Social media usage surged among U.S. adults ages 50 and up, according to a latest survey by Princeton Survey Research Associates on behalf of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Media Post reported.

The survey also suggested social media may be an effective advertising and marketing platform to reach older Internet users.

Photo: Tim Boyle/Getty Images

"Newspapers have 12 years or less left to live in print," according to the digital consultant Ross Dawson, who will speak in the Newspaper Publishers' Association forum in Sydney, Australia this Thursday, mUmBRELLA reported.

According to a NPA release, Dawson said: "By 2022 newspapers as we know them will be irrelevant in Australia. However the leading newspaper publishers of today may have transformed themselves to thrive in what will be a flourishing media industry," The Australian reported.

Photo: Pranav Mistry

Declines in the newspaper industry are expected to slow down this year, and the market will eventually stabilise by 2013 and resume growth in 2014, according to the Veronis Suhler Stevenson Communications Industry Forecast 2004-2014, Editor & Publisher reported.

VSS predicted that retail, classified and national advertisers will continue to shift budgets to digital platforms "to target audiences and improve return on investment," as print circulations drop, which indicates consumers' migration to new electronic media, the report stated.

Although some researches claim newspaper sales in Australia have remained stable throughout the years, new study finds that considering the country's growing population, sales have been in a decline significantly, according to the Media Alliance in Walkley Media Conference this week, mUmBRELLA reported.

The organisation combined data from Audit Bureau of Circulation with Australian Bureau of Statistics population numbers, and calculated an approximate measure of metro and national paper sales per capita over the last two decades.

According to the results, only 56 percent of those surveyed view print news as a valuable source of information. This was down from 60 percent when the survey was conducted in 2008. More people relied on the internet (78 percent) and television (68 percent) as their main news source.

Mobile content revenues in Japan are expected to reach about US$5.3 billion in 2011, up 14 percent from $4.6 billion in 2008, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

Mobile advertising will generate about $1.3 billion in 2011, which increased 73 percent from $743 million in 2008, according to Mobile Content Forum, Dentsu and Infinita.

The gaming market is no longer the privilege of console games, while online games are getting popular, according to a recent survey conducted by Blockdot, a firm specialised at Interactive Entertainment and Advergaming technologies.

The study, conducted in the spring of 2010 for the third consecutive year, targeted 500 game players on Kewlbox.com. 

Newspaper publishers have found that onetime cost cuts are not enough to streamline their businesses for the future. Instead, lowering costs must be done as part of a long-term business strategy; and for many companies, part of that strategy includes outsourcing, SFN's Million Dollar Strategies for Newspaper Companies reported.

Saving money through outsourcing and/or offshoring has grown in popularity because it is not a one-time fix to help numbers on a current earnings report, but rather it is part of a plan for the future.

According to the new study "Mobile Access 2010," released by Pew Internet & American Life Project, in April 2010, 38 percent of U.S. mobile device owner surf the Internet using their mobile devices, up from 25 percent year-over-year, Media Post reported.

As 82 percent of U.S. adult population has a mobile device, this means that about 31 percent of all U.S. adults access mobile Internet in 2010, Pew reported.

Compared to some parts of the world, the U.S. journalism market has experienced a more severe downturn. According to the American Society of News Editors, the country's newsroom workforce grew from about 45,000 in 1978 to more than 55,000 in 1989, but has been in a general state of decline since then. In 2006, the journalism workforce totalled about 55,000, but dropped to less than 50,000 within the next two years, SFN's Million Dollar Strategies for Newspaper Companies reported.

According to the Amerian Society for Newspaper Edtiors census for 2009, a total of 5,200 newsroom professional jobs were cut, not as high as the 5,900 in 2008. Online-only newspapers also cut 284 jobs in 2009. This caused newsroom employment to drop to 41,500, from 56,400 in 2000. The percentage of losses are higher at big metros and lower at smaller titles, according to "The State of the News Media 2010," a report by The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

1seg is a mobile terrestrial broadcasting service offering digital audio/video and data in Japan and Brazil. The service was introduced experimentally in 2005 and commercially launched on April 2006 in Japan. In Brazil, it began in late 2007 in a few selected cities. The first mobile phone handsets for 1seg were on the market in autumn 2005 in Japan, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

According to data from JEITA and NTT DoCoMo, there was only a small number of 1seg-enabled mobile phone handsets in March 2006, but in December 2007, that number reached 20 million in Japan.

Digital technology not only creates e-waste, but also uses energy when devices are not turned off, and in many cases, unplugged. However, the good news is that better technology today means more efficient energy use. Today's personal computers, and especially laptops, use substantially less energy use when using them for reading, according to a 2009 report by the KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications, "Screening environmental life cycle assessment of printed, web based and tablet epaper newspaper."

The average PC and LCD screens on the market in 2005 used 110 watts in idle mode, and laptops used 32 watts, according to the report. A modem adds an additional nine watts, SFN's Going Green reported.