A new survey from Nielsen NetRatings entitled ‘The 21st Century Digital Consumer’ shows that most British people are nothing of the sort. The majority of those polled have ‘never heard of’ a slew of new(ish) internet and home entertainment technologies. And this wasn’t a poll of the general population, but of internet users.
| Rank | Term / Acronym | % of Britons online who have ‘never heard of it’ |
| 1 | V-O-D | 75% |
| 2 | Wikis | 70% |
| 3 | IPTV | 69% |
| 4 | Really Simple Syndication | 69% |
| 5 | PVR | 68% |
| 6 | Web 2.0 | 67% |
| 7 | RSS | 67% |
| 8 | Triple-play | 66% |
| 9 | VoIP | 59% |
| 10 | IM | 57% |
However, when researchers referred to these technologies in full, rather than using acronyms, recognition levels soared. 333% more people, for example, understood ‘video on demand’ as opposed to VOD. 350% more had heard of a personal video recorder. Whether this is because the full terms here are fairly self-explanatory is hard to say.
It’s a good reminder,though, for those of use who write technology pieces for a general audience that low levels of understanding and recognition are the norm and we really should do our best to cater for the majority.
[...] Ian Delaney talks about the low rates of awareness among the general population, while Stuart Bruce prefers to focus on what he sees as the surprisingly high rates of awareness shown by the report. [...]