Making The Most Of File Sharing: Free Market Research & A Captive Target Audience

The demonization of file sharing by copyright maximalists blinds many companies to the fact that it is marketing in its purest form. That's because people naturally only share stuff they think is good, and thus everything on file sharing networks comes with an implicit recommendation from someone. Not only that, but those works that appear on file sharing networks the most are, again by definition, those that are regarded mostly highly by the filesharing public as a whole, many of whom are young people, a key target demographic for most media companies. 

On Techdirt.

The Net Net of Netbooks

Netbooks have been one of the surprise successes over the last year. They have also been one of the most contentious areas of computing. There are conflicting reports on most aspects of the sector – in terms of market share, rate of returns etc. - and it is easy to assume that it's all fad and fashion. Against that background, it's good to have some figures – any figures – that might throw a little light on this promising sector.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Not-So-Sadville

Here's an interesting piece of research that attempts to get some (relatively) hard facts about residents of Second Life. It's only an indication, of course, but it certainly gives the lie to many misconceptions about the place:

Respondents who claim to feel happy in Second Life, also feel happy in the physical world: this hypothesis does not hold for those who spend more than 30 hours a week in Second Life and feel unhappy in the physical world. The relation is strongest for the 18-30 hrs group: the happier they feel in real life, the happier they feel in Second Life. The relation is weakest for the under 18 hrs group. The hypothesis that the more hours one spends in Second Life, the unhappier one feels in the physical word, does not seem to hold. The socially skilled, who feel comfortable in the real world, also feel most comfortable in Second Life.

Update: And talking of hard facts, here's a new page of Second Life numbers. What's most interesting is that they are all showing the same shape.

What Took Them So Long?

The study declares that open source software represents the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s.IDC believes that open source will eventually play a role in the life-cycle of every major software category, and will fundamentally change the value proposition of packaged software for customers.

They only just realised?

IDC never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

Now It's Larry's Turn

I'm not a great fan of market research companies, but these studies certainly sound eminently sensible to me. No wonder Larry's desperately trying to crash the open source party.