Loop plans to reinvent the customer-experience survey with its launch today to help businesses get customer feedback in the moment.

Loop is an iOS app that presents customers with a quick survey about their experience at a business. Loop captures the responses then and there, and founder Rajit Marwah said that this could result in up to 30 times more responses, as compared to traditional methods or user-generated sites like Yelp.

 ”Feedback and reviews are everywhere,” he said in an email. “They are at the bottom of your receipt, the check at the end of a meal, and in your inbox. Businesses want to know how they are doing so they can improve and many consumers want to share their experiences, good or bad. But when was the last time you (or anyone) bothered to fill out one of those cards or go to their feedback site? Everyone is in a hurry and just moves on.”

Marwah said that Loop’s main value is its immediacy. Surveys only contain five questions, so very little is required of the customer. It was founded by Marwah and his former Stanford classmate, Mike Liu. The two were working on a different project creating iPad menus for high-end hotels and restaurants, and he saw how challenging it was for these businesses to get feedback and reviews despite their efforts to do so. They saw the potential for mobile technology to improve upon this.

“The existing solutions are a bit intimidating,” Marwah said. “I know many people that don’t want to fill out 15 minutes surveys or write a long essay to review a place. We wanted to create a lightweight experience. Plus, companies like SurveyMonkey and Yelp are billion-dollar companies, so it told us that value can be created around this area.”

Gaining a glimpse into consumers’ minds is a hot ticket at the moment and scores of venture-backed data and social media analytics startups have cropped up to offer insight. There are also competitors like Vision Critical and Qualtrics Mindshare Technologies that also collect customer feedback through surveys. Loop is a simpler alternative to these products, but sometimes simple is better, particularly for small businesses.

Loop is “global on day one,” meaning it is available in 34 languages and in 155 countries. Archimedes Labs in Palo Alto led a seed round for the startup, which is based in San Francisco.

Photo credit: Loop

The results found that 37 percent of Bay Area investors have put money into a startup, and yet fewer than 23 percent plan to do so within the next three years. It would seem the wealthy are looking elsewhere for investment opportunities. As Morgan Stanley’s regional manager Michael Struckman said, “it appears that despite the boost the small companies have given the region, local investors are beginning to cool on the idea of startups.”

73 percent of respondents cited risk as the primary deterrent and expressed fear over losing their money. Millionaires, however, were less concerned on this front than people with between $100K and $1 million in assets. One-third of investors were concerned about possible legal difficulties, while 16 percent were afraid of personal failure.

When they do decide to invest in startups, investors said that innovative ideas are the most important characteristic. 19 percent expect to take a significant role in the ventures, and 58 percent of investors prefer to invest as part of a group.

The survey included 1,000 US investors aged 25 to 75 with $100,00 or more in investable household financial assists, with an “oversample” of 305 San Francisco investors. Of those, one-third interviewed had $1 million or more in household financial assets. 46 percent of the men polled said they have invested in startups, while only 29 percent of women polled had done so.

Photo Credit: Simone van den Berg/Shutterstock 

Polar has unfrozen $1.2 million to continue enhancing its product, a free iOS app that creates “photo polls” to share with their friends.

When faced with whether to go with cupcakes or cake for a wedding dessert, or wondering whether their friends find public speaking more stressful than an interview, people can quickly create a survey by using the built-in image search feature and send it out to their social network. Their friends and colleagues can then vote and comment on the question to provide instant feedback.

Since its launch, Polar has seen impressive traction due to its focus on user-experience and design. The app has fun little features that make it enjoyable to use, particularly for those of us who love cute cartoon animals. The company claims to have hit 1.5 million votes in the first month of its launch, which then doubled to over 3 million votes in January. The new release explores topics and tags, see how friends vote, find friends, and skips uninteresting polls.

Founders Luke Wroblewski and Jeff Cole came up with a concept they called the “new tech mullet,” which means building a product with “simple mobile interactions up front, ‘big data’ in the back.” They founded the Input Factory to build apps that embody this philosophy. Polar is the first.

Wroblewski previously founded a startup called Bagcheck that Twitter acquired in 2011. He also worked as the chief design architect at Yahoo and served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital, eBay, and NCSA. Cole was a cofounder of PatientsLikeMe, which the MIT Tech Review voted as one of the 50 most innovative companies in 2012.

The early investors are a high profile crew. Founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang, John Lilly of Greylock Partners, Maynard Webb from the Webb Investment Network, Ash Patel of Morado Ventures, Brian O’Malley and Mike Dauber at Battery Ventures, Don Dodge from Google, former Twitter executive Sam Pullara, and others participated in this round.

The money will go toward making the product “better and more relevant” as well as adding new people to the small team.

Polar is not the only mobile-first decision-making app out there. Seesaw launched earlier this month with over $1 million in seed financing to help people ask efficiently ask their friends for advice. People are becoming increasingly reliant on their smartphones to make the hundreds of choices that make up in everyday life. When your friend can’t be in the store to provide friendly feedback on a blouse, or you can’t decide what to order at a hot new restaurant, mobile phones are a tool for quickly soliciting answers to these questions.

My first task? Using these apps to figure out which decision-making app to use.

Photo Credit: Gerald Simmons/ Flickr

Movember first began in Australia and is now a global movement to support prostate cancer and testicular cancer initiatives. “Via the moustache, Movember aims to fulfill its vision of having an everlasting impact on the face of men’s health by continuing to spark conversation and spread awareness of men’s health issues each year,” says the organization’s mission statement. Over the past decade, almost 2 million “Mo Bros and Mo Sistas” have participated and raised $126.3 million for the cause in 2011 alone. 

Last year, a few of the guys at SurveyMonkey decided to form an informal team. Their efforts were so popular that this year, the company formed an official partnership with Movember. SurveyMonkey employees not only sprouted ‘staches and fundraised, but they also offered the organization the resources at their disposal.

SurveyMonkey is a provider of web-based survey solutions. Customers easily create custom surveys online and distribute them to respondents. These surveys help them collect data of any kind that can be used for anything from business insights, to in this case, “who has the most iconic mo?” Apparently, men associate mustaches with manliness and distinction, while women generally find them creepy.

“It was interesting to watch the monkeys grow mustaches, and as we watched them do it, we wanted to do research,” said VP of Marketing Bennett Porter. “This is very important stuff, we wanted to get feedback on how America feels about mustaches so we could give our monkeys pointers.”

The surveys found that the top style is the ‘classic English,’ followed by the ‘Handlebar’, ‘Fu Manchu’, ‘Painter’s Brush’, ‘Pencil’, ‘Chevron’, and the ‘Walrus’. Apparently, the number one reason men don’t grow mustaches is because they think they look funny, while 36% of significant others are fine if their loved ones ‘bro a Mo.’

That said, one of the team captains was forced to shave his mustache for a wedding at the bequest of his girlfriend. Not one to be derailed, he grew a second ‘stache and had something to present at the Great Shave after all.

As part of the Great Shave, SurveyMoney brought a professional barber into the headquarters to bring all participants back to clean-shaven. However, a few men abstained from the proceedings to keep their mustaches for one more wild weekend and a few even contemplated maintaining the mustachioed look. 

“Over the past 30 days, some people looked exactly the same as they did on day 1, and others looked like they were headed straight for a biker bar,” Porter said.  “We took an internal survey to crown the King of Movember and the winner was one of our guys in Portland, but it was kind of unfair because mustaches seem to grow better in Portland. Regardless, we are going to miss those furry little guys.”

Hipster points aside, SurveyMonkey raised around $2000 for men’s health. Porter said this endeavor was about more than fundraising; it  was also about promoting company culture and staying competitive in the battle to recruit talent. SurveyMonkey is hardly a scrappy startup anymore. It was purchased in 2009 by Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital, and today has 150 employees and a billion dollar valuation.

That said, SurveyMonkey, like the mustaches on of its employees faces, is continuing to grow, spreading the doctrine of accessible data, as well as mustaches, around the world. Check out the Flickr gallery the “Month of Mustaches” and this Movember infographic:

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As a kid, I loved to fill out customer surveys. I would drive my mother crazy by agonizing over the questions and whether to award a business 3 or 4 stars. The days of paper questionnaires may be long gone, but there are companies digitalizing the process so online businesses can receive feedback as well.

WebEngage is a Mumbai-based startup that enables companies to gather customer insight and promote user engagement. It has launched a completely redesigned site and announced raising over $500K in seed funding.

The technology powers the delivery of questionnaires to specific audiences. Using the software, companies can build their own feedback and support forms and embed them on their site. They can then filter which visitors they would like to target with these surveys, for example people coming from a Google search or someone who spent at least a minute on a page. All the collected data is turned into actionable analytic reports.

WebEngage clients can also create filters for push notifications. They dictate certain parameters, such as repeat visitors or users in the shopping cart drop-off phase, and these people will receive targeted messages. The service is implemented through a Javascript API.

Over the past year, the company has added 4200 customers from around the world. The investors include GTI Capital, Indian Angel Network, and Blume Ventures, Rajan Anandan and Jonathan Schulhof. WebEngage is currently a team of six.

For traditional businesses, social media is like a virus: it’s furious, fast-growing, and impossible to ignore.

According to a new survey released by the Stanford Rock Center for Corporate Governance, the Center for Leadership Development and Research at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and The Conference Board, less than a third of companies today use social media for business purposes.

Executives not confidently using sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to support their corporate strategy whether it’s for the purposes of communication, brand management or identifying risk.

In the report, 180 senior executives and corporate directors of North American public and private companies, were surveyed for their opinions on social media. The findings reveal a disconnect between companies’ understanding of social media and how they are applying it to their business.

“Companies appreciate the potential that social media can have to transform all aspects of their business,” said Professor David F. Larcker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and lead author of the study, in a statement. “They also realize the serious threats that it can pose. They’re just not doing very much about it.”

The key findings from the report include:

• 90 percent of respondents claim to understand the impact that social media can have on their organization but only 32 percent monitor social media to detect risks to their business activities (only 14 percent use metrics from social media to measure corporate performance).
• Only 24 percent of senior managers and 8 percent of directors receive reports containing summary information and metrics from social media. Approximately half of the companies do not collect this information at all.
• Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) use social media for personal purposes, and 63 percent for business purposes. This demonstrates that executives and board members are familiar with social media.
• Only 59 percent of companies in the survey use social media to interact with customers, 49 percent to advertise, and 35 percent to research customers. About 30 percent use social media for to research competitors, new products and services, or communicate with employees.

To get savvy with social media, the authors of the report recommend that businesses develop a formal set of guidelines for employees and directors, and consider a monitoring or “listening” tool like Sysomos, Sprout Social, or Salesforce-owned Radian6.

Read the full report here

Image via Shutterstock

I guess those 3 percent are Silicon Valley tech blog writers.

ChangeWave Research just surveyed 4,300 consumers, and it turns out that they don’t care about Apple Maps versus Google Maps. In fact, one in three people surveyed said they’re likely to buy the iPhone 5, with 20 percent saying “very likely” and 13 percent saying “somewhat likely.”

“Despite the media attention surrounding both the Apple Maps issue and the Apple Lightning port issue, neither has had an impact on the massive numbers of buyers queuing up to buy the iPhone 5,” Paul Carton, a ChangeWave VP, said in a statement, adding that “both issues hardly rank as bumps in the road.”

Apple replacing Google maps with its own not-quite-as-solid version has dominated a lot of the media about the iPhone 5 launch, of course, with concerns about its lack of data and its sometimes-hilarious 3D flyover fails, causing Apple CEO Tim Cook to publicly apologize. But Consumer Reports gave Apple Maps a fairly positive review, and the app is, apparently, good enough to give Taiwan’s military a few hot flashes.

ChangeWave compared the current Maps issue with the iPhone4′s “Antennae-gate,” and Maps is not even in the same league. While 36 percent of consumers experienced an issue with iPhone 4 reception, only 10 percent have experience any sort of problem with the iOS 6′s new maps.

Additionally, when the research company asked consumers what was stopping them from buying an iPhone 5, Maps blocked precisely 0 percent of purchases. The biggest reason? People were satisfied with their current phone and saw no need.

photo credit: the past tends to disappear via photopin cc

Data scientists are like the supermodels or football players of the enterprise world: highly in-demand and earning sky-high salaries in their prime but insecure about their future prospects.

Business intelligence company SiSense found that 59 percent of data scientists move on after less than six years in the industry. About half of them reported they were seriously concerned about their job security, despite an escalating salary.

The survey found that the annual earnings of a data professional can range from an average of $55,000 for a data analyst to an average of $132,000 for a vice president of analytics. Almost 80 percent reported that they expected a salary increase in 2013.

Data scientists have been touted as the elite group that are poised to capitalize on the hype surrounding Big Data. A recent report by consulting firm McKinsey & Co found that there is a major, global shortage of data scientists. Those with the skills to take a large data-set, model it, and glean insights, are proving impossibly difficult to recruit.

Still, the glamour and mystique that surrounds the data scientist is relatively recent, and it’s easy to understand their misgivings about the future. As Irfan Khan, Sybase’s CTO explains in ITWorld, the newly-minted data scientist’s role will be jeopardy in if companies don’t hire the right management team.

The study also found that data scientists tend to work in groups of five or more. This is a practice that is routinely encouraged by Silicon Valley’s tech companies: LinkedIn is known for its team, formerly headed by D.J. Patil (pictured above), that developed features like “People You May Know” and “Jobs You May be Interested in.” Facebook’s pack of 12 researchers is led by “in-house sociologist” Cameron Marlow.

The survey results are based on responses from over 400 data scientists and analysts from around the world, collected online in July 2012.

Top image via Joi

Conducted by independent research firm Information Solutions Group, the study analyzed the behavior and play habits of gamers in the U.S. and U.K. and found that half of them prefer to play at home.

“We already know that people play mobile games ‘on the go,’ but now we are seeing mobile gamers largely favor their mobile devices for home use,” said Dennis Ryan, vice president of Worldwide Publishing at PopCap. “If you add the fact we are seeing a deluge of new gamers coming in through mobile, we believe mobile gaming is invading the last bastion of video game consoles and personal computers: the home.”

Here are the top five places to play mobile games, according to the survey:

• At home on the couch (69 percent)
• In a car or on a bus or train (63 percent)
• At home laying in bed (57 percent)
• Waiting for an appointment (55 percent)
• While watching television (41 percent)

Mobile games are invading public spaces as well. Out of those surveyed, 8 percent claimed they’ve played during class, while 9 percent have played during a sporting event. Six percent confessed to playing at work during a meeting or conference call, and 4 percent said they’ve played while at the gym.

Almost one out of every 10 people in the study claim they’ve been late or missed an appointment, class, ride, or flight because they were playing a mobile game. Most of these distracted gamers are male (60 percent), are younger than 35 years old, and play frequently. They also spend more money on mobile games — 75 percent bought a game in the past year compared to 51 percent of the overall mobile gamer population. Those same gamers spent an average of $49.63 in 2012 on mobile titles, game currency, or content, while the overall population spent an average of $29.04.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Bubble — what bubble? For all the talk of a funding boom, Bay Area investors are plagued with doubts this summer due to Facebook’s disappointing IPO and the deepening debt crisis in Europe.

The results of the quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index, released today, shows declining confidence that the Bay Area will be shielded from the global economic recession. This news seems somewhat surprising considering that this is peak time for fundraising, and firms are newly flush with cash.

“Venture capitalists are future-oriented,” Mark Cannice, the Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the University of San Francisco who compiled the report, told VentureBeat.

Elton Sherwin of Ridgewood Capital, one of 30 investors interviewed for the report this June, explained that startups conduct their business internationally more so now than they have done in the past. As a result, investors have to account for macro-economic trends, particularly in China and Europe.

While the life sciences are lagging due to regulatory restrictions, certain sectors remain relatively untouched by the doom and gloom. It will come as no surprise that the market for mobile, social, local, and cloud (our favorite buzzwords!) is stronger than ever, and that’s giving Bay Area investors cause for optimism.

“The innovation economy in Silicon Valley continues to hum along, despite the coughs and sputters in the global economy,” said Shomit Ghose of Onset Ventures.

Other insights from the report include renewed confidence in the exit market, despite the substantial decrease in the number of venture-backed IPOs last quarter. Igor Sill of Geneva Venture Management reported that his firm has 168 companies in the IPO pipeline. ”Our economy is definitely showing strong signs of realizing continued returns for venture investors,” he said.

And, finally, migrating to San Francisco is all the rage these days. Startups are relocating from the Peninsula to the city, and venture capital firms are following suit.

The venture capital firms that participated in this survey include BlueRun Ventures, Allegis Capital, Canaan Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Trinity Ventures.

Facebook IPO Image via Reuters

Blue: percent of execs who say tech innovation will move away from Silicon Valley

Those are among the results of KPMG’s Global Tech Innovation Survey 2012. The audit and advisory firm asked 668 business execs about the future of disruptive technologies and about where the next epicenter of innovation will be.

VentureBeat talked to Gary Matuszak, global chairman for IT at KPMG, about the results.

It may not be surprising that 60 percent of Chinese executives believe Silicon Valley would lose its pre-eminent place, but it’s a little more surprising that almost 30 percent of American business leaders agree with them.

And when the CEOs and directors were asked “which region showed the most promise for disruptive breakthroughs,” only 39 percent of American execs picked the home team, while 71 percent of Chinese leaders said China was the future.

In a statement, Egidio Zarrella of KPMG China said, “These survey findings also demonstrate that China’s innovation investment has fostered an environment for the development of disruptive technologies that is growing by leaps and bounds.” According to the KPMG report, the Chinese government is fueling intensive investments in cloud computing, mobile payments, and outsourcing services as part of China’s twelfth Five-Year Plan.

But while the press release announcing the study was titled “China projected to be on par with U.S. as a future tech innovation leader,” Matuszak wasn’t certain that replacing Silicon Valley was going to be an easy process:

“A number of places in the U.S. have tried to replicate the Valley and failed. You could imagine people in places like Israel and China not understanding it either. But, they see themselves as making gigantic strides and believe they should be able to replicate Silicon Valley’s success.”

Where global execs thing the world’s center of tech innovation is going (among those who think it is moving away from Silicon Valley)

I talked to Robert Scoble, startup liaison officer at Rackspace and social media guru, about Silicon Valley and whether it is replicable elsewhere.

Scoble recently talked to the founders of Atlassian, the software development toolkit company. They moved to Silicon Valley from Australia for four reasons:

“First of all is money … you can’t get funded to do risky weird shit in very many places. Secondly, it’s PR … most of it is here, for example at Google I/O tomorrow. Third, it’s talent — the guy who built a 20,000 node server farm for eBay, he lives here. You can’t get that anywhere else.”

Fourth and finally, Scoble said, it’s the culture.

“Just on Sunday walking on the beach I ran into the guy who runs the welding team at Tesla … he lives here, not anywhere else. It happens every single day, and you just don’t have this anywhere else.”

Scoble doesn’t see Silicon Valley losing its luster anytime soon.

“There’s a little area of Tel Aviv like this, a small space in London, maybe a neighborhood in Beijing. But they don’t have the big companies, and they don’t have the complete ecosystem.”

Which made me wonder why American executives seemed so down on the Valley. A question I asked KPMG’s Gary Matuszak was whether American execs who are not in the Valley or intimately connected to the Valley really understand how it works. He replied that he wasn’t certain anyone knew why it really worked, and there’s some truth in that.

“What China does have going for it is a huge population of internet users,” said Matuszak. “It’s a huge home market,” which the country’s entrepreneurs can exploit without too much outside interference, thanks to the great firewall of China, by which American companies such as Facebook cannot do business in China.

Whether that is enough to help China become a global technology superpower is unclear. Certainly Scoble thinks it’s not that easy.

“Look at this the other way,” said Scoble. “In Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon kicks out so many good geeks every year. They pretty much built the Google self-driving car. But no geeks stay there. There’s no culture, no ecosystem. And no weather!”

Image credit: ShutterStock

Whether you’re able to be creative or not has little to do with how old you are or whether you’re female or male, but it might depend heavily on where you live, how your boss treats you, and how you were educated.

According to a mammoth survey conducted by Adobe (and strategically released at that company’s CS6 launch event), there are significant gaps in creativity, but those gaps might not be where you expect to find them.

The study reveals some interesting statistics. Around 80 percent of respondents said they thought creativity is “critical to economic growth.” More than 60 percent of them also said creativity is important to society.

However, just 25 percent of respondents said they are currently living up to their creative potential.

What enables those lucky 25 percent to live up to their potential and be creative? For the 5,000 adults around the world in Adobe’s survey, age and gender have almost nothing to do with it. Rather, it all comes down to environmental factors: location, education, and work.

Japan and the U.S. are the first- and second-most creative countries, respectively, among a global audience. While Japanese in the survey didn’t see themselves as particularly creative, they earned high marks from their peers in other countries.

Americans, on the other hand, said they felt highly creative, but the country was ranked second-best globally.

Our biggest barrier to creativity might be at work. In the survey, 75 percent of respondents said they have been experiencing more and more pressure from superiors to be productive rather than creative in the workplace, even though their jobs require at least some measure of creativity. This kind of bottom line-focused emphasis on producing rather than creating leads to — no surprise — less creativity at work. Respondents said they spend around 25 percent of their workday being creative, mostly due to lack of time.

Another major factor in creativity is education: not whether you had a “good” or “expensive” or “public” education, but whether you were encouraged to develop your creativity starting at an early age and continuing throughout your school years.

Around the globe, more than half of Adobe’s respondents said creativity is being stamped out rather than nourished by the education system.

“One of the myths of creativity is that very few people are really creative,” said education and creativity specialist Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., in a release around the survey.

“The truth is that everyone has great capacities but not everyone develops them. One of the problems is that too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and, as this study reveals, producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.”

Finally, access to creativity-boosting tools can be important to expressing your creative urges. In Adobe’s survey, 40 percent of respondents said they do not have the tools they need to be creative. These tools are seen as the single most important key to expressing one’s creativity (by 65 percent of all respondents and 76 percent of U.S. respondents).

Of course, an emphasis on tools for creativity is what you’d expect from a company like Adobe. Nevertheless, having access to these kinds of tools can, in fact, make all the difference to a budding artist, designer, or filmmaker. Kinda makes you wish, at least for those young/broke creatives’ sakes, that Adobe products were less prohibitively expensive, doesn’t it?

The Adobe State of Create survey was conducted by research firm StrategyOne among a group of 5,000 adults, 1,000 each in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. The firm conducted the survey between March 30 to April 9, 2012.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

iPhone 4S owners don’t seem to be straying far from the basics when using Siri, the built-in voice-activated assistant, even though it’s capable of completing many different tasks.

Market research firm Parks Associates surveyed 482 iPhone 4S users to find out just how they used Siri. It found that 87 percent of iPhone 4S owners do take advantage of the voice-activated assistant each month. Around a third of them stay safe, however, using Siri only for making phone calls, searching the Internet, and sending text messages. But Siri is capable of a slew of other underused “tasks.” Apple’s commercials promoting the feature show people using Siri to set alarms, create calendar events, send meeting invitations, play music, and more.

Indeed, 35 percent of Siri users say they would never use it to schedule meetings, 32 percent would never play music using Siri, and 30 percent would never send an email with the feature. Another 26 percent, however, disagree and say they send emails through Siri daily.

Overall, only 55 percent of people who use Siri are happy with the feature, while nine percent remain dissatisfied. Apple does disclaim that the product is in beta and is still being tested and tweaked for future iterations. That disclaimer doesn’t sit well with every, however.

In a recent class action lawsuit, Apple was accused of misrepresenting Siri in its commercials. The plaintiff, Frank M. Fazio, claimed that he bought his iPhone 4S based on the commercials, but found Siri was unable to perform as advertised. Fazio also argued that Siri commercials are “false and misleading,” and that he was unable to complete some of the tasks shown in the ads.

via Wall Street Journal

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Looks like more than just consumers are excited about the new Apple iPad unveiled last week. A new survey from ChangeWave Research indicates that more than a fifth of businesses will soon buy a tablet, with the iPad as the most preferred device.

We’ve known for a while that businesses are strongly interested deploying iPads into their work flows. And hours after last week’s event, we analyzed how business demand for the iPad would intensify thanks to new features like 4G wireless networking and better graphics capabilities. But this new survey only further validates that business demand will continue to grow as the iPad gets more powerful.

The survey indicates that 84 percent of companies that plan to buy tablets in the second quarter will pick up an iPad –  leaving all other tablet manufacturers to fight for the remaining 16 percent. Samsung, Amazon, and HP represent the three top non-Apple tablet makers companies expressed interest in, but they are minuscule compared to Apple.

The 84 percent figure is a 7 percent jump from the last time the survey was conducted in Nov. 2011. As you can see on the chart above, companies have mostly been preferential to Apple tablets all along.

Will your company be deploying iPads in the next quarter or perhaps during this year?

iPad guy staring photo: Robert Nelson/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual MobileSummit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of themobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

The survey, conducted on over 15,000 people last month, found that more are drawn to the mobile platform than in previous years. Forty-six percent of those surveyed said they played on their mobile more in 2011 than in the previous year, while 26 percent said they’d played more on their consoles, and 23 percent said they’d played more on their PCs.

The study says women over 30 consistently showed more interest in mobile gaming than others. Twenty-seven percent of women over 30 said they spend more than three hours playing games on their mobile phones every day, which is double the percentage of men on average, as well as that of women ages 12-29.

The survey also found that mobile gamers are as devoted to game play as console gamers. Twenty-one percent say they spend at least an hour playing every day on their mobile phone, compared to the 24 percent who say they spend at least an hour a day on their console, on average. MocoSpace says the high engagement levels on mobile indicate the device carries as much allure as consoles. Despite the portability of a smart phone, 47 percent of mobile gaming is actually done at home, according to data from the NPD Group. MocoSpace CEO Justin Siegel says the fact that people are gaming on their smart phones while sitting a few feet away from their controller shows that mobile is capable of grabbing and holding their interest.

“This data makes it clear that mobile is a viable alternative to console and PC gaming,” he said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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More than two-thirds (68 percent) of employed adults in the U.S. check their work email on traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 27 percent of those who check email do so several times a day, according to data compiled by email and social intelligence startup Xobni. The online survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, polled 2,810 adults in November 2011 on their holiday email behaviors.

Okay, so we check our email. Guilty as a charged. Plus, more and more of us are always toting around email-capable smartphones so that makes sense. But perhaps more telling of our always-on, work-related holiday email patterns is this little nugget: 79 percent of those folks who check email on their holiday vacays said they received a work-related email from a coworker or client. That’s right, your coworkers are sending you action items when they should be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, you may not mind the work diversion — and you wouldn’t be alone. Nineteen percent of those who received work emails on holidays said they were “thankful for the distraction” or “relieved.”

If this all sounds familiar that’s because Xobni conducted the same study in 2010 with similar results. The same percentage of people (79 percent) expect to receive work-related emails on holidays this year, but the number of people who expect to check their work emails has dropped from 59 percent in 2010 to 55 percent in 2011. But Xobni also found fewer folks will loathe the never-ending stream of messages in their inbox, as just 37 percent (as opposed to 41 percent in 2010) of workers said they felt “annoyed, frustrated or resentful” about holiday emails.

It even turns out that our holiday work preferences and patterns vary by our age and gender. Men, for instance, are still more likely than women to check their work email, but the percentage gap is closing.

You can have a look at the infographic below (click to enlarge) for some of Xobni’s other demographic findings.

[Image via Flickr/geishaboy500]

Meet the bloggers

Those surveyed are mostly hobbyists (61 percent) who don’t post daily. In fact, only 11 percent of surveyed bloggers were posting on a daily basis. Thirteen percent of bloggers are doing it for extra income on the side, and only 5 percent are bonafide professional full-timers bloggers. Of the pros, 37 percent say it makes up the majority of their income. The remainder of the bloggers are doing it to promote a brand or company — 13 percent are entrepreneurs and 8 percent are corporate.

For the most part, the bloggers are educated, married parents between 25 and 44 years old. Though still mostly male (59 percent), there was a gender shift from last year when 64 percent were men.

Eighty percent have been blogging for over two years, and half for over four years. Bloggers are juggling an average of three different blogs, up from two last year. It’s interesting that bloggers are maintaining or increasing the amount of time they put into their blogs after launching, instead of losing interest or moving onto the next new thing.

Inside the blogger’s toolbox

The term “blogosphere” isn’t used much anymore, as the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks blur. Are Tumblrs blogs? (Yes!) Do people actually still use LiveJournal? (Yes!)

WordPress is the blogging service of choice, with 51 percent of bloggers using it. It was followed by Blogger (21 percent) and Blogspot (14 percent). The rest of the bloggers were scattered among TypePad, Moveable Type, LiveJournal, Tumblr and other tools.

Social media continues to be a hop topic, with the majority of both hobbyist and professional bloggers using Facebook, Twitter, and new kid, Google+. The average number of Twitter followers for a blogger is 847. If they’re a professional blogger, that number jumps to 1,674.

Professional bloggers used Twitter more in general, and 90 percent of the pros are using it to promote their content. Automated tools for promoting blogs on Twitter are very popular, with 40 percent of all bloggers using them to automatically syndicate their posts, though they supplement it with other tweets. Thirty seven percent of bloggers link their Twitter and Facebook accounts so they only have to post once.

But social media use wasn’t limited to the big three. LinkedIn was the next most popular social network, followed by YouTube and Flickr. However, Facebook and Twitter will still the best tools for promoting blogs and bringing in traffic.

Of social media, the biggest traffic drivers are Facebook and Twitter, followed by LinkedIn, YouTube and the scrappy StumbleUpon, which had the most impact on pro bloggers. For all traffic sources, the top two drivers are still Facebook and Twitter, but a lot of traffic also comes from tags, comments, Google, Technorati and general SEO (search engine optimization).

The business of blogging

Two thirds of bloggers post about brands, and a third do reviews. Any blogger with a notable following can tell you about the influx of PR attention. Some welcome it, such as the beauty bloggers who test out free products and post reviews of them. Others are hilariously less comfortable with the pitches.

Brands are very aware of the power of bloggers, and they’re aggressive if not always thorough. According to the survey, a third of hobbyist bloggers are approached about twice a week by brands, and two thirds of professional bloggers get approached an average of eight times a week. Some respondents reported getting as many as 250 and 1,000 pitches a week.

But bloggers aren’t wowed by their relationships with these brands — 60 percent feel they’re not treated as well by brands as the traditional media. Bloggers overwhelmingly feel that brands weren’t knowledgeable about their blogs, and they weren’t interested in building relationships. Less than 25 percent of respondents said brands provided value.

When bloggers do strike a deal with a brand, most keep it above board: 86 percent of bloggers disclosed when a post was sponsored or paid, and 58 percent disclosed when they were reviewing a product they had received for free.

If not these brands and PR people, who are bloggers really influenced by? In a meta spin, the answer is: Other bloggers. When asked what their biggest influences are, 68 percent of bloggers said other blogs. That number was just 30 percent in 2010. They are also influenced by (in order) friends, social media, print media, family, major news websites and television. Less than 10 percent reported being influenced by brand representatives, just slightly more than were influenced by web portals like Aol.

Check out more statistics from the annual survey here:

Click to view slideshow.

The report, from consulting firm KPMG, showed that tech executives don’t plan to go on a hiring spree any time soon. KMPG surveyed 102 executives for the report: 71 at software and hardware companies with revenue of more than $1 billion, and 31 in companies with revenue between $100 million and $1 billion.

“Companies are less optimistic this year than they were a year ago,” KPMG partner Gary Matuszak said in an interview with Bloomberg. The silver lining? Many companies had an easier time showing growth in 2010 after 2009′s economic downturn.

Here are the 2011 survey’s top findings:

49 percent of executives interviewed put hiring on hold this year,

42 percent said hiring would return to pre-recession levels over the next 18 months,

21 percent said their headcount will never return to those levels,

52 percent said the U.S. market will lead their growth in the next 12 months, followed by China, Brazil and India.

65 percent ranked cloud computing as the biggest revenue driver, up from 55 percent a year earlier, followed by mobile applications and advanced data analytics.

Finally, some positive news for investment banks: Eight out of 10 technology executives said they expect their company will be involved in a merger or acquisition in the next two years.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After the iPad debuted last year, some people predicted e-readers would fade away, becoming at best niche products. But a report from the Pew Internet Project Monday shows a different trend: E-readers like Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle are growing at a faster rate than tablet computers like the Apple iPad.

Tablets have been given more coverage in the press and the latest developments of the iPad are hungrily consumed by tech enthusiasts. But when it comes to actual adoption rates, e-readers—which are less-expensive than tablets—have grown at twice as fast.

The Pew survey asked adults in the U.S. which devices they owned. The number of respondents who said they owned e-readers doubled from 6 percent in November 2010 to 12 percent in May 2011. Tablet ownership moved from 5 percent to 8 percent in the same period. Only 3 percent of U.S. adults said they owned both a tablet and an e-reader, a figure suggesting many tablet owners would rather use a dedicated e-reading device than a tablet for reading books.

When compared to other earlier mainstream devices like cell phones, desktop computers, laptops, DVRs, and MP3 players, both tablets and e-readers are considerably early along the adoption curve. 83 percent of surveyed adults, for example, own cell phones while 44 percent own an MP3 player.

The full results of the ownership survey can be seen below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Even before the Verizon iPhone launched, pretty much everyone expected it to drop calls less than the iPhone on AT&T, which has become notorious for its network flakiness. Now a survey by ChangeWave Research shows us just how much better Verizon’s iPhone is at sustaining a simple phone call.

ChangeWave surveyed 4,068 consumers and found that Verizon iPhone owners dropped calls 1.8 percent of the time, while AT&T iPhone owners saw a much higher drop rate of 4.8 percent. Those numbers don’t seem to be iPhone specific: the company also found that network-wide Verizon customers saw a dropped call rate of 1.4 percent, while AT&T customers faced the industry’s worst rate of 4.6 percent.

The survey doesn’t tell us much that we don’t already know, but it’s always good to see our assumptions backed up by data. It’s unclear where ChangeWave actually surveyed cellular users — I know that if it took place in notorious AT&T fail zones like New York and San Francisco, its dropped call rate would be much higher.

iPhone users seem to be equally satisfied with the device on both AT&T and Verizon. According to the survey, 82 percent of Verizon iPhone owners were very satisfied with the device, compared to 80 percent of users on AT&T. 16 percent of Verizon users were somewhat satisfied, while 18 percent of AT&T users felt the same.

It’ll be interesting to see how Verizon’s iPhone experience compares to AT&T’s in a year or so. Right now Verizon only has a handful of iPhone users compared to AT&T.

Potential iPhone owners seem well aware of the pitfalls of AT&T’s network. The survey found that 46 percent of new iPhone 4 buyers will opt for Verizon, while 27 percent will go with AT&T (the other 27 percent still haven’t decided).

The study surveyed 1500 consumers and found the most common reasons given for a social media breakup are that the company sends too many messages (“The stalker”), the consumer receives too many messages in general from companies (“The belle of the ball”) or the company’s communications become boring and repetitive (“The spark is gone”).

Around a quarter of consumers are more mercenary and “only after one thing”. They sign up to receive messages from a brand only to receive a one-time offer and then opt out.

Consumers who follow a brand through Facebook and Twitter are also much less likely to formally indicate that they are no longer interested in receiving information from a company and just ignore it (“not returning your calls”).

A social relationship with a brand begins when you become a subscriber, fan, follower or consumer of the company’s products. As in any new romantic relationship, how it develops depends on whether the brand’s social media persona veers towards indifference, repetitiveness or just plain desperation.

93 percent of US online consumers receive at least one permission-based email once a day and 70 percent open emails from their favorite companies. But 91 percent have unsubscribed from a company’s emails, while a more passive-aggressive 17 percent will delete emails rather than actively unsubscribe. 54 percent unsubscribe when they receive too many emails, while 49 percent unsubscribe because the emails become repetitive or boring.

Facebook fans pose particular problems for online marketeers in that their expectations vary wildly. Facebook users like a company’s Facebook page for all kinds of reasons from self-expression and identification with the brand, the desire to learn more about the products and interact with other users to getting special offers. 51 percent of Facebook fans say they do expect to receive marketing messages from companies they have “liked” while 40 percent don’t! Consumers under 25 are least likely to expect to receive marketing messages from companies they like on Facebook.

Since 42 percent of US consumers (64 percent of Facebook users) have liked a brand on Facebook, this is a puzzle marketeers need to learn to solve. 55 percent of those who liked a brand decide later change their minds, but many of those don’t  bother to formally unlike the company (see image left). When they do un-like, 44 percent of users do so because they receive many posts and 38 percent because the posts were boring and repetitive.

56 percent of active Twitter users follow at least one brand. 41 percent have followed a brand and then unfollowed later. However, Twitter users much less likely to unfollow than Facebook (55) or email (91) users. 52 percent unfollow because posts were boring and repetitive while 39 percent said the company posted too frequently.

One interesting conclusion of the study is what is important to consumers in their relationships with companies. “Consumers we spoke to didn’t talk about authenticity. They talked about caring, and caring goes much deeper. Caring conveys the sentiment that brands place the best interests of their customers ahead of their own balance sheets.”

So in the end, it’s all about the love.

As the service climbs toward mass user adoption and stabilizes its ground — having recently replaced its CEO, pushed out the next iteration of its product, and stepped toward implementing a monetization strategy — the finding adds some perspective to its growth so far.

Based on phone interviews with 2,257 partipants, the survey revealed that the service was notably more popular among men than women, 18-29 year-olds than other age brackets, and minorities — such as Hispanics and African Americans — than white Internet users.

In 2008, the group had asked participants whether they use “Twitter or another service” to post or see others’ status updates, to which 6 percent answered in the affirmative. The same question, when asked in September of this year, had the number escalate to 24 percent. To clarify doubts by readers and analysts, this new survey was carried out with a question phrased to refer strictly to Twitter.

For comparison, it is estimated that approximately 130 million Americans use Facebook, equating to roughly 41 percent of the population. Also, similar surveys by Pew Research have found in the past that 4 percent use geolocation services, and 24 percent use mobile apps.

Forrester Research’s North American Technographics survey, conducted in the second quarter of 2009 and 2010, asked participants to state their level of agreement to the statement “I’m very concerned about my privacy on social networking sites.”

Among Gen Y participants, agreement with the statement barely changed, going from 29% to 30%. Gen X showed a slight increase, from 30% to 33%, but the majority of the change in the level of concern occurred among Younger Boomers, 31% to 39%, Older Boomers, 32% to 50%, and Seniors, 28% to 43%.

In short: The change in the level of concern correlated almost directly with the age group.

The media has made much of privacy in the past year, particularly with Facebook. After changing its default privacy settings earlier in the year, the company was on the receiving end of much criticism, finally introducing simpler, albeit more open, controls. More recently, it was accused by the Wall Street Journal of letting third-party applications transmit user information to advertisers. When it rolled out new groups and location features, users complained about the ability for others to add them to groups and announce their location without their permission.

Against that backdrop, the age correlation found in the survey is intriguing. It suggests that the younger generation is relaxed to the point of passivity when it comes to privacy. Is that despite their heavy use of social networks, or because of it?

It may be that privacy concerns are less related to one’s generational cohort than one’s life situation, which changes as one ages. In a world where employers check prospective hires’ Facebook profiles, concern with sharing drunken party photos and edgy status updates may grow.

Then again, having grown up with the Internet around, comfort with sharing online is just a part of the game for Gen X and Gen Y. For the older cohorts, trust and privacy are real ordeals.

Facebook, meanwhile, has been doing its best improve its impaired privacy reputation. The company released a tool last month that lets users download all the information they’ve ever entered into the site — including photos, messages, and status updates. While it hasn’t backed down on letting users automatically add and tag their friends, it does let them opt out of those features.

The world’s biggest social network may well figure out a middle ground on privacy before its first users reach middle age.

SurveyMonkey gives websites and other companies a cheap way to create and distribute surveys online. There’s a free option for casual users — say a student looking to create a survey for a class — that has a cap on the number of people that can respond. The premium monthly subscription lets users brand their own surveys and lifts the cap on the number of respondents.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s main business is monthly subscription plans that allow for more responses and a deeper analytics suite for each survey. SurveyMonkey handles more than 25 million surveys each month, according to the company. It expanded from web surveys to phone polling in June this year after it acquired Precision Polling, and its customers include all of the largest companies in the world on the Fortune 100 list.

The company will use the new funding to expand its business, including some M&A activity, and other corporate purposes like purchasing servers. This is a peculiar step for a web startup, since the lion’s share of startups typically stick to equity financing. That means they raise capital from firms by selling off certain portions of their company in the form of stock.

Debt financing, on the other hand, is a guarantee to pay back the debt with a certain interest rate. It’s equivalent to the sale of government bonds and treasuries that have a fixed interest rate. Secured debt like bonds are typically a safer investment than equity because there is a guarantee to be paid back in the event a company goes under.

These are some pretty heavy-hitting banks — so that could be a testament to the company’s performance. JP Morgan Chase Bank, Webster Bank and Royal Bank of Canada also participated in the round.

SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999.

[Photo: peretzpup]

The tally included all Internet sites owned by Google, namely its main Google.com search engine, YouTube, GMail, Google Maps, Google’s office suite of products like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and others. One expects a major contributor to the statistic to be its juggernaut video-sharing site YouTube, which transmits an average of 24 hours of video every minute according to an estimate by Website Monitoring.

Since January, Google’s site-wide traffic has gained a whole percentage in Internet traffic share, the firm estimated, adding that it would be the second largest Internet Service Provider in the world if it were to operate as one.

The company has said in the past that long-term increases in Internet and mobile users ultimately help its traffic at a large scale, claiming that this is one of the factors that has led to its decision to enter the mobile market with Android. It has also shown initiative in building its own gigabit fibre network, which, were it to transpire, would also interestingly crystallize the company as an official Internet Service Provider.

The tally, which was obtained through more than 110 ISPs in 17 countries, comes after Google announced a record 2010 third-quarter revenue of $7.29 billion earlier in the month, up 23% from last year.

The survey, commissioned by the Palo Alto office of Dorsey & Whitney, an international law firm, challenges many preconceived notions of what entrepreneurs find attractive.

Angel investors — wealthy individuals chiefly investing their own money — came out on top as the most popular source of funds. And the most important criteria were speed of investment and an understanding of the business’s financing needs — both ranked as important by more than 90 percent of survey respondents.

In other words, today’s entrepreneurs want just enough money, delivered right when the business needs it.

Another critical issue: An investor who knows the startup’s industry well was rated as somewhat important or very important by 85 percent of respondents.

Nearly half of respondents, on the other hand, said a prior relationship with the investor was not important. And three in four ranked having a top-tier investor with an established brand name as either not important or only somewhat important.

Ted Hollifield, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney, called the funding environment for tech startups “hypercompetitive.” He’s not kidding: The tension between old-school angel investors, newcomers to the scene, and traditional venture capitalists broke out into the open recently, with the likes of Google investor Ron Conway and PayPal alum Dave McClure (pictured above) engaging in name-calling in emails, tweets, and blog posts.

A memo to McClure and Conway: The Dorsey & Whitney survey shows that entrepreneurs don’t care about your Techmeme mentions. They just want their money. And fast.