The latest study from the good folks at the Pew Internet & American Life project reports what is by now old news: The number of Internet users among the adult population continues to hit new all time highs. In April, 73% of survey respondents described themselves as Internet users. Click on the graph below to see the growth since the mid 1990s.

The more interesting section of the report documents how Americans are becoming more adept at using the Internet and how the Internet itself is evolving to better accomodate their habits. Click on the graph below to see strong gains in Americans’ satisfaction with the Internet for shopping, health care information, hobbies, and work info.

The report (really just a memo) is only 5 pages long. Get it here.

Check out the April edition of Fundraising Success magazine for an article by Beaconfire co-founder Michael Cervino and myself.

It’s called "Steal Smart" — and it’s an open invitation to borrow techniques that are raising serious revenue for some of the leading online fundraisers in the charity and advocacy world. We touch on the basic principles guiding online fundraising, compare and contrast it to direct mail fundraising, and profile a handful of successful techniques.

Update 6/5: The article has been moved into a subscribers-only archive and is no longer publicly available online.

Last week, our friends at Idealware published an article on the Content Management System landscape penned by yours truly and our resident solutions architect, Usha. We also got plenty of help, particularly from Laura Quinn, Idealware’s esteemed leader. Thanks Laura. If you haven’t read the article, I encourage you to have a peek as it is a pretty solid overview of the CMS market.

As we note in the article, there are literally hundreds of software tools that get the label of CMS these days including the blog tool used here. This isn’t surprising nor a bad thing given the range of needs the CMSs are asked to solve — everything from basic page updating for non technical users to distributed publishing that enables efficient management of thousands of pages of content.

To make sense of the plethora of tools we tried to put them into neat little categories as a way to help nonprofit decision makers get their heads around the options. Categories like Open Source, ASP, Installed product, CMS + eCRM etc are helpful in understanding the options. However, those categories are only tell part of the story.

It struck me that there are other characteristics that can also be a used to classify the landscape of CMS vendors. One of the characteristics that could be very meaningful is the complexity of the tool? Another still is the  complexity of the problems it solves for the organization.

So in one category, there’d be tools that would be useful to organizations for whom the web is a new tool or isn’t yet a strategic part of their business and have very simple needs. Call this category the starter tools. I’m pretty sure that  we could put less than a dozen tools in this category.

What about those organizations that have been on the web for years, have redesigned their site 3, 4, and 5 times, support thousands of pages, manage several sites and have teams of people who work on the Web site? Clearly they have complex needs and require more complex tools. Let’s call this category the advanced tools. I think there are a clear set of tools that fit into this category — perhaps there are even sub categories based on price alone!  :)

Of course, then there is a category (or three) that makes up the messy middle. The tools in the middle are likely to solve complex problems or be complex in a specialty or niche area. For example: Collaborative publishing, community engagement, CRM, and traditional publishing are all examples of a special capability/feature. For each of these, I can think of a at least a handful of tools that otherwise would be in the messy middle that could be categorized by the niche capability.

Of course, even if we successfully categorize the tools, the reality is that determining which one is right for you still requires a comparison of your needs against what the tool provides. But perhaps the starting point will help reduce the effort for all.

For our next article on this subject and for our continuing Executive Dialogue seminar series on  the CMS market, Usha and I will explore alternate categorization methods to see if it can help us make better sense of the landscape for those who don’t have the time or money to work with a consultant. For now, I hope I’m on to something. :)

Web 2.0 is becoming the most bandied about term these days. This blog is not to get into the debate around whether Web 2.0 is just a jargon or does it really mean something. That would be one endless discussion right there. But, many of the so-called Web 2.0 sites are also some of the most popular and fastest growing online applications. So, knowing these would be useful, if not necessary, for anyone interested in online technologies.

In that spirit, here are the Web 2.0 Awards. As the site says, there are �??over 300 Web 2.0 sites in 38 categories rated, ranked, and awarded.�?� That is one extensive list for you to browse through.

Some are old favorites like Technorati (blog guide), BaseCamp (project management), flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (shared bookmarking), and myspace.com (youth community). Some are newbies that served to (at least) increase my vocabulary like Etsy (custom handmade items), Zillow (home valuation), HipCal (online calendar), FURL (bookmarking), and Spurl (again, bookmarking). A few have been in the news lately like YouTube (personal videos), Writely (collaborative writing), odeo (podcasting), and Rollyo (trusted search). An aside: If you are looking for a couple of hours of entertainment, I suggest you check out YouTube.

To further confuse what is Web 2.0 and what is not, the winner in the �??Classifieds & Business Directories�?? category is craigslist.org. This site/service was part of the dot.com craze, then lived through the dot.bomb phase, and is now being called the Web 2.0 site! As I said earlier, I don�??t want to indulge in endless discussions, but still, please do call me confused. :)

Today�??s Washington Post has an interesting article titled New Trends In Online Traffic: Visits to Sites for Blogging, Local Information and Social Networks Drive Web Growth. I read the article for free on washingtonpost.com which by itself requires another blog item on the current (sorry?) state of print media. But, I digress.

The article has really fascinating numbers based on the user traffic data from ComScore Media Metrix, so it is highly recommend reading for everyone. The top three sites with the most growth between Feb 2005 and Feb 2006:

1. Blogger.com: The blogging tool, now owned by Google. From 2.5 mil visitors in Feb 2005 to 15.6 mil in Feb 2006 which is a whopping 528% growth
2. MySpace.com: The site, now owned by Rupert Murdoch�??s News Corp, where the youngsters hang out. From 9 mil visitors in Feb 2005 to 37 mil in Feb 2006 which is a 318% growth
3. Wikipedia – the ‘free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’ which is controlled by the non profit Wikimedia Foundation had 275% growth in the same period (no numbers break down)

When I saw this article, another Washington Post article from a couple of days ago came to mind. This one was about Northern Virgina area students marching to protest the immigration bill titled Students Walk Out in 2nd Day Of Immigration Rights Protest. I quote a paragraph buried somewhere in that story:

School officials did not try to stop them."Part of the Washington-Lee mission is to encourage students to take an active role in their community," Robertson said. As with earlier demonstrations, word of the protests was spread by cellphone and the Web site MySpace.com. Some students said they learned about the immigration debate from newspapers or in class. Others said friends convinced them that many of the proposals were unfair." (emphasis is mine)

So, here is a mobilization tool of choice for the youth – MySpace.com. Non profit organizations that are attempting to reach young activists, better watch that space – bad attempt at pun :).

Additional Reading:

1. The MySpace Generation: They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing (Business Week)
2. Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace (Research Paper)