pkellypr's Podcast

Ireland is interesting in many respects. We lag behind most of Europe in many broadband league tables. Broadband penetration currently stands at 12.5%, which is below the European average of 18.6%. However that is a marked improvement, as the penetration level stood at 5.3pc just over a year earlier. The popularity of social networking sites, Bebo in particular, and other online services such as YouTube and Xbox Live, is exploding, leading to an increase in demand for broadband. Ireland also lives up to its stereotype, we just love to talk, and have one of the highest mobile penetration rates in Europe. Outside of South Korea, Ireland also has the highest PS2 penetration rate in the world. While mobile and PS2 penetration rates may seem slightly irrelevant to the topic I am discussing, they have a major influence on the direction on what the online landscape in Ireland is likely to look like in the future. But first, let us look at the lie of the land. Broadband subscriber figures have steadily increased over the past couple of years,currently standing at 517,000 subscriptions. They doubled from approximately 176,000 in the second quarter of 2005 to approximately 372,000 in 2006. We ended the year with 430,000 subscribers and Noel Dempsey, Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, set a target of 700,000 broadband subscribers by the end of 2007. We have one of the lowest broadband penetration rates in Europe, a fact highlighted by a statistic disclosed to me recently by someone who runs a popular website that 42% of their visitors were on a dialup connection. So what is the population doing online? An estimated 935,000 people use a computer every day while an estimated 638,000 used the Internet at least once a day. No surprise that the most popular activity online is search, which is followed by email. In terms of shopping habits, the top three Irish internet purchases were travel and holiday accommodation, tickets for events and books. In terms of online banking, one of Ireland's leading banks offers some insights into how Irish consumers use the service. According to AIB, one of the most frequently used services on its site is the bill-pay option. Ireland has a soaring level of consumer debt, so it comes as no surprise that credit card bills is the most common debt to be paid. Our high mobile penetration rate also has an influence on online banking, with mobile top-up usage levels growing 30pc in the past year, with an average top-up value of €15.36. Online banking services are also most commonly used between 9am and 10am as consumers check just how much is left in their balance from the night before and plot how to last until the end of the month. Now let us turn to social media. According to Wikipedia, social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. A few prominent examples of social media in action are Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube and Second Life. Ireland bucks the trend slightly when it comes to social networks as Bebo dwarfs the popularity of MySpace. The social networking website has over one million Irish users. The site has a broad base with users varying from 13 - 35 years of age. 1 in 3 Bebo users are between the ages of 13 to 17 and users are typically based in urban areas due to broadband rollout in the country. These areas are Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. Looking at other social media tools, 25% of Irish Internet users claim to download podcasts and 22% read blogs regularly. However it should be noted that these technologies only appeal to a certain section of society like other parts of the world. The statistics which I have just mentioned can be turned on their head as 70% of Irish internet users never download 'podcasts' and 73% never read blogs. Although niche and in its infancy, the Irish blogging community is going from strength to strength. Organiser of the Irish Blog Awards, Damien Mulley, recently said that the number of Irish people blogging has increased from around 1,000 to between 3,000 and 4,000 people. Ireland's top blogs include Mulley's own site, mulley.net, as well as beaut.ie, blogorrah.com, tomrafteryit.net and twentymajor.net. Twenty Major is an anonynmous blogger who has just signed a book deal which is another indication that blogs. To get a flavour of the Irish blogosphere, it is worth visiting Irishblogs.ie, a popular blog aggregator that compiles content from the majority of Irish blogs. The impact of all these technologies was noted by the Sunday Tribune which recently reported on comments by eircom's chief technology officer Geoff Shakespeare, where he said that growing popularity of video and music downloads, online tax returns, YouTube and other social networking sites and online gaming has caused demand for internet bandwidth in Ireland to rise 800% on Eircom’s network since April 2005. This is set to be fuelled by the launch of the PS3. Despite its hefty price tag, Irish shoppers have been queuing in their droves to get their mitts on the console. The Xbox 360 is already firmly established in the hearts of Irish gamers. Although its Xbox Live service is vastly superior to what is currently on offer by Sony and Nintendo, both of Microsoft's rivals have put more emphasis on the Internet. One of the key challenges facing the telecommunications industry is to provide a network that has the capacity to provide for the demands of gamers, as well as other services which will grow in popularity over the coming years such as video-on-demand. As I previously mentioned, Irish people love to talk. We have a mobile penetration rate of 111%, with 4.4 million mobile subscribers, and Irish mobile companies have one of the highest ARPUs. ARPU is an acronym for Average Revenue Per user. In terms of mobile usage, in 2005 Irish mobile users sent 4.4 billion text messages, equating to 1,053 per person. The number of voice messages transmitted in 2006 was 5.7 billion. Mobile revenues however have plateaued and like the rest of the world there is a lot of focus on the mobile phone and the Internet. Bebo is rumoured to be in negotiations with one of the big mobile companies in Ireland, a move which could match the success of Helio in the States. Helio allows it users to access MySpace portal which its subscribers can use to access their mailbox, bulletins, blogs, photos, and profiles from their mobile device. The company is on track to rack up 100,000 subscribers and that their customers are spending $100 on average per month. However the makeup of the mobile market in Ireland is different to other parts of the world, with the Pay-As-You-Go model proving to be exceptionally popular, especially with younger audiences. This throws up a challenge for those hoping to emulate Helio's success as Pay-As-You-Go users typically use voice and SMS services. Like the rest of the world, the online landscape in Ireland is quickly evolving and I have no doubt that in a year's time this podcast will be sorely out of date. But until then, thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Please join me in three weeks time for an overview of the media landscape in Ireland

Welcome to the first edition of Ten Minutes Older. Please find below a script of the podcast if you'd rather read than listen: My name is Piaras Kelly and I am an account manager with Edelman, an international Public Relations consultancy, with their Dublin office. This podcast series will discuss Public Relations, Marketing, emerging trends and the evolution of the modern consumer. As you can guess by the title, I'll keep each podcast approximately ten minutes in length rather than bore you to death. A new one will be published every two to three weeks. There's no better topic to start with than the emergence of social media. Blogs, podcasts, YouTube, all words that were pretty much unknown two years ago. Yet today here I am, making a podcast and discussing these topics with you. It is symptomatic of the mass democratisation of the web. The modern consumer has the tools and the ability to publish content in various guises with a couple of clicks. This is starting to have huge implications on organisations across the globe and it's also got companies very excited about how to connect with consumers. Just in case you need a last minute reminder about the scale of what we're talking about and to discount any notions that this is all just a fad, here's a couple of milestones that might just change your mind. Google purchased YouTube, a free video-sharing website, for $1.65 billion. MySpace claims to have 106 million registered users and a sign-up rate of 230,000 per day. Online advertising grew by 41% last year. Advertisers are already spending more online than on radio, outdoor-poster sites and in business magazines. At the same time, TV advertising revenues shrank 4.7% last year, radio by 5.2% and press classified by 7.8%. Blogs are just one of many new online tools that have begun to highlight the impact of the Internet on communication. In the past the rate at which a message spread depended on the number of people talking about it. Now millions of people can be exposed to the same message in an instance and naturally it spreads faster. More importantly, that message can be targeted directly at a particular audience and communicated more efficiently as the audience is more likely to pick up on it. So is this a new phenomenon? In my opinion, no. Humans have an unquenchable desire to communicate and share their experiences. All throughout our history, we've shared stories around a campfire, painted stories on cave walls and written ballads to immortalise moments of our history. Today we record our thoughts and opinions on blogs, send text messages to our family and friends, and connect with others on social networking sites like Bebo or MySpace. We have always tried to express ourselves. Don't believe me? Just take a look in the mirror. The clothes you're wearing, even your haircut, they say something about you. They are an extension of your personality and how you want to be perceived. The reason why the Internet is having such a major impact is that it is fuelling this underlying behaviour. Web 2.0 is a huge buzzword at the minute which encapsulates many things. For me, it represents the fundamental shift in how we communicate online. Web 2.0 tools allow people to connect with many others at one time and has enabled groups with similar interests to come together online. In the past, word-of-mouth communication consisted of one-to-one-to-many communication in that one person would tell somebody something and they in turn would spread that message to numerous other people. Web 2.0 amplifies that effect in that when somebody comments about something, that message can instantly be communicated to a widespread audience (numerically and geographically), thereby taking a one-to-many-to-many form of communication. Organisations are moving past the stage of thinking about whether online consumer opinions matter or not. The modern consumer can pay to read a review of a new product in a newspaper or he can access hundreds of reviews about the same product on the Internet for free. People are more likely to believe a number of similar opinions rather than the opinion of just one person unless they are a trusted source. For example, new movies are released in the cinema every week. People can read a review in a newspaper or they could access hundreds of reviews and get more information about a particular film online. The general opinion of a number of people is more credible than that of a single source. What we're witnessing today is only the tip of an iceberg. The first generation of digital natives has only just emerged. Today's teens don't know a world without the Internet, mobile phones or video games. The word google is synonymous with research, copyright is a foreign concept as they log onto sites like PeekVid to watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters and they've brought multitasking to another level, instant messaging friends while they do their homework, watch clips on YouTube, upload songs to their iPods and text their friends. Like a generation of Steven Spielbergs, they can create and publish content at will, often without thinking about the implications. This will have profound effects on society as a generation who live by the YouTube motto 'Broadcast Yourself' gradually becomes incorporated within it. A word of warning however. We are quick to label digital natives as the My Space generation. The stupidest thing we can do is label a group that has always sought to be different. People do not act the same. Starting a blog or creating a MySpace page for your company isn't suddenly going to connect you with this audience. If you want to connect with them, you need to create something that they will talk about or an event that will bring them together. Blogs are simply a medium. There is a perception that this new batch of consumers will take the time to make ads for companies or help them develop the next iPod, wishful thinking really and thoughts I'll expand on in future podcasts. Thanks for taking the time for listening. Please join me again in two weeks for an overview of the online landscape in Ireland.

This default podcast has been automatically generated by the libsyn system. Feel free to delete it at any time. Welcome to Liberated Syndication, and happy casting