Posted: 05th Oct, 2006 By: MarkJ
The latest research from Nielsen/NetRatings has revealed that terms (Acronyms) such as
VoIP, Podcasting and IPTV still confuse a large number of people. For example, despite 40% of Britons receiving news feeds, 67% did not know what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was:
Acronyms in particular foxed users. 75% of online Britons did not know that VOD stands for video-on-demand, while 68% were unaware that personal video recorders were more commonly referred to as PVRs.
Millions of people keep in touch via instant messaging but some 57% of online Brits said they did not know that the acronym for it was IM.
35% of online Brits had heard the term podcasting but didn't know what it meant and a quarter had never heard of it. Similarly with blogging, 34% said they had heard of it but weren't sure what it meant.
The
BBC News Online item is interesting, yet isn't a terrible surprise. For the more Internet service/access related Acronyms we have our own Jargon Buster to help:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/jargon/