After 200 of Enron's internal emails were placed in the public domain by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioned (FERC) back in 2003, innovative software company Trampoline Systems created the Enron Explorer based on their own SONAR platform. In the Enron case, SONAR was able to illustrate existing social networks and information by analyzing email content from the entire organization during the 1999-2003 time period. Though the 200 emails that became part of the investigation are not representative of every part of the company, the sample does give insight into internal communications at the highest levels at Enron before, during and after its collapse.

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A recent study from Nielson//Netratings found that there are more Republicans than Democrats online. Of U.S. adults surveyed, 36.6 percent identified themselves as Republicans, 30.8 percent as Democrats and 17.3 percent as Independents.

This makes perfect sense given that other studies have shown that Republicans tend to earn more money than Democrats. The more money you make the more likely you are to have Internet access.

Here are some other tidbits from the study:

• The websites that attracted the highest percentage of Republicans were RushLimbaugh.com (84.8%), NewsMax.com (65.4%), BillOReilly.com (65.4%) and the Drudge Report (59%).
• The websites that attracted the most Democrats were BlackAmericaWeb.com (79.8%), AOL Black Voices (64.8%), BET.com (58.6%) and Salon (55.3%).
• The Wall Street Journal was the most Republican newspaper in terms of demographic breakdown (40.2% Republican and 25.8% Democrat) while the New York Times skewed the most toward Democrats (52.3% Democrat and 18.3% Republican).

Based on the sites named, it’s clear the survey only looked at mainstream media sites and didn’t dive into the blogosphere. Be interesting to see the breakdown for the most popular political blogs.

Inspired by our meeting last week with LA Times reporter T. Christian  Miller, I decided to take a closer look at some of our data from the newspaper study we conducted this summer.  I wanted to see how the online versions of newspapers are performing compared to their print circulations.  The findings were interesting and indicate that there are many  factors besides Web features that play a role in making a newspaper website successful.

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Erin had a little free time today so we decided to build on our campaign study and do some quick research to see which US Senate candidates had the most popular websites.   Please note that the site rank and reach per million data included in the table below is taken from Alexa.  We included the blog column based on our own research.

Note that many people consider Alexa data to be extremely flawed. So take our findings as anecdotes.  No one should write their PHD dissertation based on what you see here.

Before listing the data, here are some observations about the findings:

(1) The sites of CT candidates Ned Lamont and Senator Joe Lieberman are #1 and #2 in traffic due to the intense amount of interest their primary battle attracted both in the blogosphere and in the mainstream press.   Their sites are well ahead of those of any other candidates.

(2) 13 of the top 20 (65%) sites that attracted the most traffic were run by Democrats.  Six (30%) belonged to Republican candidates and one (5%) was run by an Independent (Lieberman).

(3) The least popular sites were equally split among the parties. Ten of the sites belong to Republican and ten belong to Democrats.

(4) 14 of the 20 (70%) most popular sites included blogs.  Only six of the 20 (30%) least popular sites had blogs.  While factors like how competitive a race is and the size of the state undoubtedly play a big role in traffic figures, I think it is pretty clear that blogs do play a role in driving traffic.

Following are the results:

Candidate Name	Party	Site Rank	Reach per million	Blog?
Lamont, Ned	D-CT	69,223	27	Yes
Lieberman, Joe	I-CT	106,399	19	Yes
Webb, Jim	D-VA	252,000	5.3	Yes
Clinton, Hillary	D-NY	259,810	4.05	No
Allen, George	R-VA	318,516	4.15	Yes
Harris, Katherine	R-FL	333,619	3.65	No
Casey, Bob	D-PA	338,532	3.55	Yes
Santorum, Rick	R-PA	373,240	2.85	Yes
Kennedy, Ted	D-MA	384,977	3.3	Yes
McCaskill, Claire	D-MO	451,708	2.75	Yes
Tester, Jon	D-MT	476,381	2.15	Yes
Ashdown, Pete	D-UT	476,452	2.05	Yes
Klobuchar, Amy	D-MN	498,905	1.85	No
Cantwell, Maria	D-WA	517,918	1.9	Yes
Brown, Sherrod	D-OH	539,171	1.8	Yes
McGavick, Mike	R-WA	562,788	1.5	Yes
Corker, Bob	R-TN	584,685	1.55	No
Ford, Harold Jr.	D-TN	609,777	2	No
Carter, Jack	D-NV	642,398	1.1	Yes
Burns, Conrad	R-MT	828,534	0.8	No
Bouchard, Mike	R-MI	991,558	0.75	Yes
Tarrant, Rich	R-VT	997,650	0.55	Yes
Nelson, Bill	D-FL	1,008,100	0.6	No
Dewine, Mike	R-OH	1,030,216	0.7	No
Pederson, Jim	D-AZ	1,061,624	0.5	No
Raese, Jim	R-WV	1,088,769	0.4	No
Kean, Tom	R-NJ	1,158,875	0.45	Yes
Kennedy, Mark	R-MN	1,158,875	0.45	Yes
Hay Bright, Jean	D-ME	1,229,651	0.35	Yes
Chafee, Lincoln	R-RI	1,272,159	0.45	No
Talent, Jim	R-MO	1,370,825	0.5	No
Radnofsky, Barbara Ann	D-TX	1,425,639	0.3	Yes
Kyl, Jon	R-AZ	1,433,237	0.45	No
Stabenow, Debbie	D-MI	1,459,546	0.45	Yes
Whitehouse, Sheldon	D-RI	1,663,920	0.25	Yes
Mountjoy, Dick	R-CA	1,727,518	0.25	No
Ricketts, Pete	R-NE	1,870,334	0.25	No
Spencer, John	R-NY	1,919,976	0.35	Yes
Byrd, Robert	D-WV	1,989,144	0.2	No
Fleming, Erik	D-MS	2,098,929	0.15	No
Ensign, John	R-NV	2,156,985	0.2	Yes
Steele, Michael	R-MD	2,776,888	0.2	Yes
Groutage, Dale	D-WY	2,872,933	0.1	No
Hatch, Orrin	R-UT	4,203,588	0.1	Yes
Ting, Jan	R-DE	4,931,853	0.05	No
Nelson, Ben	D-NE	5,608,587	0.05	No
Kohl, Herb	D-WI	5,618,551	0.1	No
Conrad, Kent	D-ND	5,621,699	0.05	No
Carper, Thomas	D-DE	5,877,096	0.045	No
Menendez, Bob	D-NJ	6,152,317	0.045	Yes
Hutchinson, Kay Bailey	R-TX	6,530,867	N/A	No
Grotberg, Dwight	R-ND	6,050,491	0.045	No
Akaka, Daniel	R-HI	N/A	N/A	No
Bingaman, Jeff	D-NM	N/A	N/A	No
Chase, Ken	R-MA	N/A	N/A	No
Feinstein, Diane	D-CA	N/A	N/A	No
Lugar, Dick	R-IN	N/A	N/A	No
McCulloch, Allen	R-NM	N/A	N/A	Yes

A $500 million to $1 billion problem, depending on whom you ask.

In a front page article in The Washington Post, 'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ad, staff writer Sara Kehaulani Goo discusses the mechanics of click fraud, the new forms of click fraud — the fast growing "pay to read" and "pay to click" rings of individuals and companies around the world — and the new lawsuit against Google.

 Some figures from the article worth filing away:

• Google and Yahoo own 70% of all web searches in the  U.S.
• About 40 percent of all Internet ads are clickable text ads (the advertiser only pays when the ad is clicked on)
• Thirty-nine percent, or $1.04 billion, of Google's 3rd quarter revenues derived from affliate networks, website that allow Google text ads
• Click fraud hurts mortgage, insurance, real estate, legal and travel businesses the most

Yankee Group estimates that fraud is involved in 10% of clicks on text ads, or a $500 million problem.  Others estimate the problem is even worse, perhaps as bad as $1 billion — affecting 12 to 30 percent of all text ad clicks.  Google claims the problem is less that 10 percent.

Yankee Group argues that without more agressive measures to validate ad clicks, "fraud could undermine the the entire business model of Internet search engines by causing advertisers to lose confidence."

Virtual gaming fever has hit the MacArthur Foundation, resulting in the philanthropic organization awarding Indiana University professor Edward Castronova a $240,000 grant to build a Second Life -esque virtual world fashioned after the plays of Shakespeare. The project, entitled "Arden: The World of Shakespeare," is meant to let Castronova and his research team delve into online behaviors by conducting ongoing social experiments online.

In an article by CNET's Daniel Terdiman, the professor explains that the early designs are influenced by a "Richard III" theme, which gives designers and prospective gamers the necessary historical context needed to spark the imagination.

Castrova, an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University, is the author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games and Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, as well as the director of the Synthetic Worlds Initiative. The Synthetic Worlds Initiative was founded in 2004 to "promote research on synthetic worlds." The research center has both a website and a blog .   

Mark Blumenthal, the man behind last election cycle's Mystsery Pollster blog, has a new site called pollster.com and it is fantastic.  There is a blog that provides analysis of the latest polling data as well as a section called The Polls that aggregates all the various polls for each Senate and Gubernatorial race and select House races.  Great stuff.

If you live in the Washington, DC area, you are undoubtedly getting bombarded with ads about the Maryland and Virginia Senate races.  So here are the polling trends for both races.

Definitely check out Pollster.com if you are interested in this sort of stuff.

With the recent news that the Iranian government has decided to limit ADSL bandwidth above 128 kbps for all ISPs (BoingBoing reported it before Reuters) without giving a reason, it makes sense that this is an opportune time to take stock of state-mandated Internet regulation (including content filtering and surveillance) schemes around the world.

We've done a post before on the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), an organization created through the collective efforts of the various Internet research centers at the University of Toronto, Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. The main mission of this group is to examine the phenomenon of state control over the Internet (filtering and blocking content, etc.) in various countries. The center has published a number of research papers on their site that are devoted to studying the anatomy and pervasiveness of state-sponsored filtering and information-control initiatives around the world. Case studies concerning content filtering and surveillance are currently available for the following countries:

• Vietnam
• Yemen
• Tunisia
• Burma
• Singapore
• Iran
• China
• Bahrain
• United Arab Emirates
• Saudi Arabia

In addition to case studies and other interesting publications, ONI also provides an interactive map that not only illustrates the state of the Internet in various countries, but also briefs the user on the level of filtering in the country, the way filtering technology is used, the state of the media environment and examples of sites that have been either blocked or filtered. (more…)

Researchers from OpenNet Initiative (ONI) released an excellent report last year on the scope and degree to which China filters Internet content. Though quite a few countries filter Internet content, the researchers agree that "China's Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world." They describe it as "pervasive, sophisticated and effective" and it is supported by a number of laws and regulations that tend to make Internet Service Providers, Internet Business Owners and Internet Content Providers agents charged with carrying out the government monitoring and censoring plans.

Though there is no way to be completely certain of China's exact process for reviewing sites, tests conducted by ONI confirm that filtering takes place on a multitude of levels. While a great deal of content can be (and is) blocked by a list of search terms (some of which can be easily guessed, but most of which are not public knowledge), it was confirmed through the study that the filtering system is actually dynamic in nature, which has made it difficult to conclusively describe the system. (more…)

Like many others, I read this brief article on CNN.com entitled, "China bloggers surpass 30 million."  The articles says there's about 34 million blog sites, but the more important number is the number of actual bloggers — more than 17 million according to the article.  That's a few folks, but not all that many if you consider that more than 105 million persons in China have access to the web — but it's a lot of people for all those censors to worry about (and the number's expected to more than double by 2010).

In this morning's USAToday, there's a good article about the growth of libel suits against bloggers.  in the side bar on the left-hand side, "The Bloggiing Boom," are numbers provided by Technorati, the blog search and directory service.  Technorati says there are some 53 million blogs, 12% of them in Chinese.  This would mean that here are only 6.4 million Chinese language bloggers.  

There are likely differences in counting, and the Chinese government surely doesn't include Taiwanese bloggers.  But that's still a big difference, with the CNN number about three times as large as the Technorati figure.  No matter, there are lots of Chinese bloggers and their number will grow dramatically over time. Maybe even to the extend that it becomes the predominant language of the blogosphere.

You can make yourself a free, categorized and searchable archive of news on any topic for reference and monitoring using free web-based RSS reader Bloglines in tandem with major news aggregators. This is not something that is immediately apparent, but it's still relatively simple. Here's how to do it.

The first thing you’ll need to do is get as much relevant news as possible on the topics of interest to you. There are several volume news aggregators that suit this purpose.  (more…)

This is one of those weeks where I've got more material than time.  So here are some quick thoughts on some things that have been floating around my browser this week.

(1) A new startup launched this week called Grand Central.  According to Life Hacker, Grand Central "lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone) will ring."  That's just sort of the starting point with this service too.  Sounds awesome.  Looking forward to giving it a try. 

(2) There is an interesting post on Forever Geek that debunks the Myspace claim to have 100 million users.  It puts the number of actual users at around 43 million.  Not sure about the methodology, but there is no doubt in my mind that that 100 million number is bogus.

(3) Saw an interesting post entitled 10 Things that will Make or Break Your Website.  Best advice comes in the first bullet: "EASY is the most important feature of any website, web app, or program."

(4) The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article on the email overload problem that afflicts most of us.  Great read for anyone that feels like a slave to their inbox most days. 

(5) Michael Kinsley wrote a great article for Time Magazine this week called Do Newspapers Have a Future?  Money quote: "Newspapers on paper are on the way out. Whether newspaper companies are on the way out too depends."  IMO, the key to survival is figuring out how to use the Internet properly.  We'll continue to beat that particular drum. 

(6) Mark Warner got a lot of attention for appearing in Second Life a few months back.  We wrote about it.  The appearance was short and he didn't take any quesitons from the audience, saying he would come back for a full townhall in late September/early October.  Did they ever schedule this?  I haven't heard a peep about it since the initial burst of coverage.

We launched a couple of new features yesterday sort of on the sly.

(1) We put up a Wiki (what's a Wiki?) that will serve as a companion to The Bivings Report.  At it's most basic level, the Wiki will provide a place where readers can collaborate and expand on some of the ideas we discuss on The Bivings Report.  Down the road, we'll be attempting to conduct some collaborative research on our Wiki. 

Currently, you can contribute to our listing of PR Firms that Blog or add your ideas to our piece on Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites. 

Stay tuned.

(2) We added a link on our sidebar that you can use to email us ideas for posts or products/services you think we should look at.  Or if you just want to talk.  Either way. 

Both ot these features appear in the Collaborate area of our sidebar.

If you needed information about your city, it makes sense to head over to the metropolitan website to begin figuring out what's what. A research study by Cleveland State's Leo Jeffres and UConn's Carolyn Lin appears in Indiana University's Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The study examines how the websites of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US represented their cities and how well their websites communicated with the public, both residents and visitors, through their sites. The researchers found that while some websites offer quite a lot of useful information, they still have a ways to go to be perfectly useful, especially since the Internet is recognized as a superior platform for democraticizing society and fostering community. 

Jeffres and Lin are, in their investigation, asking a larger question, of whether or not the internet can (and has so  far) help(ed) build and support community and engagement in civic life for a variety of stakeholders, not limited to current and prospective residents, business owners and tourists. In this study, they directly ask whether or not the sample of 50 major metropolitan websites offer the kind of diverse information/content one would consider of great importance to the abovementioned stakeholders. (more…)

Our recent discussions about the national and international newspaper industry got me thinking: I wonder how network news sites measure up? Are the sites of some of the United States’ most popular news networks better or worse than those of their print competitors?

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