FLASH: [Fwd: "Poor Rich Media" article follow-up]

[Nigel Randsley-Pena]

Flashers,


<soap box>

I don't usually forward messages to this list, in fact it's a first and

not to be repeated, but the subject warrants it, or so I think. Please

forgive me  for the length of this message but I decided to leave it as

is.

On this subject I would like to appeal to all non-Macromedia employees

on this list with access to general media to do their bit in promoting

something we believe in and is being so misrepresented in a lot of

'studies' directed towards decision makers. The launch of Flash 4 seems

to have stirred a lot of worries from a large sector of 'other

solutions' defenders. Take a stand, speak your mind and let others know

about it.

</soap box> <!-- for now -->


Nigel


-------- Original Message --------

Subject: "Poor Rich Media" article follow-up

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 13:24:53 -0700

From: Ali Partovi <

alipmicrosoft [dot] com

>

To: "

'nigelmail [dot] telepac [dot] pt

'" <

nigelmail [dot] telepac [dot] pt

>


Hi Nigel,


If you're interested, here's how the issue you raised with my article

has

been resolved.  Besides your message, I received a few other messages

from

people complaining that the stats from my article seemed incorrect.  I

followed up with StatMarket at depth and identified the source of the

error

(more on it below if you're interested).  I wrote the following letter

and

expect it to be published in next week's issue of the magazine:


----------

Dear Industry Standard,


I am writing with a correction to my column, "Poor Rich Media," in your

May

21, 1999 issue.  It has been brought to my attention that some stats I

quoted in this article regarding user share of multimedia technologies

varied greatly from other studies.  However, my fundamental opinion of

encouraging advertisers and web site owners to be conservative about

adopting "beyond-HTML" technologies remains the same.


My source was StatMarket (www.statmarket.com).  After digging deeper and

speaking with with StatMarket, I learned that some of the data I had

quoted

was indeed wrong.  The error was due to a misinterpretion of data that

they

had computed in an unexpected way.  It was an honest error, and

StatMarket

has since updated their site to reflect the correct data.


Despite the earlier error, I believe that StatMarket's method of

monitoring

actual usage across 89,000 sites makes them the ideal source for this

data.

The correct user shares, according to StatMarket's live monitoring of 7

million daily Netscape users, are:

  LiveAudio	- 81.21%

  AVI - 73.71%

  QuickTime - 71.38%

  Flash - 60.72%

  Beatnik - 34.84%

  Media Player - 34.71%

  Shockwave - 32.83%

  Acrobat - 30.17%

  RealPlayer G2 - 27.47%

Based on a survey of 1,675 users (performed by King, Brown, & Partners),

Macromedia claims that the share for Flash is 77%.


The installed base for these technologies is admittedly larger than I

thought. However, I continue to remain highly conservative about the use

of

these technologies, not only because of the user share, but also because

of

the browser delays in launching the respective applets.  The web is

continually spreading to new devices and platforms (many of which

support

only HTML), and reach continues to be an important factor of success for

all

web businesses.


Sincerely,

Ali Partovi


Note: the opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect the

opinions of LinkExchange or Microsoft.


---- end of letter ----


Here is more detail on the stats:


StatMarket gathers data by monitoring actual usage on thousands of web

sites.  These web sites have all inserted the "Hitbox" component on

their

pages, which enables StatMarket's servers to see every visitor to these

pages.  This means that they can measure exactly the entire population

of

millions of users across their 89,000 constituent web sites.  By

analyzing

the HTTP stream, StatMarket can actually detect which plugins are

installed

for any user. (NOTE: this particular measurement can be done on Netscape

browsers only, so StatMarket ignores IE browsers for the purposes of

calculating share of Plugins.).


At the time when I wrote the article, StatMarket's site contained an

erroneous calculation for the Plugin share.  The proper way to calculate

user share (assuming you can only measure Netscape users) is:


(# of NS users with specific Plug-in) / (total # of NS users)


The stat that had been posted on their site was a slightly different

calculation:


(# of NS users with specific Plug-in) / (total # of Plug-ins)


This latter calculation produces a much smaller number and does not

represent the user share.  When StatMarket and I uncovered this, they

updated their site immediately (on June 16, 1999) with the correct

figures,

which I also quoted above.


Ali


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