UPDATE: The Office for National Statistics has also released some data on internet access which paints a more positive picture. Their data puts the numbers who haven’t been online at 18%. And 45% had accessed the web on the move .

I’ve just been scanning through the internet section of Ofcom’s latest report on The Communications Market 2010. As always, it’s an essential read and this year the body have done a beautiful job in publishing it online with unique URLs for each passage of the document, and downloadable CSV and PDF files for each piece of data.

Here are what I think are the key points for those specifically interested in online journalism and publishing:

1: Mobile is genuinely significant: 23% of UK users now access the web on mobile phones (but 27% still have no access to the web on any device).

Implication: We should be thinking about mobile as another medium, with different generic qualities to print, broadcast or web, and different consumption and distribution patterns.

2: 23% of time spent online is on social networks – and there has been a 10% rise in the numbers with a social media profile across all demographics. Mobile emerges as an important platform for social media access, particularly among 16-24-year-olds. Twitter is has 1m more unique visitors than MySpace, but Facebook has 20m more than Twitter.

Implication: We should have social network strategies not only around distributing content but also commercial possibilities such as embedded advertising, diverting marketing budget, etc.

3: Display advertising grew slightly, but search advertising continues to gain market share.

Implication: Not good news for publishers – the question to ask might be: why? Is it because of the mass market search engines enjoy? Or the measurability of being able to advertise against search terms? Is that something news websites can offer too – or something similar?

4: 48% of 24-34 year olds use the internet to keep up with news – more than any other age group – older people are least interested in news online.

Implication: confirms not only that our online audiences are different demographically, but young people are interested in news. What’s missing is an elaboration of what they consider ‘keeping up with news’ – that doesn’t necessarily mean checking a news website, but might include letting news come to them via social networks, email, or finding ‘news’ about their friends.

5: Google literacy - only 20% think search results are unbiased & accurate; 54% are critical.

Implication: surprising, and challenges some assumptions.

6: Google Image Search becomes a significant search engine on its own, above all other general search engines (Bing, Yahoo, MSN) apart from Google’s main search portal. Curiously, YouTube is not listed, although it is widely known that it accounts for more searches than Yahoo! I am guessing it was not classified separately as a search engine (it is, however, the second most popular search term, after ‘Facebook’).

Implication: emphasises the importance of SEO for images, but also the growing popularity of vertical search engines. A news organisation that created an effective search facility either for its own site (most news website search facilities are not very good) or in its field could reap some benefits longer term.

7: UGC is changing – there is an overall decline in uploading and adding content. “The only age group in which this figure did not fall since 2009 was 45-64 year olds, while the number
of 15-24 year olds claiming to upload content fell by 10 percentage points.”

That said, in the detail there are increases in the numbers of users who have created UGC in certain categories – there was an 8% increase in those who have commented on blogs, for example, and a 6% increase in those who have uploaded images to a website. It may be that UGC activity is being concentrated in social networks (the numbers who have created a social network profile doubled from 22% to 44%)

Implication: There seems to be a limit to the people who will contribute content online (even where there were increases, this appears to be drawn from the proportion of people who previously wanted to contribute content online – see image at top of post). And these appear to be gravitating towards particular communities, i.e. Facebook. There may be a limited window of opportunity for attracting these users to contribute to your site – or it may be that publishers have to work harder to attract them with functionality, etc.

8: News and information is the 4th most popular content category – although ‘search and communities’ are lumped together in first place. Time spent on news and information is significantly lower than other categories, however. Likewise, the BBC and Associated Newspapers both feature in the top 20 sites (along with more general portals AOL, Sky and Yahoo!) but have lower time per person.

Implication: the news industry has an ongoing ‘stickiness’ problem. People are clearly interested in news, but don’t stick around. Traditional cross-publishing and shovelware approaches don’t appear to be working. We need to learn from the areas where people spend most time – such as social networks. Research is needed into media types that appear to have a strong record here, such as audio slideshows, wikis and databases.

Nicholas Moerman has put together an impressive collection of graphs showing a general decline over the past year in visits to mainstream websites across a raft of categories, from content and commerce to portals and porn. The only sites that buck the trend? I’ll let you guess.

He doesn’t know why this is (or even if he’s seeing things), which is rather refreshing, but offers some ideas, and it’s certainly food for thought. Here it is:

Virtual intern Natalie Chillington rounds up last week’s online journalism-related news

Google

• Google will announce a new metrics tool to measure web site audience, to rival current power players Nielsen and ComScore.

• Lots of debate over whether Google is making us stupid

WordPress

• Puffbox.com announces it will be sponsoring WordCamp UK in July,bringing together around 100 devotees of WordPress in Birmingham for aweekend of code and conversation.

Twitter

• Debate over whether you should use Twitter for live blogging at a conference.

• The same people behind the tech news site WebProNews have launched Twellow, a new search tool and directory for finding Twitter users

Social

• Facebook launched new mini-feed comments

• MySpace partners with NBC News and msnbc.com to find a citizen journalist to cover national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties later this summer in the US.

• Nokia has acquired German social networking service Plazes,expanding it’s mobile internet services. Plazes offers a location-basedservice, with friends posting messages about their location and whatthey are doing from their mobile or PC – sounds like Twitter.

• Domestic Chinese mobile phone service provider MICAT has announcedan agreement with social-networking website, MySpace. Together, theywill be launching “MySpace MICAT,” a social platform for Chinese mobile internet users.

• Facebook introduces Chinese-language versions of its social networking website, marking its first move into the world’s largest internet market.

Web

• Interactive map shows the aftermath of Parkersberg tornado

• YouTube is home to nearly half of web clips watched in the UK

• Magazine publisher IPC Media buys gaming website Mousebreaker in an effort to increase its access to an audience of young male internet users.

• Yahoo to announce the results of a major staff reorganisation as internet firm tries to reassure investors and staff that it can improve its performance and competitiveness.

• The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was due to vote on new internet domain names this week. It is thougth that from early 2009, users will be able to acquire generic addresses such as .love

Media

• Debate over ‘Pay-per-view’ future of online journalism

• House of Lords report says growth of news sites is harming investment in news gathering

• Sky News Online prepares to re-launch with a new look

• CNET is also getting a new look

• The Associated Press will begin rolling out details of its new pricing to members this week, a plan that will return up to $21 million to its U.S. member newspapers.

• Debate over the usefulness of blogging to journalists continues

• BBC launches new revamped online catch-up service, iPlayer with integrated radio shows.

• Trinity Mirror launches a series of branded YouTube channels for the video content of its regional newspapers.

• ITN has signed a ‘six figure’ deal with Al Jazeerato make 800,000 hours of archived video content available to thebroadcaster. As part of the deal, the network and production companieswill have access to Channel 4, Reuters, Granada and ITN.

• The Independant hires the former head of the prime minister’s digital PR operation Jimmy Leach, to lead online development.

• Some journalists still opposed/scared of the internet

Other

• Freelance journalist Sean Langan released after being kidnapped by a group associated with the Taliban in a three-month ordeal.