Category: Email

Pew on how Americans are using social media to stay informed

6/9/2010

Face-to-face contact hasn't gone out of style, but we all know that new tools abound to stay informed. A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project quantifies the trends.

It found that one-fifth of Americans (and 27% of Internet users) used digital tools to understand more about community issues. And 22% of adults (and 28% of Internet users) used either text messaging or email alerts to gain information. Some 11% used blogs to stay up to date on local matters.

Of those signed up for text and email alerts, 13% signed up for school events (closures for weather, for instance), 11% used them for weather warnings, 5% for crime data and 4% for traffic congestion.

The study was conducted late last year involving 2,258 Americans. Its findings are considered accurate within 2.8 points.

Happy news: We email positive journalism

2/9/2010

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania scrutinized The New York Times' most emailed list for months and have concluded people are more likely to send positive news to each other.

Long articles, pieces on the subject of sex, and those involving diets and marriage were pretty hot re-sends. But the most intriguing finding was that people loved to send articles that inspired awe.

Science did well, better than expected, and it had to do with awe, the researchers concluded.

Newspapers: E-mail advertising set to boom, says Borrell

5/22/2009

Borrell Associates says local e-mail advertising is going to boom in the years ahead and newspapers stand to capitalize on it.

The massive marketing channels newspapers possess are powerful tools, says Borrell, and the activity for email advertising will grow more than 150 per cent to more than $2 billion in the U.S. by 2013.

Borrell VP Peter Conti is quoted on Clickz as saying only a small percentage of local media is focusing on this source of revenu. He argues that newspapers should be hiring a database manager to seize the opportunity.

Google and Mail Goggles

10/7/2008

Google has released Mail Goggles, a new feature for Gmail that helps you avoid those indiscriminate moments of sending inappropriate mail.
You can go to the settings, click through to the labs, and program your Gmail account to prompt you with a skill-testing question at particular times of the week --- say, late Friday or Saturday night, when you might be a little vulnerable --- before you can press the Send button.
No, it's not a joke. Everyone I've mentioned it to so far wishes it had been here a long time ago.

Search closes in on e-mail as an activity: Pew

8/6/2008

Search has long been a form of personal journalism. In our case nearly half of our page views come from search engines like Google and Yahoo.
Now the Pew Internet & American Life Project has taken a look at the rise of search as an activity in the U.S. It finds that nearly 50 per cent use search every day, only 10 points less than those who use e-mail. About 39 per cent use the Internet for news and 30 per cent use it to find weather information.
But the search growth is what's most impressive: 69 per cent between 2002 and 2008, compared to a 15-per-cent growth rate for e-mail in that period.
Education and income levels of searchers are high. Younger men are the principal cohort. Pew concludes that the rise of broadband connections and information-rich engines has a lot to do with the increase in the activity.

E-mail, the Web, and the continuing digital divide

5/18/2008

Newsrooms are making enormous strides in championing digital content, but it's always worthwhile to remember not everyone is poised to reap the benefits of this work.
A new U.S. study shows one in five households has never used e-mail.
The Parks Associates survey indicates nearly three in ten households has never used a computer to create a document. And one in five has never looked up a Web site, searched for information online, or exchanged e-mail.
The study estimates some 20 million U.S. households aren't connected, and that only seven per cent of them have plans to get online in the next year.
Older and less-educated Americans are the largest cohorts in this unconnected minority. More than one-half of those who hadn't used e-mail were over 65, and 56 per cent of the non-e-mailers didn't have more than a high-school education.
The numbers are in decline --- last year's study found 29 per cent were not connected --- and while economics might play some role in the digital divide, the report's authors believe the larger problem is that those not online just don't see a reason to be there.