Questia's Social Network

As social network sites go its hard to judge Questia’s new Research Wizard. In principle it make sense to link researchers into a community application that enables them to share thoughts but is it enough and is Questia the right centre? It has aligned the Research Wizard with Facebook which obviously adds an attraction to many and provides potential new subscribers.

Questia is a major online library, with over 67,000 full-text books, 1.5 million articles, and an entire reference set complete with a dictionary, encyclopaedia, and thesaurus. It provides materials in some 14 major disciplines and its new social site has further fragmented these into what they claim are 6,000 plus research categories.

Looking at the initial dialogue it appears far from a research site and more of a touch point with some weird and wonderful research subjects which will obviously appeal to the earnest researcher but is maybe too granular in its construct.
On first reaction the principle looks good but unless the traffic occurs across the many categories many may not find the experience sticky enough and a good idea may be lost through its execution.

Have You Time to Read This?

So how do people spend their leisure time? Have we turned away from the TV and being couch potatoes and become gizmo and Internet geeks?

A report from Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator gives us some insights as to the current position and potential trends. It estimates that in the last five years mobile phone usage in the UK has doubled whilst the use of PCs and laptops has quadrupled.

The average person spends some 8 hours asleep in bed but now spends nearly the same amount of time watching TV, on the phone, online or using other communications services. That leaves just 8 hours to work, shop, eat and do everything else! No wonder online shopping is becoming so popular!

One of the driving forces is the falling cost of communications and growth in broadband connectivity which itself was significantly boosted by the introduction of the mobile laptop ‘dongle’. Some 2 million people are now estimated to be connected via these wireless ‘dongles’. The report claims that 58% of UK homes now have broadband connectivity. Some 40% of broadband services are now bought as a bundled package which itself help fuel further convergence both in services and products and also consumer perceptions.

Even though some 87% of UK homes now have digital television with a wide choice of channels 57% of viewing remains with the five main channels.

It is also interesting to note that some 44% of adults use text and 36% access the Internet everyday. We would love to se the same analysis of children’s usage and would expect this to be significantly higher on both counts. Mobile phone usage has grow by some 21% but land line calls have remained static which obviously shows that the old BT advert worked and we are finding that ‘it’s good to talk’.