With Memorial Day weekend quickly approaching and the graduation/wedding season upon us, I hope to start spending as much time as possible taking in the spring weather out of doors. I, like many other Americans, will just need to find a way to balance my email-checking, blog-reading, Pandora-listening and NYTimes.com surfing with the enticing fresh-air activities of late spring.
According to a new report from Media-Screen, my daily leisure-time Internet habits are far from atypical. In the article, “Americans Spend Half of Their Spare Time Online” Jack Loechner explains some of the report’s findings. On a given weekday, broadband users spend about 48% of their spare time online. While online, the most popular media activities are checking email and visiting Web sites for personal reasons. The report also stated that while almost 50% of younger users say they learn about new entertainment online, only 25% say they learn about it through television. This is not surprising–with the plethora of social networking, video and blog sites that people in my generation visit daily there are far more opportunities to learn about a new TV show, movie, book or popular viral video than during an evening in front of the TV.
The report has obvious implications for advertisers. As Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen states in the article:
“Currently, the proportion of advertising resources devoted to the Internet (about seven percent according to ZenithOptimedia) is nominal relative to the value it generates… among fans… consumers, on a typical weekday, spend more than 40% of their time consuming media online…”
But what could this mean for the rest of us? Does spending so much of our time “virtually” interacting and consuming entertainment via the Internet detract from time we might spend actually socializing or engaging in other activities? Or is the Internet merely replacing much of the time we used to spend in front of the TV?
Weather-permitting, I think I will check my emails and read up on my favorite blogs on my porch this weekend. If I am spending 48% of my leisure time online at the very least I can multi-task by getting some fresh-air while I’m at it.
Creating and posting video to the internet just got a little easier. Pure Digital, the same firm that’s responsible for those disposable digital cameras you find at the convenience store, just launched their newest product Flip Video. The pocket-sized camcorder will be available at various tech retail locations and aims to make it easier for people to capture video with the aim of placing it on your website, Youtube or MySpace.
On why he feels there is a need for such a device in the market, Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan notes:
“There is so much pent-up demand for capturing and sharing video. But the challenge is that there is no great, easy way to get video up on YouTube”.
Kaplan feels that his Flip Video will fill this need for easier to use and less expensive tools which will enable greater expansion of the user-generated market and increase the number of video posts:
“The user-generated content mainly comes from Webcams, cell phones and digital still cameras. There is no simple, affordable device to capture video so we decided to address that.”
The device starts at $119 for 30 minutes of video capacity and has a model that retails for $149 which holds 60 minutes of video.
Pay close attention as more of these devices hit the market. It will be interesting to see just how small, easy to use, and inexpensive they will become.
