Please don’t do this survey in the southern United States. Please please please purdy please.
Research conducted among taxi drivers, hairdressers and pub landlords – backed up by conventional market research of more than 1,000 adults in the UK – has found that seven out of 10 people don’t know what a blog is.
For the advertising firm which did the research, DDB, the results came as a bit of a shock, and indicate that marketers are assuming that their target audiences are more interested in technology than they actually are.
Even among parts of the population classified as “early adopters”, knowledge of blogs was scarce. Two out of three men, two out of three 16-24 year-olds, and two out of three single people hadn’t heard of them. Having internet access also appeared to make little difference: two out of three people with internet access didn’t know what they were.
“Our research not only shows that there is no buzz about blogging and podcasting outside of our media industry bubble, but also that people have no understanding of what the words mean. It’s a real wake-up call.”
Interesting tidbits from the article can be found here .
🙂 Hey…I’m in the south…I don’t disagree with the “Please don’t do this survey in the southern United States. Please please please purdy please.” because I’m leaving my tech filled programming job here to go hook up a printer for someone who just upgraded to XP from Windows 98 🙂 They know more about pod people around here than podcasts.
I believe it – I live in San Francisco and sometimes forget that it’s kind of a techie bubble, no matter what industry people actually work in – and have been really surprised a few times when talking to people who I’d think would be in the know about blogs who…well, didn’t know.
Question, what the hell does this mean? “Please don’t do this survey in the southern United States. Please please please purdy please.” I wade through the obvious liberal crap that gets posted here, for the insightful tech article links, and now I get insulted by some California moron living in the supposed “tech bubble”
Signed: a concerned Tennessee hillbilly with a PH.D in computer science. Thank very much!
I read blogs and don’t even know what they are. Can someone explain to me the difference between a blog and those personal webpages from the 90s?!
Wow, as people who are in the “internet community” its often easy to forget just how little the general public knows about computers. I am always amazed when I realise that most people have not even heard of things such as Vista or Mac/Intel…its a small sheltered world we live in.
I believe KB was joking. There are, “rural”, areas all across the US. The point is that many person are not that engaged in cyberland. I grew up before the internet, and if you wanted your opinion heard then you wrote letters to the editor of the local paper, or espouse it at a local bar or barbershop. Then, as today, few really cared to hear it.
To Blog or not to Blog… that is the question. I have been in the tech industry about knee deep since there was a tech industry. I Saw USB demonstrated as a new technology at ComDex and the prototype memory sticks from Sony and I did not know what a Blog was until fairly recently. If it hadn’t been for my Twin Brother turning me onto Blogs, podcasts, etc… I would still be blissfully blind to these things focusing more on the actual working in the IT industry. I have to admit though that I now have a Blog and listen to podcasts. I guess, like Microwaves, when you DO hear about something like this that it will suck you in.
William,
From one southerner to another, I don’t apologize one iota for ridiculing southerners. One of the distinguishing characteristics of southerners is our ability to laugh at ourselves, a trait some other parts of the country could stand to emulate. While it’s certainly the vogue to find something to be offended about, I won’t join you and the vast majority of Americans in that.
From the South? What’s up with that? Hell man, we design web sites, write computer programs, network a bunch of stuff then go home and sit on the porch amongst the chickens and drink a bit of sour mash before hitting the sack. Thing about the South, we generally know how to relax and enjoy things as we go.
Why bother to learn the term? The “blog” is just another step in the devolution of the Internet. Something will come along and replace it eventually.
(Devoltuion of the Internet: The content out there keeps getting worse as content management programs are made to be used by people not interested in spending time on content.)
Spoken like a true atheist as well as a flaming left coast liberal. See stereotypes come in all flavors!