A survey of 2000 internet users in the UK from GfK NOP has found that iTunes still remains by far the most popular music service, but that new entrant Spotify is shooting rapidly up the charts, despite having only just celebrated its 1st birthday.

The survey asked participants which music services they used, and 11% said Spotify. That puts it in fourth place behind Real Player (13%), Amazon (24%) and iTunes sitting at the top with 50% approval rating. Spotify sits ahead of the slightly older Last.fm (7%), MP3.com (5%) and Napster (4%). 60% of users stream music direct from the Web.

In the navigation arena, Google Maps dominates with 72% of those surveyed saying they used it. The AA came in second place with 40% and Multimap was third with 35%. Behind that came Mapquest (7%), MSN Maps (4%), Yahoo Maps (4%) and Streetmap (3%).

When it comes to social networking, new boy Twitter draws for second place with MySpace - but both only have 4% of people who use them as their main social network. Bebo is even lower with 2%, but Facebook romps home with over 74% of users picking it as their favourite.

IM is similarly dominated by one provider - Windows Live Messenger. 50% picked it as their main provider, with 16% going for Facebook chat, Yahoo IM coming in third with 8%, Skype at 6%, AIM at 5% and Google Talk coming in at just 2%.

Webmail is closer - 33% opt for Hotmail, but Yahoo Mail was chosen by 14%, 10% picked their own ISP's service, and only 6% have "Gone Google" and picked up a Gmail account. Interestingly, a further 6% said they used email provided by a social network - is this MySpace mail?

Lastly, Skype wins out when it comes to VoIP - 60% of respondents picked it as their favourite online voice-calling app. Google Talk was second with 13%, and VoIP.com and Gizmo came in third with 3% each.

Of course, while the best provider is winning the day in some categories, others are dominated by bloated former giants commanding the attention of people who are too lazy to make a change. Which would you pick as your favourite in each category? Let us know in the comments below.

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Tags: Software Online Websites Music IM Mapping Software Social Networks Email iTunes Spotify MySpace Twitter Facebook Amazon Lastfm Gmail Hotmail Skype Yahoo Microsoft Google Statistics

iTunes still most popular music service by far originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41:43 +0000

Mozilla has announced an interesting project called Raindrop, which appears massively complicated on the surface but is actually quite a simple idea when you strip it free of buzzwords.

Mozilla (like Google, with its Wave platform) says that "email isn't fun any more". Instead, conversations are taking place all across the Web - in IM, Twitter, blog comment threads, Facebook, and other locations. Raindrop wants to aggregate all that in one place, and sort it so that the useful stuff comes straight to you.

Unimportant messages, like mailing lists, will be relegated to the background whereas the email from your mother telling you she's booked a family holiday to Barbados or the IM conversation from your girlfriend telling you that she's pregnant pops up front and central.

At the moment the project is at version 0.1, so it's only open to developers. You won't be able to download a client just yet, and the team's first task is to create an installer for the application. Still, it sounds like an interesting idea, and we'll keep an eye on it and we'll let you know when it's available to try.

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Tags: Software Online Websites Mozilla Email IM Twitter Video

Mozilla announces Raindrop communcations project originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:47:52 +0100