FIFA 14, Gravity and Hudl in latest Harris Buzz research

The October edition of Harris Buzz is out, our monthly look at what's hot in entertainment and technology polling a national representative Harris Poll sample.

The full report is available for free - click here.

This is what we measured this month:

• BBC to launch BBC One +1 channel
• BBC unveil the next-generation iPlayer
• FIFA 14 video game
• Gravity movie
• Homeland Series 3 begins on Channel 4
• LOVEFiLM makes available exclusive drama series, Copper
• NBA 2K14 video game
• Runner Runner movie
• Samsung launches smartphone with curved screen
• Sony Xperia Z1 goes on sale
• Tesco launches Hudl tablet
• Wuaki.tv launches in the UK
• YouTube launches its first Music Awards

Google research - ranking the familiarity of recent Google initiatives

Google do a lot of stuff. Some things work, some don't. Google+ and Google TV may be struggling to meet expectations, but there's no doubt that the company is raking it in from search and they were recently proclaimed the world's third most valuable brand.

It's worth taking a look then at how all their recent initiatives cut through to the Great British public.

The graph below is taken from Harris Interactive's series of Buzz reports. These are monthly polls using the Harris Poll Online Omnibus in GB, nationally representative of 16-64 year olds. Note that these are results  of polls at the time of each initiative's release (or shortly after) - there's a table at the bottom of this post showing the polling dates.

There's a big spread of familiarity here with failed projects like Google Buzz towards the bottom. It's interesting that their recent and major change to its privacy policy is the thing that more people in the country have heard about. Google+ and Chrome do well, and it's interesting to see that Chrome has now become the world's most popular browser. Google+ is another matter, perhaps weighed down by high expectation.

The one that stands out most for me is Google TV. As many people with connected TVs hardly bother with the function, it's a space where a giant like Google can make the running and create the demand with a beautiful service. It's yet to filter through. Perhaps Apple will do it instead with the much rumoured release of the Apple iTV.

For those who want to know, we polled the public at the time of (or shortly after) each release. Here's a table showing the launch and polling dates.

Get in touch if you want to know more. And see here for all the Buzz reports from which this data is collated. All are free to download.

Buzz report bonanza - two new reports available

It's been a while since I've updated and there are two new free Harris Buzz reports available to download.

Buzz#10 - the November 2011 report is available here
Buzz#9 - the October 2011 reports is available here

Here's a summary of all the news stories and the brands we've measured in these two reports:

As always, get in touch if you want to know more. My contact details are on the right-hand pane.

Mobile entertainment - the inexorable rise

It's been a full year since we published a new wave of our Fast Forward tracking report. This is the 9th edition with now over 2 years of tracking data.

The full report from Harris is free and click here to download it.

Fast Forward is a tracker of the UK public's entertainment habits, mobile entertainment habits, content piracy and device ownership. All data is based on nationally representative samples using the Harris Poll.  I'll post some other stories later, but in this post I'll focus on mobile entertainment.

The graph below shows how much more we are using our smartphones and other mobiles for entertainment and social networking.

Bear in mind the blue bar is a measure right now in August 2011 and the prior one is 12 months ago, so we should certainly expect to see significant gains in mobile entertainment usage as more and more of the general public acquire smartphones.


I've plucked out a few choice activities to show the same data in a way that really brings the uplifts to life:

iPad research, tablet research, portable devices - major new free report

Click here to download a major new consumer research report into portable devices.

This is a large-scale study, interviewing over 2,000 members of the GB public online using the Harris Poll Omnibus.









We look at the choices people make between different portable devices (see earlier post) like tablets, smartphones, laptops, ebook readers and mini netbooks. Probably one of the most interesting areas we look at is anticipated usage of these different devices. We see just how attractive tablet devices like iPads and Xooms are for true multi-media usage, and especially so for video and gaming. This is underlined in the anticipated usage chart below.

The graph above underlines the potential of the tablet to deliver video and gaming content to a much higher degree than that seen for smartphones. Of course, there are and will continue to be many more smartphone users than tablet users, but the tablet device shows it to be the portable device for the fullest multi-media experience. As such the tablet device offers massive potential for content owners - see a summary of potential below:

The full report is 100+ pages of analysis and is free to download. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions - my contact details are on the right-hand pane.

Power of YouTube for consuming music

Interesting data here from Nielsen (full report available here, but email registration required) looking at how consumers are listening to music. It's a big study with 26,600 respondents in 53 markets. The key finding is the prominence of music videos (no doubt YouTube), its incidence outstripping that of piracy and streaming. The figure for "downloading a song without paying for it" is shockingly high - nearly 50%. It also shows the growing prevalence of mobile entertainment, with music playing a critical role.

It confirms some ongoing research conducted by Harris Interactive showing the ever growing popularity of YouTube among the UK general public.

You can find this Fast Forward data, as well as how YouTube viewing compares against a host of other entertainment behaviours, device ownership and content piracy in our series of Fast Forward reports, which are free to download in their entirity (without email registration!) by clicking here.

Mobile entertainment, mobile social networking, Facebook - latest research

Yesterday saw Facebook make some major announcements about its mobile future. They see everything going mobile and it's hard to disagree with them. Just looking at the commuters on my train in the morning, I can see half the people busy on their iPhones and Androids twittering away and updating their Facebook status with a moan about leaves on the track. Wired report that 200 million people are already using Facebook on mobile phones — up from 65 million only a year ago.

Harris Interactive's Fast Forward tracking research has been keeping an eye on mobile social networking in the UK for more than a year. Even in this relatively short period, we have observed substantial uplifts in the usage of mobile for emailing, social networking, YouTube and Twitter.

Usage of Twitter and YouTube has doubled and mobile emailing and social networking has increased pretty much every quarter. No wonder Facebook are so focused on mobile.

Fast Forward is a free report Harris Interactive, providing key entertainment research tracking, content piracy and device ownership. You can download the full report for free here

Contact me if you want to know more:  techmedianow@gmail.com

Harris Interactive 

Illustrating the power of social media - iPhone 4 antenna issues and Jay-Z spoof "Newport"

In the latest edition of Harris Interactive's Buzz report, we looked at the awareness and buzz of two recent social media phenomena - the hoo-hah about antennae and reception problems for the iPhone 4 and the viral YouTube and Jay-Z New York music video spoof, "Newport". The original video has since been taken down due to copyright infringement, but whilst it was up it generated hundreds of thousands of views and various versions are can be found online.

Both of these are perfect illustrations of the power of social media. Would the iPhone 4 issues have made headline news across the world if it weren't for the power of blogging, YouTube and Twitter?




Speaking of spoof music videos, the iPhone 4 antenna issue has produced its own tune. This video lamenting the reception has, at the time of writing, been viewed over a million times. And this is just one video on YouTube. Add together all the tweets, the blogs, the complaining Facebook updates and coverage in the mainstream media and, all of a sudden, a technological flaw becomes a social media phenomenon.

But is all of this really just confined to the geekosphere? What about the general public? It's this sort of thing we like to find out at Harris Interactive.

Harris Interactive's latest Buzz report via the Harris Poll looked at how many consumers in the Great Britain aged 16-54 were aware of these two news stories. We interviewed over a 1,000 people online, representative of the national demographic.









So how many GB consumers were aware of these two stories at the end of August 2010?

• 62% of GB consumers had heard something about iPhone 4 antenna issues - with 21% saying they were extremely or very familiar with the issue

• 32% of GB consumers had heard something about the Newport music video spook - with 9% saying they were extremely or very familiar with it

That's a lot of people.

That's the power of social media.

The Buzz report not only looks at awareness of issues, we also investigate the degree to which it stimulates people to discuss a given issue. Of those who were at least somewhat familiar with the iPhone 4 antenna issue, a remarkable 55% said they had or will discuss it with their friends and peers. And the figure is 45% for Newport. No wonder news spreads so quickly and with SMS, email, IM, Twitter, blogs, YouTube and Facebook at our collective disposal, we now have the means of spreading the news - quickly and to anyone who cares to listen.

This makes the need for brands to monitor their social media all the more important. Harris Interactive can help. Get in touch with us if you want to know more. 

Download the free Buzz report here.