Figures Show Internet Betting Taking Off
Among the many dot-com businesses falling on hard times, one of the few exceptions, according to Web traffic monitoring company Jupiter MMXI, is the sector of companies that offer online games, particularly gambling-type games. Jupiter's figures show that, in recent months, gambling-related websites have moved up considerable in popularity, especially in the United Kingdom, where lottery games are huge. Online betting sites current rank as some of the most visited U.K. entertainment sites. "The popularity of the national lottery is now being felt on the Internet," Mari Kim Coleman, managing director of Jupiter MMXI, explained. "New game and gambling sites are appearing regularly in our data, as the Internet becomes not only a work tool but also a source of fun and entertainment." The most glaring example is Grab.com, which moved from the 25th most popular U.K. entertainment site to the third most popular, behind Virgin.net and WindowsMedia, during the month of December.
Shanghai Deals with Gambling Addiction
Mental health experts in Shanghai have recently expressed concerns over the growing number of people they are treating for addiction to the city's lotteries. According to a BBC story, the city's 15 million people purchase 43 million lottery tickets every month; at least have the population there say they have at one point or another bought lottery tickets. The Shanghai Daily newspaper reported last month that at least 12 people were being treated at the time for lottery addiction at the city's mental health center. Doctors there are saying that several patience are obsessed with winning numbers; some of them are even suicidal.
They're Watching You
The United Kingdom's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 gives businesses in the U.K. the right to monitor employees' Internet activities without informing them. According to a report by a law firm called Klegal, many British companies are taking advantage of the privilege. The report suggests that one fifth of employers in the U.K. monitor employees' Internet activities. The survey also found that downloading pornography was the main reason for firings over the misuse of e-mail and Internet systems.
Internet Fraud Is on the Rise
Meridien Research has published a report suggesting that online payment fraud is rising steadily as the number of payment transactions through the Internet increases. Money lost to payment fraud in 2000 amounted to $1.6 billion. By 2005, Meridien says, that number will rise to $15.5 billion in 2005.
Analyst Jeanne Capachin says the biggest contributing factor in the projected increase is that only 30 percent of Internet merchants use anti-fraud technology. Meridien estimates that Internet fraud could be as low as $5.7 billion in 2005 if companies merchants widely adopted the technology.
So Is Intellectual Property Abuse
A recent survey conducted by Net Searchers, a London-based firm, suggests that intellectual property abuse online is getting way out of hand. Between May and September 2000, the group asked over 4,000 intellectual property specialist in Europe and the United States for their feedback on the state of the Internet content business. The results show that Internet property infringement has risen sharply since 1998. Particularly, Net Searchers is calling for new controls to put an end to meta tag abuse, specifically instances in which websites contain the names of their competitors in their meta tags to divert traffic to their own sites.
The Net Protection Survey 2000, in comparison to the 1998 survey, found:
90 percent of respondents have experienced domain name infringement on the Internet (a 5 percent
increase from 1998.
The number of parody sites has risen by 2200 percent.
Counterfeiting has risen 1650 percent.
Metatag infringements have risen by 1280 percent.
Copyright infringements have risen 105 percent.
90 percent of infringements experienced by respondents were among ".com" sites, followed by ".co.uk" and ".de."
The survey also found that:
70 percent of the respondents have had to pay large amounts of money to purchase domain names from cybersquaters (an increase of 10 percent since 1998).
More than half of the respondents have paid third parties significant amounts of money for
domain names. One company paid £500,000 for a domain name.
96 percent of respondents wanted to see more countries adopt of the Universal Dispute Resolution Policy, the policy for settling domain name disputes.
81 percent of respondents supported the introduction of the proposed European .eu domain name suffix.
Overall Internet Usage Declines in December
Apparently this whole Internet thing was just a fad. Nielsen//NetRatings's Internet ratings report for the month of December 2000 shows that Web users have been steadily spending less time surfing the Net at home and at work, The average time spent per person online declined more than 15 percent in December from October 2000, dropping from 17.5 to 14.9 hours. Page views declined more than 17 percent from 1,196 page views in October to 983 in December. The number of unique sites visited per month fell 15 percent from 20 to 17 sites, while the number of surfing sessions per month decreased 15 percent from 33sessions to 28 sessions in December. "Vacation time from work combined with family events and travel were the likely drivers of the decrease in Web usage in December,' said Sean Kaldor, vice president of eCommerce at NetRatings. In the gaming sector, Casino On Net remains a top-10 at-home advertiser, tallying 348,351 impressions and a reach of 24.4.
B2B50 Index Continues to Drop
The Delphi Group launched the B2B50 Index in July 1999 to follow the profit/loss of a hypothetical portfolio of up to 50 B2B companies. The index cruised into 2000 riding a 2,054-point gain over the latter half of 1999. It reached a zenith of 2,940 in mid-March, and then tumbled to -924 as the year 2000 concluded. Over a third of the companies in the Delphi B2B50 lost at least 90 percent of their value; over half lost at least 80 percent. In the midst of this overall disastrous performance in the B2B50 Index, only five B2B50 companies managed to generated positive returns on their stock prices over the past 12 months. The exceptions to the rule includes Documentum, Informatica, i2Technologies, Interwoven and FileNet.
Internet Not Getting To Inner Cities
In a new study, 56 percent of low-to-moderate income inner-city adults said they knew little or nothing about the Internet. The respondents said cost was the major obstacle to becoming computer literate and accessing the Internet. On an encouraging note, among those who have little or no familiarity with the Internet, 80 percent said they would be eager to participate in training.