IT Literacy among IT pros : Survey results
My skies are overcasted with Web 2.0 buzz. Open source technologies, Free to use software products, free services, free and easy Knowledge sharing, being up-to-date on bleeding edge technologies is all so much a part of my life now. I just created an iGoogle gadget for my blog readers and wanted everyone to know. Now, there were two things I did not know for sure.
- Who reads my blog regularily? - No subscription facility
- Who uses iGoogle?
Now since I could ask nobody, I set out to find it by myself. I created a survey. The aim was to gauge the awareness of the power of IT among those who, I believe, should know about it. And also, to know who uses iGoogle and might be interested in using my gadget. I surveyed 50 people from accross the globe, who are in IT or IT-enabled businesses. 90% of them are working professionals (aged 20-30) - software engineers, consultants, post graduate students, Managers, CEOs and business owners. These are people in my network, who I believe, should be using the power of IT pretty well. Fortunately or unfortunately the results were shocking (at least to me).
Here are a few stats :
- Only around 29% people use Web2.0 products. Around 42% dont even know what they are.
- While 66% people use Internet for Blogging, Social/Professional Networking, 46% think online Social/Professional networking is not worth anything.
- 84% people are away from goodies like RSS and Podcasting, 42% never even heard about them. Only 14% are using free and powerful GTD tools and services available on the web. Infact 68% dont even know what GTD is. And that’s precisely why they should subscribe to ujjwalstreet journal.
Conclusion:
- A majority of population is still living in dark ages, a computerized dark age.
- There is a lot of scope to market new web 2.0, GTD products, RSS based services. But the marketers have to first take up revolutionary awareness programs before they can successfully tap this market.
- A majority of young, talented professionals need to be told about using professional networking to hedge against recession.
BTW I was a little disappointed to know that only 36% users use iGoogle all the time. Anyways it was a great eye opener for me. Are your experiences any different?
