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has anyone else experienced a change in their Facebook ad performance?

Wednesday, all over the world, online marketers experienced drastic changes in their Facebook advertising performance. Most advertisers saw large drops in both impressions and clicks. The bigger the ad spend, the larger the drop, some as high as 60%.

There are many factors that go into advertising performance, and some immediately checks come up negative:

• Has the volume suddenly dried up? Are they all on vacation? This is not the case as these drops cross industries, markets, and demographics.
• Has the competition gone up, increasing the minimum bid? No sir, bid recommendations remain the same.
• Did your intern pause all of your Campaigns? No, interns are kept locked in the conference room.

All signs point to Facebook changing the way they serve ads. Data collected since Wednesday shows no signs of return, leading most to assume these changes are here to stay.

While you may think it a bit odd for Facebook to suddenly change the way they do business, keep in mind they continually change their interface- much to the (dis)like of the majority of their users. Those changes, however, typically allow people to revert back to the old style for a few days.

If you think it's confusing, you're not alone. Reps at Facebook have been scrambling to come up with answers as large checkbook advertisers flood their phone lines. I can almost imagine the hoards of online marketers yelling: This wouldn't happen on Google!

I applaud Facebook for continuing to grow and mature it's ad serving platform. They've got plenty of targeting power and are slowly learning how to enable everyone to use it. My problem is with their implementation and lack of communication. If you're the biggest, badest, fastest growing social platform- the future of the web, ACT like it. Get a campus like Google, hire a beebop flute player, and seek measurable perfection in all that you do.

Potentially related, Facebook has publicly discussed their work on optimization the News Feed with a system called EdgeRank. A great News Feed will make for better user experience, but the ad platform is what keeps the iguana fed at Facebook. They need to devote more attention to the business side of the house.

Triage What can you do? Test results haven't come back yet. In the mean time, here are a few potential band-aids:

• Ensure your bids are within the suggested range & test upping your bids.
• Create new ads with the same & new copy.
• Compare performance across multiple accounts & campaigns.

The way I see it, Facebook will either revert and reevaluate or adjust and inform. My guess is that they'll tweak what they've done- though there is a sense of urgency. You're spending less, and they're making less so it's going to be a working weekend at Facebook.

I also recommend adjusting your Facebook advertising strategy. The system is changing and soon the new levers that affect performance will become clear. Gear yourself up for a Facebook Quality Score, complete with it's own set of algorithmic quirks and voodoo rules. The positive side is that they're moving toward Quality, which should benefit us all in the future.

If you've had any performance changes recently, please post them below:

Samuel and Charles Wyly, the billionaire brothers from Dallas who are large donors to philanthropies and to conservative causes, were charged Thursday with conducting an extensive securities fraud that the Securities and Exchange Commission said reaped $550 million in undisclosed gains.
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The brothers, who founded Sterling Software, a business software and services company that they sold for $4 billion in stock to the software company CA in 2000, were also charged with insider trading violations from which they profited by more than $31 million, the S.E.C. said.

Charles and Samuel Wyly, along with their wives, have donated $2.5 million to more than 200 Republican candidates and committees over the past 20 years, including over $1.3 million to the Republican National Committee, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The top recipients of their largesse have been Texas Republicans. George W. Bush received at least $100,000 raised by the Wyly clan during the 2000 presidential election. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson has received $30,400 from the family; Rep. Pete Sessions, $29,000.

Other Republican senators who've received their donations include John Cornyn of Texas, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, John Thune of South Dakota and Kit Bond of Missouri. Sam Wyly also funded the Swift Boat campaign that torpedoed Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

And the Wyly brothers have been busy in the 2010 election cycle, most recently writing a check dated June 10 for $10,000 to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Charles Wyly has contributed to FreedomWorks PAC, which has been instrumental in the Tea Party movement. The Wylys and their companies have also reportedly contributed $353,500 to Texas Gov. Rick Perry in recent years.

It's takes a certain type of person to get excited about a work productivity tool. Mark Nielsen and Patrick Carmitchel, unsatisfied with 37Signals Basecamp, have decided to disrupt the productivity software industry (see their incredibly twee video above).

Says Nielsen We decided we'd rather not see the light of day for awhile than have to live with knowing that with just a little bit of creative, a pinch of logic and a dash of sexy, we could revive the productivity software world with a tool that would even make Apple cry.

Previously unknown to the blogosphere, Nielsen and Carmitchel emailed us at 2am last night and emphasized that they were out for 37Signals' blood (we'll get more into why we actually listened in a later post). When reminded that the formidable former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was also in the collaboration tool space, joining the likes of Salesforce, Zoho, and Atlassian with his stealth startup Asana, they replied We'd like to see how [Dustin Moskovitz's] deep pockets stand up against moxie and energy.

The RULE.fm product itself looks like what would happen if Apple got serious about productivity software, with much emphasis on design aesthetics. Right now its basic function is a ramped up contact list manager with real time updates from your contacts pushed to you, a Yammer-like discussion area, a place for tasks, and a communal file sharing functionality. Nielsen describes it as a place to know and understand everything that's going on with in your organization and hopes the company will eventually expand into wikis, customer retention management and accounting tools.

For those curious, the tour is live on the RULE.fm site right now, and the platform itself will go live on Tuesday August 3rd, making the productivity software industry just a little bit more badass.

E-newsletters allow a business to stay in touch with its customers on a regular basis. They give you the opportunity to establish yourself as a "thought leader" in your area of expertise, be that in designing toys for rare parrots or providing software to keep your personal finances straight. They are also a great way to create viral marketing, because if your customers find the information useful they may forward your e-newsletter to others, thereby helping you grow your customer base.

"Done right, they will give you a return far better than any other marketing strategy," says Tamara Gielen, an independent e-mail marketing consultant who has worked for such companies as Cognos, eBay, and OgilvyOne. "But success largely depends on two things: relevance and permission. Sending irrelevant messages to recipients who didn't give you permission to e-mail them will not only hurt your brand, it is also the fastest way to get blacklisted with the major ISPs. The last thing you want is to be perceived as a spammer."

So, how do you get permission, and how do you create relevant e-newsletters?

The following guide will cover how to get permission by building an opt-in e-mail list, how to create compelling content and attract readers, and how to choose an e-mail newsletter provider.

Dig Deeper: E-Mail Marketing Solutions

The first order of business is to build a quality list of customers -- customers who have given you permission to send them e-mail newsletters. "Collect this information wherever and whenever you are making a connection with a prospective customer," advises Eric Groves, senior vice president of global market development for Constant Contact, an e-mail and online marketing tool provider. If you have a store front, for example, have a sign-up book by the register and ask people to fill it out and include their e-mail address so that you can send them your e-newsletter. "There's been research done that if a local business asks a customer for their contact information, over 60 percent of the time they will give it to you," Groves says.

Collect e-mail addresses from your prospects and customers at a variety occasions, such as the following.

Use all offline channels you currently have to drive e-newsletter subscriptions, whether they be direct mail, advertising, catalogs, flyers, or feedback forms, Gielen says.

Be careful with rented lists. "Make sure the list owner sends the e-mail on your behalf. If the list provider promises to give you a list of email addresses, walk away. It's not worth the risk of getting blacklisted because the list is old, contains spam traps and lots of bad addresses," Gielen warns. Most email service providers, such as Constant Contact, won't even allow companies to import rented lists into e-mail newsletter products because it would violate terms of service, Groves says.

Remember that permission is important, so don't add an e-mail address to your list unless you have the owner's explicit permission to do so.

Gielen advises to use a double opt-in process when you're collecting email addresses in places other than your own website or when the email capture is part of a contest or sweepstakes. "Double opt-in means that you ask people to confirm their subscription before you add them to your list. That way, you can be sure that all the e-mail addresses that end up on your list are correct and the people on your list are truly engaged." she says. "On your own website, your Facebook page and your blog there's usually no need for a double opt-in process." Gielen says. However, she does recommend sending an email that welcomes the news subscribers, tells them what they can expect and how they can unsubscribe."

Dig Deeper: Finding and Using E-Mail Newsletter Templates

A successful e-newsletter consistently provides value to the recipient by offering relevant content to the readers. "It's not about you, but sharing what you know," Groves says. "If you do it well, recipients will forward it on to others."

Keep in mind that your customers may be solicited via e-mail with scores of offers every day. They eventually tune out the "buy from me" pitch. But they're more likely to read something that helps them become more knowledgeable about a subject that interests them. "Different content offering might include how-to guides that help readers get better at what they do, tips on how to get the most out of the product or service that you sell, background articles on topics that your readers find interesting, surveys, contests and sweepstakes, and promotions such as discounts or free shipping," Gielen says.

A restaurateur might have the chef send out tips on cooking, such as "What to do if you put too much salt in a recipe," Groves suggests. During the holidays, they might send out a newsletter item on what great wine goes with turkey for Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, a landscaper might write an article about plants that deer won't eat. "That's something people can use," Groves says. "They're going to take that and forward it to their friends and say, 'Check this out.' You're sharing knowledge and getting engagement. They already know what you sell."

How can you figure out what your target audience considers to be relevant content? "One way is by asking them on the sign-up form or via surveys and polls," Gielen says. "Another way is by analyzing their behavior. Which links do they typically click on? What kind of subject lines typically trigger them to open your e-mails?"

The articles in the e-newsletter should be brief, Groves advises. And there shouldn't be 42 different items. "A simple one-article newsletter is a fantastic tool," he says. In addition to articles, you might add a calendar of events that might interest readers and, perhaps a link to a promotional offer at the bottom. "If you're writing about California Chardonnays, you might say, 'Here is a real special Chardonnay that we just got in.' That's fine if it's all tied together."

Design for the Preview Pane
Once you have built your list and determined what kind of content your readers value, it's time to develop an effective template for your e-newsletter. The first thing to keep in mind is that most e-mail clients do not display images by default, Gielen says. "The top right two to three inches of your template is what people see in their preview panes, so if your template has mainly images in that area, most readers will not see anything in their preview pane," she says. "Make sure you design your template with this in mind." Think of the preview pane area as a teaser area, and use this area to grab the reader's attention. The information in this area should be compelling enough to make the reader open the e-mail, download the images, and scroll down for more information.

Keep Design Professional
Pick a layout that is going to look professional and render well. Groves says that Constant Contact has 400 different e-newsletter templates alone. You don't have to worry about how to create HTML, but you do need to look at the colors, create images, and think about layout so that it renders well. Most e-mail clients have images turned off as a default, so it's not necessarily a good idea to put a big company logo on the top of the image in the preview pane because it won't load, Groves says. Instead, have that logo lower on the page and just write the company name in regular text at the top of the screen. Choose colors that look weak and reflect your brand. Groves recommends two online tools, Color Cop and Color Schemer, which can help you choose colors. "You don't have to be a graphic artist," Groves says. Lastly, leave some white space for your readers so the e-newsletter doesn't look too dense and is easy on the eye.

Write a Compelling Subject Line
The subject line (and your sender name) is what convinces someone to open your e-mail, Gielen says. You can ask a question, state a benefit, or add urgency, as long as you don't try to deceive your readers. "You should keep your subject line short," she says. "Most readers see only five to seven words, or 50 to 60 characters, of your subject line, so your most important words should be right in the beginning." Also, make your subject line dynamic. Don't use the same subject line over and over again. Finally, tell, don't sell, what's inside. A subject line that tries to sell something is often perceived by readers as spam, and the chance they will delete your e-mail without opening it is much higher.

Choose an E-Mail Service Provider
Don't use Outlook to send out your e-newsletter. Apart from some very nasty deliverability problems you risk running into, you will not have any reporting for your e-newsletter whatsoever, Gielen says. Without the necessary reporting, how will you know how your e-newsletter performs?

There are a number of very good and affordable e-mail service providers out there, like Aweber, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, MailChimp, eROI, iContact and others. "By using an e-mail service provider, you won't have to worry about any of the logistics, you'll know exactly who opened and clicked and even creating a professional looking template will be a piece of cake," Gielen says.

Manage Your List
Each time you send out your e-newsletter, you'll find e-mail addresses that no longer exist or people that have unsubscribed from your list. It is of the utmost importance that you remove these e-mail addresses from your list before you send out your next e-newsletter, Gielen says. "If you don't, you risk running into legal problems, as well as being blacklisted." Remember the two rules of sending e-mail newsletters: relevance and permission. If a customer revokes their permission, you need to respect that. But, Groves says, next time the customer comes in to your store or makes a purchase, follow up and ask to make sure they didn't unsubscribe from the e-newsletter by accident.

Additional Resources

How to Write Effective E-Mail Newsletters
Tips from Web Market Central, a portal for interactive marketing professionals.

E-mail Marketer's Club
Discuss e-mail marketing trends, issues and tactics with other e-mail marketers.

Do Ravens Tweet? The answer is YES!

Today, the Baltimore Ravens have launched their very own Mixx channel, making it the BEST way for fans to follow all the up-to-date, day-to-day developments at Ravens Training Camp! Check it out over on their site: http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/tweetmixx.aspx

The Ravens have a customized News page with two streams - one stream features tweets directly from the Ravens' Twitter account and other team personalities, the other stream focuses on tweets from the media. They also have a Players and Fan Chatter tab.

So head on over and check it out - just in time for some NFL football preseason!

Love,

The Mixx Team

In modern web interface design, no other principle has been heralded and pushed onto us as much as the concept of user-centered design. User-centered design tells us that we should do everything we can to make our user interfaces as easy to use and as intuitive as possible.

However, a big part of designing user interfaces that are easy to use also involves figuring out what things should be a bit more difficult to to use. It's a counter-intuitive notion that's central to effective user interface design.

Why Make Certain User Interface Items Difficult to Use?

I can think of 3 main reasons for making an interface element more burdensome to utilize:

1. When using the interface element is costly to the user if used by accident
2. When there's an overall improvement to the UI as a whole
3. When the cost of maintaining a feature is costly to the provider if used frequently

High Cost of an Error in Usage

When you accidentally delete a file or click on a button that you didn't mean to, there's going to be a cost. For example, recovering a deleted file in a traditional operating system such as Windows costs time. To get your deleted file back, you need to:

1. Minimize your current application so that you can see your desktop
2. Click on the Recycling Bin icon
3. Locate the deleted document in your bin (or type in a search term if you have many files in your bin)
4. Right-click on it to see and issue the restore command
5. If you want to continue working on the document, you need to reopen it

That's a costly mistake. Good user interfaces will have safeguards for this situation, such as obfuscating the visibility of the delete command and showing you a confirmation dialog that asks you if you really want to delete the file. Burdening the deletion process is a purposeful design choice to avoid the more costly event of accidentally deleting the document.

Example: Deleting Content in WordPress

In older versions of WordPress, when you deleted content by accident (such as that post draft you've been working on for a month), there was no simple way to recover from the mistake. There was a confirmation dialog window that asked you if you did in fact mean to delete the content, but if you're quickly going through, say, spam comments and deleting them one by one, there will be accidents. In older versions of WordPress, when you delete something, it was irreversible.

To fix this, WordPress added an additional feature called Trash. It works much like the Recycling Bin in operating systems that temporarily house files you've deleted in case you want them back.

Although it's now harder to permanently delete WordPress content since you have an additional step to go through to remove the stuff you deleted inside your Trash, by intent, the deletion process was extended and made more difficult to prevent the more costly event of accidentally deleting a post or comment.

Improving the Overall UI System

When there are a lot of interface items competing for your attention, the result is an intimidating and cognitively burdensome UI.

For newer users of the system, having too much noise going on all at once can slow down their ability to learn how the system functions.

But we want people to have ready access to all of these awesome features, so the tendency is to fit as many things as we can into our screens.

Fitt's Law

To help explain the value of making some interface elements more difficult to use for the overall good of the system, I'll borrow from Jeff Atwood's discussion of the opposite of Fitts' Law.

Fitts' law is a human-computer interaction (HCI) model that predicts the speed in which someone can move to an objective. It applies to any human-computer interaction situations that involve human movement and a target.

In the context of graphical user interfaces on computer screens, the model attempts to quantify the factors that improve someone's ability to, for example, point and click on an interface element such as a call to action button.

If that sounds too complicated, we can simplify the model this way: Things that are important and frequently used should be bigger and closer to the user^[1].

It makes sense: Bigger things that are closer to us are easier to get to and touch than those that are smaller and farther away.

So, if Fitts' Law states that interface elements that are essential to the user should be bigger and closer to them or in the context of a computer screen, easier to find and see Atwood looks at the problem in reverse and asks, "What should we do with UI elements we don't want users to click on?"

The answer is simple. By logic, we make those UI elements more difficult to use, locate, and find by making them smaller and more distant to the user.

Doing this forces us to prioritize what interface elements are more important. In turn, this creates visual hierarchies in our UI elements that help the user understand how the system works.

Example: Freshbooks

One of my favorite apps, Freshbooks, demonstrates this point well.

The web app's design smartly implements a logical visual arrangement of its interface elements to make things easier and more intuitive.

For example, in the Expenses tab, there are 6 commands you can perform from the top interface command set:

1. Add a new expense
2. Archive
3. Delete
4. Copy
5. Convert to an invoice
6. Search

Look at the variations in size, grouping and spacing of those commands. Some are close together, some are farther down to the right, Search is deemphasized.

Which command is the most important? Which one is the least important?

Counter-Example: Microsoft Word

Just because they're our favorite whipping boy, let me follow the trend and pick on a Microsoft product: MS Word 2007.

MS Word has a cluttered main menu, and there's not a lot of thought put in, in terms of Fitt's Law. They all seem of equal value and thus, it's harder to find the things you need.

How many times do you need to adjust your document margins or theme? Probably just once.

How many times do you need the Acrobat tab? (Never in my case).

Should all of these options be shown by default, or should they be hidden and more difficult to access for the overall good and simplification of the UI?

By hiding some interface elements or by making them smaller, you are afforded with more room to work with for commands that are truly important and often used (such as styling commands for bolding and emphasizing text).

High Cost to the Provider

Some features might be too costly to us as providers if they're used regularly. An example of this situation is in obfuscating or burdening the customer support process so that users are encouraged to help themselves before submitting a help ticket.

Let's use a real-world analogy to explore this topic: Toilet paper in public restrooms. Toilet paper in public restrooms are typically provided free of charge as a courtesy to bathroom goers. You can guarantee that toilet paper in these restrooms will be as rough as sandpaper and manufactured as cheaply as possible.

The reason this is so is that it's a free service. One of the ways to cut costs is to get the cheapest toilet paper possible.

But what if the public restroom operator had some spare money to spend? Should he/she improve the quality of their toilet paper?

Nope.

There are other benefits to keeping toilet paper as crappy as possible. By making toilet paper difficult to use, they discourage people from taking advantage of the offering unless they absolutely need to.

For instance, many would hesitate to take rolls of toilet paper home because they're unbearable to use and they probably have better stuff waiting at home. Some might even refrain from using public restrooms if they know that in five minutes they'll be at home and in the comfort of their own restroom.

It doesn't take away from the user; they still have the feature (toilet paper) but they're just less likely to use it if they can avoid it. There is no lack of feature availability, so it's okay.

Example: Download Feature in Design Instruct

I'll use an example closer to home. On Design Instruct, everything is free: You don't have to pay a subscription fee to access the site, you don't have to register to use any site feature, and you don't have to jump through hoops to download stuff (such as Photoshop files and freebies).

On similar sites that provide free downloads, they'll often have large call to action buttons placed prominently at the top of the web page, enticing the user to download their source file.

In retrospect, on Design Instruct, the download feature is at the very bottom of the tutorial, as a link with a purposefully intimidating heading ("Download Source Files") and link name ("some_file_name").

Our reasoning is to discourage the feature's use unless you really need to. This is because the download feature, although great for our users that need it, costs us an arm and a leg in bandwidth and servers (we need a dedicated server and CDN just for these downloads).

The download option will be used more by long-time readers who are already familiar with the interface and less by one-time visitors who'll never return to the site again.

The objective here is simple: we want to prioritize our resources in such a way that the readers who've been with us longer are the ones that are likely to take advantage of this feature.

Example: Minimizing Free Signups in Basecamp

Another example where this concept can be seen is in Basecamp's pricing page. Basecamp offers a free plan, but they'd much prefer you sign up for their premium plans.

In the screenshot below, I'd wager that many people miss the "free plan" option and find it more difficult to click on because of the option's size and position, especially when compared to UI elements around it.

Even though they want to make this option available, minimizing free signups versus premium signups is the objective of this screen.

Further Reading

Here are a few articles related to this topic.

• The Opposite of Fitts' Law
• Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
• Visual Hierarchy 52 Weeks of UX

References

1. Fitt's Law

Related Content

• Negative Space in Webpage Layouts: A Guide
• An Introduction to Website Split Testing
• How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He's also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development and a book author. If you'd like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

Megan O'Neill / SocialTimes.com:
Cisco Fails With Old Spice Copycat Campaign Yesterday Cisco paid homage to Old Spice's recent response campaign with their own YouTube response project, featuring Ted From Accounting.' Just like Old Spice, Cisco announced the campaign in the morning, asked people to send in tweets

Newspapers are now less important than the Internet as a source of information, yet the majority of online users say most online information is not reliable, according to the 10th annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans by the Center for the Digital Future.

The study also found that 70 percent of online users believe that Internet advertising is annoying, yet 55 percent of users said they would rather see Web advertising than pay for content.

Among the study's findings:

• Americans on the Internet For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans now 82 percent. Weekly hours online The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
• Gaps in Internet use in age groups Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
• Low adoption of new media Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• Does technology make the world a better place The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
• Internet and Political Campaigns although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
• Buying online 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
• Internet impact on traditional retail declines 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores down from 69 percent in 2008.
• Top 10 online purchases 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).
• The study found that as sources of information their primary function newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).
• Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 also last among principal media.
• Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.
• Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.
• Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.
• Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable a new low level for the Digital Future Project.
• Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.
• Also revealing is the percentage of users who have limited trust even in the Web sites they visit regularly: although 78 percent said that most or all of the information on the sites they visit regularly is reliable (a decline from the previous two years), 22 percent of users say that only one half or less of information on sites they visit regularly is reliable.
• Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo traditional stalwarts of online credibility have lost some of their luster. While 53 percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, that percentage declined slightly in the current Digital Future Study and is well below the peak of 64 percent in 2006.
• 36 percent of users said only about half of information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, and 12 percent said only a small portion or none of it was reliable.
• Only 46 percent of users said they have some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general. Nine percent of users have no trust in the Internet.

Among the study's findings:

• Americans on the Internet For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans now 82 percent. Weekly hours online The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
• Gaps in Internet use in age groups Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
• Low adoption of new media Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• Does technology make the world a better place The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
• Internet and Political Campaigns although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
• Buying online 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
• Internet impact on traditional retail declines 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores down from 69 percent in 2008.
• Top 10 online purchases 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).
• The study found that as sources of information their primary function newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).
• Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 also last among principal media.
• Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.
• Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.
• Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.
• Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable a new low level for the Digital Future Project.
• Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.
• Also revealing is the percentage of users who have limited trust even in the Web sites they visit regularly: although 78 percent said that most or all of the information on the sites they visit regularly is reliable (a decline from the previous two years), 22 percent of users say that only one half or less of information on sites they visit regularly is reliable.
• Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo traditional stalwarts of online credibility have lost some of their luster. While 53 percent of Internet users said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, that percentage declined slightly in the current Digital Future Study and is well below the peak of 64 percent in 2006.
• 36 percent of users said only about half of information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, and 12 percent said only a small portion or none of it was reliable.
• Only 46 percent of users said they have some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general. Nine percent of users have no trust in the Internet.