Have you heard about the dirty glasses? - Behold the speed of the internet when bad or in this case, disgusting, news is broken. MyFoxAtlanta, the local Atlanta FOX network, broke a story on 11/6 about those drinking glasses in hotel rooms and how infrequently they are cleaned. The story quickly spread to sites such as the Consumerist and others. Plus, (as of 11/18) perform a Google search for 'dirty glasses' and take a look at all of the posts related to this story. News travels faster on the internet.
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/
Newspaper Readership Dropping, Internet Consumers Rising - Some interesting stats on newspaper vs. internet readership. (Thanks Beth) The stories came from the New York Times and Reuters. Some of the highlights:
- According to the survey of 2,062 adults, 79 percent, or about 178 million, spend "an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.”
- In 2000, 57% of adults said they were online. By 2006, the total was 77 percent.
- Newspaper Web sites are drawing more young adults than traditional newspapers.
- Advertisers do not consider an online reader as valuable as a print reader.
- More adults are spending more time online with 72% saying they spend more time online at home, and 37% saying they spend more time online at work.
- Nine percent of those that use the Internet are now 65 years of age or older.
AT&T Follow-up: A follow-up story from AdWeek also discusses the recent AT&T 'Where do you live' campaign and it's interactive components. If you recall, we talked about this campaign last week in a post titled 'I Work In Phodalona.' While the article hints (for some unknown reason) that the campaign's purpose is to sell t-shirts, rather than build loyal AT&T customers, it is still a good read and follow-up to our post.
http://www.adweek.com
VibeAgent Launches - Apparently the biggest news from the The PhoCusWright Conference was that TripAdvisor competitor (or at least that is who pundits are comparing against) VibeAgent has come out of private beta and is now available for regular consumers. As a refresher, VibeAgent is a hotel search / booking engine site where members can receive recommendations from friends. See our previous post on VibeAgent for more info.
http://www.vibeagent.com/
Highlights From PhoCusWright - The team at Travolution has posted several entries about the recent PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando. Here are some highlights and interesting facts:
- "Travel experiences" are infinite but "travel destinations" are finite.
- TripAdvisor is slowly shifting its model from that of a mass review website to one which incorporates social networking.
- 80% of all hotels listed on TripAdvisor are viewed every single day.
- Johnson & Johnson's corporate travel budget totals $915 million a year - but only $272 million is spent on flights and hotels. The rest is on "Long Tail" products such as car hire, ancillaries, taxis.
- 64% of online business travelers bought an event ticket during their trip.
- "Social networks give everybody a shot a celebrity..." - Jeffery Boyd of Priceline
