Digital Lifescapes

The following is a short list of exhibiting vendors, service providers and others that captured my attention at the SXSW Interactive event earlier this week in Austin, Texas. I encourage you to check out their Web sites to learn more. The two basic themes I noticed were new tools that aggregate your online presence on various social media sites -- most are attempts at creating a dashboard-like solution. The other noteworthy theme was a variety of easy to use do-it-yourself content management and microsite publishing tools, with a resurgence of basic HTML page designs (SEO-friendly CSS rather than Adobe Flash). Awareness has created what they call "social marketing software" -- it's an integrated good-enough solution to building online communities for those who prefer not to apply the free best-of-breed tools that essentially do the same thing. Sobees created what they call "my social client" -- the latest release adds Digg to the list of supported ser...

Recently, Nielsen conducted a global survey of more than 27,000 consumers in 54 countries to examine attitudes about paying for online content -- and to determine which content types people were most willing to buy. The study findings uncovered that consumers are either "willing to pay" for online content, or are "open to increased advertising" by content sponsors -- but that attitudes vary greatly by geography, demographics and content type. Nielsen believes that people have therefore shown a higher propensity to pay for music, movies, games and "professionally produced" video -- in contrast to podcasts, blogs or consumer generated video. Nielsen says this now validates that people still place more value on content produced by "professionals" than by others. Likewise, people are more inclined to buy what they already pay for, rather than on what they currently get for free. Moreover, Nielsen concludes that while people are more willing to pay f...