AdAge reports today on an interesting survey from the Consumer Electronics Association in the US, which offers some evidence that consumers no longer see new technology as a discretionary purchase - but as an intrinsic part of their everyday lives. And they are sacrificing clothes and food to pay for those smartphone upgrades. (Sort of.) We’ve also heard anecdotal evidence in the UK that consumers place their digital TV subscription above their credit card bill in their hierarchy of things they must pay this month.

What’s interesting is that this appears to be more than simple cocooning or feel-good purchasing in the midst of a recession. When it comes to consumer electronics, “must-have” has gone from being an empty marketing buzzword to a pretty accurate summary of consumer attitudes.

Stuart

We’ve had a deluge of Xmas eCards in our inboxes over the last few days. Which is lovely of course. My favourite has to be this effort from BBC Worldwide.

Seasons greetings.

Stuart

Essential is of course platform-neutral, independent and impartial when it comes to media. But as a Virgin Media customer, I am almost salivating with excitement about the announcement today of this potential tie-up between Virgin Media and TiVo.

Although the FT describes it as a ‘rebuff to Project Canvas’, I’d imagine this has got much more to do with Virgin Media finding a better way of helping viewers navigate through its growing library of VOD content, ensuring that they can always find something they want to watch, which has got to be the holy grail as far as VOD is concerned.

Last year we produced a major study of VOD (VOD: State of Play) which suggested that the next (and potentially most exciting) wave of digital TV will involve the deployment of services that truly help audiences find the content that they will most value, regardless of whether this is delivered through a broadcast, an IPTV service or from their hard disk.

Simon recently blogged on here about an essay by Kevin Kelly of Wired, entitled Better Than Free, which argues that when digital content is all free or infinitely available, one of the eight things that people will actually pay for is ‘findability’. (Another one is ‘personalisation’.) We believe that in a TV context, this means intelligent recommendation tools – an area in which TiVo is a recognised pioneer.

Who would have thought that middleware could ever be this exciting?

Stuart

I’ve just been reading this Research Live contribution from Forrester analyst Tamara Barber, entitled “Market research catches up with Web 2.0”. Tamara confidently asserts that “it’s time for the industry to embrace online communities as a research tool.”

I’m constantly irritated by this assumption that the research industry has yet to wake up to the possibilities presented by “web 2.0”, or that we are somehow failing to grasp its significance. Why does our industry seem to get singled out for this kind of patronising, ill-informed advice? Are there people telling the newspaper business that it’s time to consider desktop publishing rather than all that fiddly typesetting, or suggesting to retailers that they might want to throw away those ancient tills and invest in a decent EPOS system?

But Tamara is sure we all have a problem, and she thinks she might have seen the way forward: “Clearly, it’s time for our industry to innovate, and no doubt companies like BrainJuicer … and others are teaching the rest of us how to think outside the radio button online survey and adopt the next evolution of online market research.” Speak for yourself Tamara. It’s clearly going to be an exhilarating and slightly daunting journey for you, but we wish you luck.

However, there’s one thing that bothers Tamara even more than the prospect of designing online research that doesn’t include radio buttons. And that’s what to call these new online social thingamejigs.

Continue reading Web 2.ohhhhhhh god please stop talking.