Wikipedia To Turn Black In Protest Against SOPA And PIPA

Wikipedia, one of the largest open-source encyclopedia or technically, a KMS (Knowledge Management System) and its community has decided to black out the English version of the site worldwide for 24 hours (less than 21 hours to go by the time of this writing) in protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

A leaderboard banner in the wikipedia.org site

It's the first time that the site will be stepped out to go for a public protest against two house bills and the decision was not easily raised. In the official statement released by Wikimedia, Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation said the decision wasn't made by himself but by the Wikipedians who have participated in a consensus decision-making who eventually joined together to encourage greater public support and actions in response to these bills.

The public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst writes:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. 

SOPA and PIPA are proposed house bills in the United States that if implemented, expands U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeited goods.

Other sites, legislators, and prominent personalities that opposed SOPA are Reddit, Google, Yahoo and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

'From Hobbyist To Tehcnopreneur' Free Webinar

Learning session in the DigitalFilipino Start Up 100 Project - Digital Entrepreneur Program continues with their third FREE webinar happening on January 11, 2012 from 8 pm to 9:30 pm.

Related: DigitalFilipino E-Commerce Summit 2012

The topic "From Hobbyist to Technopreneur" with club member and mentor Wilson Chua of Future Gen International Pte Ltd. is packed with discussions that are designed to help entrepreneurs and those business enthusiast learn trends and qualities to become successful in the field.

Agenda to be discussed include:

1. Lessons learned in making the decision from hobbyist to technopreneur;
2. Lessons learned as a Mozcom franchisee;
3. Lessons learned in running a staffing business - Integrity Staffing;
4. Lessons learned in running a BPO / contact center in Pangasinan - Farmout;
5. Lessons learned in current business: Bitstop, BNS, Future Gen International PTE Ltd;
6. What characterizes an entrepreneur?;
7. Advice to college students and yuppies wanting to become technopreneurs;
8. How can I prepare to become an entrepreneur / technopreneur?;
9. What to watch out for in running a start up? and;
10. Suggested resources

System requirements for PC-based attendees

Windows® OS: 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server (Required)
Macintosh®-based attendees: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer (Required)

To join the webinar, just fill up this FORM. You will receive an email confirmation and the link  that you can click to join the actual session.

Who Are The Most Active Social Networkers?

The picture you've just seen above already gives you hint to answer the title of this article. That's right! Women are nonetheless the most active social networkers as of today!

On a latest study reported, females ages 18-34 years old are the most engaged in social networking and which make up the majority of visitors to social networks and blogs. Aged 35-49 are also avid visitors: 4 percent are more likely than average to visit social networks and blogs than they do in any other site and 27 percent of these sites’ audience. The next paragraphs will get you into details about them.

Related: The Rise Of Mobile Social Media Use

These women are likely came from New England as the report suggests, with an average of 102 unique women who visit social networking sites and blogs. Not so far behind are women from South Atlantic and East South Central both has the same figure of average of 101 visitors who are also active in social networking. Women from Pacific and both of East and West North Central though are the third visitors likely to land on the sites mentioned.

As mentioned earlier, these active women who engage a lot in social networking are between ages 18-34 years old which has an average of 108 visitors. They are educated,  highly reputable women as the study indicates that these women has attained a bachelor's degree or even post graduate degree. There is no report on what particular field these women are into but I would like to think that they are involved in either SEO, content management, technical support or BPO or even testers. 

In terms of ethnicity, Asian/Pacific Islander women are the most active social networkers. About 103 in average of social networking and blog sites visitors are Asian while an average of 102 are either American Indian or Alaska Native. White and Hispanic women are also active with an average of 101 and 100 unique visitors respectively.

Indeed, women conquers social networking! To show this, here is a picture showing how women are active and even influential to both men and women online. Britney Spears is the most circled people in Google+ only followed by four other powerful and popular men despite the fact that the current percentage of gender who use Google+ is 69.0% men and 29.8% women.

The Rise Of Mobile Social Media Use

Year 2011 has been dominating for smartphones and tablets. In fact, more than half of all mobile phone sales are occupied by smartphones already. It is the year where consumers sought and realized that the use of these devices can bring yet another effective and convenient way of computing.

Powerful mobile OS (Operating Systems), highly interactive and useful applications, increased phone memory and the ever-powered storage over the cloud which allowed users flexibility to access files wherever, whenever! These are only among of a hundred reasons why smartphones and tablets are overtaking feature phones.

Related: Top Social Networking And Blogging Sites Of 2011

MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USE IS ON THE RISE

Whether it is a feature phone or a smartphone, the ability to access social media is a commonly used feature among mobile owners. About 43 percent of users access the web through mobile device such as mobile phones, iPad, e-reader and handheld music player. In the figure below, the 97 percent for computer use only suggests that still, computer is the most convenient way to use and access social media contents.

How do consumers access social media (Source:Nielsen)

SMARTPHONE FEATURES AND HOW USERS HAVE VALUED THEM

With wide capability ranging from the basics of making and receiving calls to checking out different places nearby down to mobile payment transactions and updating social status and news feeds plus the practicality of use over other devices, smartphones continue to be the most preferred gadget. The next figure below lists down the features commonly available in a smartphone device and how these features have valued by users.

While downloading and playing music is the most available feature for smartphones and global positioning system (GPS) is the most valued feature, applications for social networking has been the second available and most valued feature.

How does social networking compare to other features consumers have on
their phones? And what features do they value most?

MOST USED APPS FOR SMARTPHONE USERS

The on-the-rise popularity of smartphones and tablets which allow users install a wide variety of applications also made it possible for mobile social networking apps to be the third most downloaded app and used by smartphone owners. The most popular app for social networking across all operating system is Facebook  while Twitter is the number five most used app on Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems.

Gaming apps (the most popular of which include Angry birds, Fruit Ninja and Tiny Tower) are still the most downloaded and used applications for smartphones While Weather applications are also highly in demand. Other categories for the most downloaded and used applications by smartphones users include music (Google Music is the most popular) , news, entertainment, banking/finance and dining/restaurant.

Top 10 Categories of Apps Used by Smartphones Owners Who Downloaded Apps

USERS WHO ENGAGED IN MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING

As teeny as thirteen (13) and eldest as fifty five and over (55+) years of age have installed apps for mobile social networking. The most highly downloaded app of which is Facebook followed by twitter with LinkedIn, a site preferrable for professionals, as the least most downloaded app. Ages twenty five to thirty four (25 - 34) have the highest percentage of social networking app users.

Percentage of Social Networking App Users by Age

Top Social Networks & Blogs Of 2011

Social media use has become the most popular activity online and the popularity continues to grow as users who register in different social media platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more keep rising. The Nielsen social media report for 2011 lays down the most popular and visited brands with snapshots of the current social media landscape and audiences particular in the U.S. and other major markets.

Not surprisingly, Facebook topped the list among websites which users spend more time and web use in general with an average of 53.5 million minutes spent in a month followed by Yahoo! and the web giant Google. The complete figures for web brands with most number of minutes spent by users are shown below

Top 10 U.S. Web Brands by Total Minutes, in Billions, Home and Work (May 2011)

Facebook also tops in particular for the most visited social networking and blogs sites of 2011 outnumbering blogger with the same figure of 53.5 million minutes. The exact figures for particular social networking sites and blogs are shown below.

Top 5 U.S. Social Networks and Blogs
Total minutes (000s), Home and Work (May 2011)

In terms of average number of unique visitors per month, Neilsen reported the table below showing the rank, website and the average number of unique visitors per month with Facebook still on the number 1 spot followed by blogger and twitter.com. Google+,  The fastest growing social networking site also made in the top 8 spot with an average of eight thousand unique audience share per month.

Source: Nielsen Data from January – October 2011, Home and Work Computers. Ranked on average monthly unique audience.

The recent report released by Comscore.com also showed a relatively the same figures for leading social networking sites with facebook as the undisputed on the top rank followed by twitter and Linkedin.com.

With more than 800 million active users everyday, there is no doubt that Facebook leads in all the charts for being the most visited social networking site but we can also expect that other related sites can also be successful on their own in the near future.

And as social media and blog sites continue to comprehensively include a wide variety of audience, challenges also continue to be of great importance for traditional media, retailers, and advertisers to understand how different consumer segments use and share content through social media and blogs.