CyTRAP Labs - Wincurity - smarter protection

Get postings by e-mail directly to your in-box.

Your email:  
subscribe unsubscribe  

Digital media measurement company comScore Networks released the results of their analysis of global instant messenger (IM) use (2006-04-10).

The study sounds interesting such as stating that the highest IM penetration is in in Latin America, where a whopping 64 % of the online population used IM in February.

In contrast:

• 37 % of the online population in North American and
• 49 % in Europe

used IM programs to communicate in February.

Looking at the raw volume of users, Europe comes out on top with 82 million IM users, followed by North America with 69 million users.

On a market basis, MSN Messenger has the strongest penetration worldwide, with 61 % of online users overall, 90 % of Latin American users and 70 % of European and Asian users.

Skype Gains Market Share

The report made some interesting findings about changes in the IM market:

1. North America is the most competitive market, with MSN Messenger, AOL/AIM and Yahoo! Messenger each taking between 27-37 % of the market.
2. Skype reaches 26 % of the Asian IM market, and 14 % worldwide.

These figures are based on actual use rather than registered users — a more accurate indicator of market share.

But here comes the cliff hanger

We tried to get information about the above study such as sample selection, demographics of the subjects, questions asked, etc. so we mailed off an e-mail to their press officer Andrew Lipsman. What a journey, first our e-mails were unable to pass the firm’s spam filters, after using various gateways of ours we finally got through but NO answer. Thereafter …. we left messages on his answering machine. NO answer
So here we have a firm that states in his mission:

comScore’s mission is to leverage the power of the Internet to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of our clients’ sales and marketing efforts.

But the firm is unable to manage its own spam filters, to have a press officer that returns media calls and worst, a CEO’s office that hangs up on clients phoning in. Even if one can manage to get through, the staff seem unable to handle requests for assistance in a professional way.

Can we trust their study’s findings based on their proprietary database that might have whatever kind of respondents? The firm may be the “the leader in digital media measurement” but surely not an example to copy, as far as its own customer service is concerned. And a true leader in quality would provide background information about a study, would it not? Only then are we able to check and see if the study’s findings are based on valid and reliable data, including a representative sample.

You be the judge but let me know what you think. And yes, they are not shy to blow their own horn:

comScore’s executive team: veteran leaders with a track record of success in creating and growing industry-leading companies and developing innovative technologies.

Sounds good, does it not? But I am not sure about you, however, we would like Magid M. Abraham (the CEO) to provide us with information that enables checking up on the quality of the work. Once we can do that, we will report back to you. But do not hold your breath because as the above story would suggest, being good in sales does neither mean you excel on customer service nor know about quality research.

Are we in a bad mood, you guessed right, we are

2006-04-21 Update

The above story created some interest and besides doing some more digging we also found ‘Jeff’ to comment here:

• Are these studies lies or just benchmarks or indicators

If Jeff is correct, then we need to ask comScore Networks some questions about the representativeness of the subjects stored in its ‘Internet consumer database’, such as:

1. How were the Skype, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger users selected for the database comScore Networks used for the study?
2. How representative is the sample used for this database regarding geographical distribution. For instance, what type of users are included from such countries as the UK, Spain, Portugal, Latvia and Denmark. Only this knowledge would allow us to see if the claims made about Europe having the most extensive use of IM is correct (other questions are those regarding the distribution of age, income, gender, work vs. home use of IM and so on of the sample)?
3. What kind of distinction was made between using IM in a corporate vs. private setting as well as using it for business or pleasure?
4. What kind of instrument was used to get these answers (e.g., survey, telephone, logging of IM use device or what)?

And even if the above questions are answered, the fact remains that recent data in Germany, for instance, surveying about 110 companies (large and small) reveals that just about 17% use IM in corporate settings:

• VoIP, Messaging, Mobile Mail & Co — Verbreitung, Erfahrungen und Plaene in deutschen Unternehmen (Februar 2006) (see Table 9, p. 15)

Another study revealed that a far higher percentage of Americans use IM that in the comCore Networks study. It appears that collaborating evidence for comCore is lacking and unless sample characteristics and data collection methods are laid open, we dare to put into doubt the usefuless of these findings. Whoever pays for such work is possibly wasting a bit of money… You be the judge.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 16:58 and is filed under