Email Down

Email stumbles in digital paradigm shift … The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.

That’s one of the eye-opening paradigm shifts identified in a must-read report from comScore on the fast-changing state of the digital universe.

A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.

The reason, of course, is that a growing number of people are communicating via Facebook and/or text messages on their mobile phones. Many, of course, also are chatting on the Facebook apps on their smart phones.

The rapid shift in one-on-one communication is not the only disruptive trend noted in the comScore study.

Traditional portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL are “conceding ground to Facebook and other social networks,” said comScore. Noting that portals represented 16.7% of time on site in December vs. 16.6% for Facebook and its brethren, comScore said social sites are on track to “soon declare supremacy over portals.”

Putting its growing traffic to good use, Facebook last year became the top publisher of digital display advertising. Facebook ran more than 1.3 trillion ad impressions, as compared with 529 billion at Yahoo, 215 billion at Microsoft and 174 billion at Google.

While Google remains the king of search advertising, comScore notes its vulnerability, saying:

“Advertising on Facebook – which combines many of the attributes of search such as granular targeting, small ad formats and self-purchased ad buys – presents a unique offering for many marketers looking to bridge their search and display advertising.”

Email stumbles in digital paradigm shift

 The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.

That’s one of the eye-opening paradigm shifts identified in a must-read report from comScore on the fast-changing state of the digital universe.

A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.

The reason, of course, is that a growing number of people are communicating via Facebook and/or text messages on their mobile phones. Many, of course, also are chatting on the Facebook apps on their smart phones.

The rapid shift in one-on-one communication is not the only disruptive trend noted in the comScore study.

Traditional portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL are “conceding ground to Facebook and other social networks,” said comScore. Noting that portals represented 16.7% of time on site in December vs. 16.6% for Facebook and its brethren, comScore said social sites are on track to “soon declare supremacy over portals.”

Putting its growing traffic to good use, Facebook last year became the top publisher of digital display advertising. Facebook ran more than 1.3 trillion ad impressions, as compared with 529 billion at Yahoo, 215 billion at Microsoft and 174 billion at Google.

While Google remains the king of search advertising, comScore notes its vulnerability, saying:

“Advertising on Facebook – which combines many of the attributes of search such as granular targeting, small ad formats and self-purchased ad buys – presents a unique offering for many marketers looking to bridge their search and display advertising.”

There Goes Your Privacy

Mountain View’s Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.

Come 1 March the 350 million people worldwide who have Gmail accounts, for example, will no longer be able to use that service in isolation of other Google products they browse to online.

That’s because the company’s Terms of Service are changing.

Some will argue that Google is merely doing some neat housekeeping by cutting and shutting the majority of its 70 privacy policies into one clean explanation of what will happen with the information users input into the company’s array of products.

Others might note that these privacy tweaks are coming ahead of any public antitrust battle Google potentially faces on both sides of the Atlantic where formal regulatory probes of the world’s largest ad broker are already well underway.

“The main change is for users with Google Accounts,” Google’s privacy, product and engineering wonk Alma Whitten said.

“Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

Vice Adm. Venlet Requests Production Slow Down for F-35 Lightning II

Building jet while ground and flight testing was ongoing was a “miscalculation” according to Venlet

The problems and delays with the F-35 fleet continue to mount. AOL Defense reports that testing and analysis have turned up so many potential areas of issue in the airframe of F-35 fighters that Vice Adm. David Venlet has said that he feels production needs to slow down. Venlet notes that the number of hot spots and potential cracks found in the airframe over last year have gone up significantly. Slowing the rate of production would allow testing to continue and parts that need redesigned to be found and fixed before the cost of retrofitting them to existing aircraft mounts.

 Venlet said, “The analyzed hot spots that have arisen in the last 12 months or so in the program have surprised us at the amount of change and at the cost. Most of them are little ones, but when you bundle them all up, package them, and look at where they are in the airplane and how hard they are to get at after you buy the jet, the cost burden of that is what sucks the wind out of your lungs.”