Microsoft’s website welcomed 93.8 million unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2011, more than any other computer and consumer electronics brand online during the month. Visitors spent an average of 42 minutes perusing the site. In comparison, Apple saw 68.7 million unique visitors but their they were more likely to spend more time on their site as the average visitor remained on their website for 62 minutes per visitor. “Adobe, Mozilla, and CNET rounded out the top five brands, with 24 to 28 million visitors going to their sites and spending 2 to 6 minutes each on average. CNET was the only news website among the top 5 in this category overall.”

Amazon had the third-highest amount of unique visitor traffic with 72 million unique visitors, each spending an average of 29 minutes on the site. Amazon was leaps and bounds the most visited mass merchandiser website, easily dwarfing the traffic for and time spent on rival sites like Walmart, Target, and Overstock.com. Consumer traffic at Walmart “followed as the second-ranked site, where 34.5 million visitors spent an average of 13 minutes per person on the site. Target, Shopathome.com, and Overstock.com rounded out the top five most visited mass merchandiser websites.”

One stand-out factoid about Amazon: 1 in 3 people in the United States visited the site in September 2011.

Demographically speaking, women were more likely to both categories of websites. 3 out of 4 Internet savvy women visited consumer electronics sites during September 2011, compared to 7 out of 10 men. “Women were also 7 percent more likely to visit mass merchandiser sites. Young people aged 18-34 were slightly more likely than the general population (4 percent more likely) to visit consumer electronics sites.” Additionally, those in the middle income bracket were also more likely to visit computer and consumer electronics websites (guess that makes sense that they’d visit it more than low income consumers, and those 1%ers probably just hire people to do their comparative shopping for them).

Nielsen suggests that interested readers take a look at their State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report for additional insights about these consumer habits.

Apparently, Winamp is still whipping the llama’s ass, if the llama in question is the oft-maligned RealPlayer.

As you well know, these are small amounts in the grand scheme of Twitter, and it should clue you into just how popular the service is. Granted, they’ve expanded from the days of being known as the streaming video player that brought the word “buffering” to popularity, but even with the new services, they can’t escape their past, something Oh Internet expands on quite nicely.

Now, as if to add to their sterling reputation, RealNetworks is suing a Dutch webmaster because he had the audacity to link to a free alternative to the RealPlayer, called Real Alternative. The webmaster in question runs a software downloads site, but instead of hosting these files, he simply links to places they can be downloaded.

Naturally, RealNetworks’ complaint has to do with trademarks and copyrights, but the question is, if they are truly worried about that, why not go after the developers of the Real Alternative instead of some webmaster who doesn’t have the same resources to defend himself?

Obviously, the answer lies in the question.

Instead of going after companies like CNet’s Download.com, a site that apparently hosts the program in question and Google, who has more links for “Real Alternative” than the webmaster being sued, undoubtedly, RealNetworks goes after the little guy, much like a bully who picks on the weaker of the bunch.

Apparently, going after the little guy is safer than getting your collective ass handed to you by Google’s legal team. That being said, we’re throwing down the gauntlet at WebProNews. This is us linking to a site that links to Real Alternative downloads, essentially the same thing the Dutch webmaster did. This should also give some insight into the lead image, which is defiance in the face of RealNetworks’ bullying strategy.

RealNetworks’ problem is with the developers of Real Alternative, not the people who link to the download. Considering the fact that RealNetworks have been around since 1995, you’d think they’d have a little bit more Internet/business savvy than…

Sorry, that last part of the article hasn’t downloaded yet because of buffering issues.

In the latest round of who-can-we-sue, disgruntled “victims” of file sharing have taken aim at CBS’s CNET, specifically their software downloading site cnet.download.com.

Entrepreneur, FilmOn Founder and “eccentric billionaire” Alki David has filed a lawsuit against CNET alleging that they aided in copyright infringement by distributing P2P clients, most notably LimeWire but also Morpheus, iMesh and FrostWire.  Of course, LimeWire is already in its own mess.

Joining Mr. David as plaintiffs are a number of rappers and R&B artists that include members of 2 Live Crew, Pretty Ricky and Ying Yang Twins.  Fifteen plaintiffs are listed in all.

Whose fault is copyright infringement, if anybody’s? Is it the person who shares the files, the makers of the client, or in this case do you agree that CNET shares some responsibility? Tell us what you think.

Part one of the argument is that CNET is guilty of copyright infringement because they allowed users to download software that was used for copyright infringement.

The CBS defendants have been the main distributor of Lime Wire software and have promoted this and other P2P systems in order to directly profit from wide-scale copyright infringement…the CBS Defendants’ business model has been so dependent upon P2P and file sharing applications that entire pages of Download.com are designed specifically to list and categorize these software offerings.

So, blame Dick’s Sporting Goods for selling the hockey stick that was used to bludgeon someone to death with.  Got it.  Maybe we should sue Google for providing search results linking to CNET.  Actually, let’s just sue the internet.  Let’s sue Al Gore.

All ranting aside, the fact remains that while CNET was distributing LimeWire, is was a legal product. Limewire does not inherently have to be used for “copyright infringement.” File sharing does not necessarily equal copyright infringement.  Of course, P2P clients are used for the sharing of copyrighted files – nobody can deny that.

But I simply don’t know if we should sue the tackle shop for selling the bobber used to snag and keep the fish from the catch-and-release pond. Should we?

But I digress.  The second part of the argument is that along with hosting downloads, CNET also wrote reviews for products like LimeWire, thus instructing users specifically how to break the law.

The CBS Defendants have not just distributed and profited from software applications used to infringe copyrights on a massive scale.  They also furnished articles and other content that explained how users could use P2P software to infringe.

On cnet.com, Download.com and other website, the CBS Defendants offered videos, articles and other media that instructed how to use P2P software to locate pirated copies of copyrighted works and remove electronic protections placed on digital music file sin order to prevent infringement.

Or as I call it, the Anarchist Cookbook argument.

Part 54 of the lawsuit provides my personal favorite complaint, simply for its leave-no-stone-unturned approach:

As part of their review process, the CBS Defendants tested the software that they reviewed and, in the case of P2P clients, infringed copyrights to do so.  In a video that Download.com posted to its website, the CBS Defendants again reviewed LimeWire, but this time demonstrated how it worked to Download.com users.  The message of the video is clear: LimeWire is really great at infringing copyrights.

The lawsuit seeks damages as well as an injunction barring CNET from offering P2P client downloads.

Here’s a video of Alki David ranting against CBS, thanks to Ars Technica.  David says that CBS “finds itself publicly exposed as an irresponsible hypocrite, that has ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the creative community and created copyright infringement damages into the trillions of dollars.”

“Hypocrite” is most likely a reference to past legal dealings between CBS and David’s site FilmOn. Last fall CBS along with Fox, NBC and ABC won a restraining order against U.K. based FilmOn in the U.S. The networks argued that because FilmOn was rebroadcasting their content over the internet, they were in violation of copyright law. Although the merits of Alki David’s lawsuit against CBS deserve a fair debate, it is not a stretch to see this current lawsuit as some sort of retaliation for previous actions.

CBS has responded to the lawsuit, saying:

“This latest move by Mr. David is a desperate attempt to distract copyright holders like us from continuing our rightful claims. His lawsuit against CBS affiliates is riddled with inaccuracies, and we are confident that we will prevail, just as we did in the injunction hearing involving his company.”

Also, does anyone see the awesome irony in Dentron Bendross of 2 Live Crew suing someone for copyright infringement, considering his group was part of one of the more famous fair use lawsuits ever?

Oh well.  It shouldn’t be too hard to discern where I land on the issue.  But what do you think? Let us know in the comments.

CNET Limewire Torrent Freak Report

Have you noticed an increase in local results since the Panda roll-out? Let us know.

CNET has now released some data, as it compiled about 100,000 Google results, testing Google.com in March, and then last week, just after the new update. The data reflects earlier reported data from SearchMetrics in terms of news sites benefiting and Demand Media’s eHow sliding.

One interesting element CNET’s data brings to the table, however, is that of Google’s localization and its relationship to the update.

“We also tested what happens if you connect to Google.com from an overseas Internet address. We picked one in London. We performed the same searches on the same day–the only variable that should have changed, in other words, was our location,” explains CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh. “The results? Google engages in significant localization efforts, as you might imagine, with Yelp.com being the largest beneficiary by far.”

“In searches originating from the U.K., Yelp appeared only twice,” he adds. “In U.S. searches, by contrast, it was the ninth-most popular Web site, with both its topic and individual business pages weaved seamlessly into the main search results.”

SearchMetrics’ data did show yelp.co.uk as having a 29.59% boost in visibility.

Yelp picked up 45 first-page appearances for generic searches like “chocolate,” “cleaning,” “food,” “lights,” “laundry,” “tv,” and “weddings,” from a Califronia address, according to McCullagh, while Davidsbridal.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Walgreens.com also benefited in the U.S. from localization.

It’s not all just big brands though.

Local-based results won big too, based on CNET’s testing. Not just local locations for big brands or local businesses, but locally-themed results.

“For our U.S. tests, we used an Internet address near Palo Alto, Calif., which prompted Google to rank nearby businesses and municipal Web sites near the top of search results,” McCullagh explains. “The City of Palo Alto’s Web site appears in the first page of search results for terms including ‘adventures,’ ‘art,’ ‘business,’ ‘gas,’ and ‘jobs.’ PaloAltoOnline.com makes repeat appearances (‘budget cuts,’ ‘restaurants’), as do Stanford, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Mike’s Bikes.”

It’s no secret that Google has put a great deal more emphasis on local in recent times, but it’s interesting to see how this is playing out in light of the Panda update, which was seemingly unrelated (based more on content farms).

We saw how news sites and video sites appeared to come out as big winners, but this research does seem to indicate even more wins for local.

The benefits to Yelp are interesting, considering the tension there has been between Yelp and Google, regarding Google Place Pages and their use of Yelp reviews. Google’s own reviews system – Hotpot – has now found its way into Places, and right into organic search results themselves.

If you’re interested in what Google has had to say about local search relevance factors, read this.

Google is also finding more ways to improve its local listings themselves. See the “open now” and local product listings, for example. Oh, and by the way, Google just launched Map Maker for the US, so users can add their “local knowledge” to the map.

Interestingly enough, as Google focuses more on local, the competition for local eyeballs is already heavily increasing. This is not just about search in the traditional sense. You have to factor in entities like Groupon, LivingSocial, Facebook, Foursquare, and others in these companies’ respective spaces (the lines between which are getting blurrier).

The more ways people obtain the information related to local businesses from sources outside of Google, the less they’ll need to search for that information with Google.

Are Google’s results better now? Tell us what you think.

But Twitter wasn’t the only site targeted. As CNET reports, Facebook, LiveJournal and Blogger were all subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack yesterday, apparently to silence “Cyxymu,” one blogger from Georgia (the country not the state). Twitter was the most noticeably affected, though Cyxymu’s LiveJournal page was unaccessible.

The Chief Security Officer at Facebook, Chris Kelly, confirmed the attack to CNET:

It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks, and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them, if we can.

You have to ask who would benefit the most from doing this and think about what those people are doing and the disregard for the rest of the users and the Internet.

Google managed to keep its sites working just fine, and Facebook suffered from some periodic slowness, but was able to keep Cyxymu’s profile visible to other users in his area.

The attack was coordinated through spy- or malware. Infected computers were instructed to request hundreds of pages per second from the targeted sites. The attack is designed to overload the sites’ servers and/or make it impossible for real users to access the sites.

Read Write Web reports that all the other affected sites have recovered, but Twitter is still suffering. Twitter went down again this morning and continues to operate with intermittent slowdowns. Worse, third party Twitter apps are suffering even more because of mixed downtime messages.

Perhaps unrelated, Cyxymu was also the victim of a spam spoof this week, where spam emails were mocked up to look as though he’d sent them.

I think this shows surprising strength from several social websites. I’m not terribly surprised that Twitter proved to be the weakest—they were once notorious for downtime problems even without malicious attacks.

On the other hand, targeting one user across multiple sites with a complete DDoS attack seems 1.) overkill and 2.) sure to backfire. How much more publicity will Cyxymu get now? Aren’t you wondering what it is that he has to say that incited this attack? (And of course there’s also the insidious possibility that Cyxymu is behind the attack in a play for publicity.)

What do you think? Are you surprised Twitter has suffered the most? Do you want to know more about this Cyxymu person?

Comments

This comes 39 days after the site reached 150 million active users early last month. While from some reports, Facebook was adding 600,000 new active users per day in early December, the longer term average was far below that (the dates here, except for the date on the final report, are taken from CNET stories):

• From August 26 to November 3, the site added 20 million users in 69 days, or about 290,000 per day.
• From November 3 to December 18, the site added another 20 million users in 45 days, or a little under 450,000 users per day.
• From December 18 to January 7, Facebook garnered 10 million new members in 20 days, or 500,000 new users a day.
• From January 7 to February 13, the site added 25 million new members in about 37 days, or over 675,000 new members per day.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are the same stats in graphic format:

CNET reports that most of this growth comes from outside the US—and comes with a price. “Server power is expensive, especially overseas,” says CNET. Plus, a lot of these international users generate far less advertising revenue for Facebook than their US counterparts. And overall, the site is still struggling with monetization, with a recent blow setting its projected overall valuation at $3.7B (down from $15B).

Can they find the missing step in everyone’s favorite formula to make money from social networks in time to capitalize on their growth? (You know—step one: set up a social network. Step two: some magic happens. Step three: profit. They use that one in science all the time.) Or will their popularity be their undoing as more and more “expensive” users join?

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That’s going to change, however as it gets a more Hulu-like makeover from the sounds of it. Although, the qualities the site already possesses are likely to stick around as well. PaidContent.org reports:

While it’s being talked about by content partners and others as the CBS answer to Hulu.com, that’s not quite the way I think CBS sees it. Hulu.com, launched in beta in late 2007 and for real in March 2008, is a video destination with a solid video search engine and some community elements that have yet to really take off. Launched in 2005, TV.com has been a “digital water cooler” about anything and everything having to do with TV, drawing more than 16 million unique monthly visitors and boasting info about nearly 19,000 shows.  As planned, the new version would blend the two by making TV.com into a real video destination, not a place where you happen to watch video, while continuing to build on its community strengths and its depth of content about TV. CBS doesn’t want TV.com to be Hulu—it wants to move beyond Hulu.

CBS execs aren’t ready to discuss—or even confirm—the project, which is still in product development (likely to be a constant state) and is being rolled out in phases. But CEO Leslie Moonves singled out TV.com for investors last week as “extremely exciting,” explaining “we think TV.com will become the destination, or certainly one of the leading destinations, for anybody who wants to watch TV shows or have a community around TV shows, see clips, play games, etc.”

To me, it sounds kind of like an IMDB for television, only with more video content (although IMDB’s working on that too):

CBS is really showing that it doesn’t want to be left behind in terms of online video competition. Apart from this, they recently announced that they would be streaming SEC college basketball games at CBSsports.com (this is big news here in our hometown of Lexington, KY, home of the Kentucky Wildcats). Last year, they streamed all of the March Madness games and that went over quite well, so it is no surprise to see them streaming some regular season games this year. Their schedule for that is as follows:

As far as TV.com goes, the content is what is going to count when it comes to competing with Hulu, YouTube and other forces in the online video industry (an industry that continues to grow rapidly). Winning viewers is going to be no easy task, with so many options available, but the powerful brand of "America’s most watched network," should help bring some TV.com’s way. And the strong user-base that it already has are probably more likely to stick around if they can find the videos they want to watch there. It could lead to Hulu and others looking at offering other types of content on their own sites.

Among the major sticking points, as with everything else on YouTube, is finding the right way to monetize full-length films. According to two studio sources, YouTube parent Google is insistent upon one particular form, though they didn’t say whether that was preroll, postroll or overlays. And of course, there’s still the issue of balancing enough advertising to make it worthwhile to the site and the studio without driving away the viewers.

And here’s something I never thought I’d say: YouTube’s major competition in this area will come from none other than Hulu. Hulu has totally pwned come to dominate the long-form video market online, with high quality streaming. As CNET points out:

A showdown between Hulu and the 3-year-old YouTube was inevitable. Consider that Hulu, the joint video venture formed by NBC Universal and News Corp., attracts only a fraction of the 80 million people who visit YouTube each month, but Hulu still managed to generate nearly the same revenue in its first year in business, according to reports.

Naturally, that strength for YouTube—audience size—is a big reason why the studios have turned to YouTube instead of Hulu.

There is a little bit of precedent for the YouTube deals as well. In July, YouTube announced a partnership with Canadian film company Lionsgate. This partnership yielded film previews from Lionsgate with links to purchase the full-length film for download.

What do you think—will YouTube become the long-form streaming video destination, will they split the market with Hulu, or will the deal never materialize?

via

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A failing company also failed to adequately keep its assets protected from theft. Colt Express Outsourcing Services lost some data to a Memorial Day burglary, and it’s now come to light that the dominant search engine formerly used that company’s services.

Unfortunately for Google, and for CNET employees also affected by the theft, a report at CNET noted employees from both firms were in the same boat. “No credit card numbers were in the stolen data; just names, addresses, SSNs–all the information needed for a thief to open a credit card account under another’s name,” the report said.

An ex-Google staffer, Danny Thorpe, blew the whistle on the Google data loss. Employees hired before the end of December 2005 at Google may now have their personally identifiable information skating around places like the forums favored by identity thieves and traders.

Colt doesn’t appear to be the best managed firm in the world, either. CNET said the company is in financial trouble, with the company’s founder washing his hands of any potential assistance Colt might give affected individuals.

We’re betting Colt will be on the receiving end of more attention from Google, specifically the legal department. “We take the security of our employees very seriously and require outside vendors to meet appropriate security standards,” a Google rep told CNET.

There is some potentially good news here: the personal data wasn’t targeted in some high-tech hack.  Instead, entire computers containing the info were stolen from Colt Express Outsourcing’s office, so this might only be a matter of hardware envy.

 

Also, CNET is providing around 6,500 affected individuals with a year of credit monitoring, and none of their data seems to have been misused at this point in time.

In other respects, things look less cheerful.  A letter from Colt to CNET states, "We do not have the resources, financial and otherwise, to assist you further.  Towards the end of last year, our customer base was reduced to an unsustainable level.  Colt has been in the process of going out of business, while at the same time providing time for remaining customers to find alternative solutions.  Those decisions are now final."

Furthermore, CBS is unlikely to be happy about all the excitement involving its new property.  But in any event, a hat tip goes to Robert McMillan.