unless it delivers the return on investment that their companies are expecting," Freedman said.
Still, it's not Facebook or Twitter--the two social tools retailers are using most often--that companies expect will help them increase sales. Instead, customer reviews take the top spot.
According to the study, about 85 percent of respondents believe customer reviews across the Web are a great way to increase sales. They reason that consumers listen to their peers. By comparison, just 33 percent of companies believe a Facebook Fan page can increase sales.
Looking ahead, the E-tailing Group sees social adoption continuing to grow in the marketplace. Twenty-five percent of respondents expect that companies will be "much more aggressive" in the social arena. And 50 percent said companies will be "more aggressive" in the next six months.
"Quick adoption of social networks is a guarantee over the next six months," Freedman said. "That's mainly due to movements to social brands by the competition."
In other words, no company wants to be left behind.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
We here at CNET get all of our movies and music the old-fashioned way: through hard work, grit, and elbow grease. We roll up our sleeves, suck it up, and put in the hard work. (Sorry, I was going for the record of most cliches in one paragraph there. I can't confirm what I just wrote is actually true.)
So, yes, CNET does it the hard way (I think), but not everyone does. In University of Cambridge professor Patricia Akester's report titled "Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment,"--which, no, I didn't read, because it's like 200 pages long--she lays out the effect DRM (digital rights management) restrictions really have.
Feel free to dive into that report if you have the time, otherwise I suggest you check out her much shorter summary here.
In the report she notes that when people who are legally attempting to access DRM content (like film lecturers putting together clips from movies for educational purposes) and they hit a DRM restriction, they are driven to instead download DRM-free, illegal copies of the content to get the job done.
Not the most surprising news, and it's another win for those who believe the way DRM is currently implemented hurts more than helps. Now we have a study that says because of DRM restrictions, people are driven to download illegally. I think that's the definition of backfire.
Also, she notes that while the Information Society Directive puts the onus on the content owner to voluntarily allow DRM-free access to said content in these cases, not all content owners do so until regulatory authorities step in.
The good news now is that I finally have an excuse to download all the movies and music I want for free!! Woot! Thank you, Professor Akester. Thank you for letting us laugh at DRM, again.
Amazon, Rhapsody, and iTunes were the big winners in a study of which music services are most popular and recognized by people who download music.
At the same time, Ipsos, a market research firm, announced Wednesday that its survey of 1,249 digital music buyers showed eMusic didn't see any growth in the public's awareness or usage. MTV and VH1 actually fell in those areas, according to an Ipsos spokesman. One of the reasons may be because MTV shut down its own service and last August teamed with Rhapsody on a joint venture.
The research by Ipsos did not measure sales but was instead a survey of people who download music. The study looked at which sites people say they visited, liked, used, and knew about.
"Amazon had a strong first year...comparable to any of the top brands after iTunes," Ipsos said in a statement. "Moreover, Amazon actually matched iTunes in user satisfaction."
Apple's iTunes still fared best among the music services and saw increased growth. Rhapsody did as well "although some of this growth may have been trickle-down from growth of digital music overall."
That's an important point because the number of music services has shrunk mightily since Ipsos performed it's last study: Sony's Connect, Yahoo Music, MSN Music, and MTV's Urge are just a few missing from the scene.
According to Ipsos, Amazon's strong first-time appearance doesn't mean that it's making up ground on iTunes. Both Amazon and iTunes are apparently taking share from lesser-known brands.
It's a familiar pattern: another month, another increase in Google's search market share.
Internet users performed 11.7 billion searches in the U.S. in August, choosing Google 63 percent of the time, according to ComScore's monthly analysis released Thursday. That's an increase of 1.1 percentage points from 61.9 percent in July, the analyst firm said.
Yahoo slipped from 20.5 percent to 19.6 percent, and Microsoft slipped from 8.9 percent to 8.3 percent.
Google's brand name value jumped from 20th place last year to 10th in 2008, according to the latest version of an annual study that ranks the best brands, with only four technology companies ahead of it on the list.
Microsoft slipped from second to third place, edged down a peg by IBM, according to the study by BusinessWeek and Interbrand, which base their results on the value of the brand as judged by how much revenue it will likely earn for the company.
Coca-Cola is king, but technology companies are common in the top 25 brands.
(Credit: BusinessWeek/Interbrand)Google showed the strongest gain, with a value that increased 43 percent to $25.6 billion, the study said. Next in line was 24th-place Apple, whose brand value rose 24 percent to $13.7 billion.
Coca-Cola remains the top, with a $66.7 billion in brand value, but technology companies are well represented on the list. No. 5 is Nokia, Intel No. 7, Hewlett-Packard No. 12, Cisco No. 17, Samsung No. 21, Oracle No. 23, and Sony No. 25.
Social-networking giant Facebook has filed a copyright infringement suit against a German counterpart, according to the Financial Times.
StudiVZ is accused of "copying the look, feel, features and services" of Facebook, including its "wall" feature, according to the complaint filed Friday in California, the Financial Times reported.
The suit asserts that the sites are so similar that StudiVZ simply replaced Facebook's "blue color scheme with a red one."
According to StudiVZ's site, the Berlin-based company has 10 million users. The site was purchased last year by German publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.
Facebook launched its own German language version in March.
CNET News could not immediately reach StudiVZ for comment.
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