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Brad Stone of The New York Times found some evidence that suggests just that. In an article posted Saturday, he said that people are finally starting to take notice of some subscription movie- and music-streaming sites because — get this — they just work better.
Huh. Who knew?
Yep, apparently sites like Imeem, Netflix, MySpace Music, Spotify and more are attracting people who might otherwise have used file-sharing software to download programs and songs illegally. Some of them are free, with advertising used to support them. Others are subscription-based.
Stone cites two recent studies in his article, from British researchers The Leading Question and MusicAlly, both of which said that teens 14-18 used illegal file-sharing software such as BitTorrent considerably less than they did two years ago — going from 42 percent to 26 percent over a period from December 2007 to January 2009. That was in the United Kingdom.
The Internet is a great thing, probably the single most important advancement for the human race of the last 50 years. We all love it and heck, I wouldn’t have this job without it. But with every great innovation comes great problems and Internet predators top the list in that category.
Most of us use the net to research information, do a little shopping, generally make life a little easier and connect with others on email and social networking sites. Then there are the creepy perverts of the world. In this case, the Internet moved stalking and preying on our youth from the parks and school yards to the privacy of their own homes.
I love the Internet. It provides me with information, entertainment and a way to keep in touch with friends across the globe. Without it, I wouldn’t have my current job — the best job I’ve ever had. I consider the Internet one of the most significant inventions in the history of human achievement. That being said, there are some real jerks out there.
I’ve decided that I’m going to start a new feature. Every Wednesday I’m going to talk about something new that I’ve found that I think is neat. It may be highly functional, it may be completely meaningless but fun. So let’s get things started!
Today I’m starting with Namechk.com. If you’re one of those people who has to be on every social networking site, this one’s for you. Yes, it’s got Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all the big names, but I would be willing to bet it’ll show you a few you didn’t know about, too. You can check to see if the name you use on all the others is taken across all 72 of the sites Namechk.com currently supports. Every once in a while I get an idea for a name that I’m just sure will be open, but I have yet to stump the site and find one that isn’t taken on some social network somewhere.
A recent Nielsen report found that visiting blogs and social networking sites is now the fourth most popular online activity, replacing e-mail. According to the report, 67 percent of the online population visits “member communities,” which includes social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as blogs.
This trend helps explain why so many companies and organizations have embraced social networking. The Web’s capacity to support interpersonal interaction has been present for years. We’ve really seen people use the Web to connect with one another over the past decade — the so-called Web 2.0 era. The Nielsen report suggests that there’s no reason to expect this trend to level off any time soon.
The report found that three out of 10 people online visit Facebook on a monthly basis. Perhaps even more impressive is that in Brazil 70 percent of the online population visits the social networking site Orkut regularly.
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