82.3% of ANYwebcam members are satisfied

During the last week of January, we ran a survey asking members to tell us what features they use, how important these features are to them and if we were meeting the members’ expectations. We also wanted to know how members’ feel about the overall ANYwebcam experience and how likely they were to refer ANYwebcam.com to someone.

43,192 members filled in the survey which provided a set of results that is representative of the entire ANYwebcam member community with a high level of statistical accuracy.

The team here at ANYwebcam.com work hard to make sure the site is reliable and enjoyable for its members. We were grateful to hear that 82.3% of members were satisfied with ANYwebcam. This is the first time that we have attempted to measure this important metric and whilst we are happy with the results, we are also committed to improving the ANYwebcam experience to ensure that community satisfaction continues to rise.

To achieve this, there is plenty of survey response data on features including cams, broadcasting, chat, message boards, galleries, profiles and support that we will be acting on.

Here are some of the facts that we put into graphs that you may find of interest.

1. ANYwebcam.com spans the Globe

Over the last 6 years, ANYwebcam has grown to include members from over 100 different countries and is accessed in 13 different languages.

ANYwebcam is truly a global community, allowing our members to interact with people from all over the globe and from diverse walks of life. Here are some comments from the survey –

“I enjoy seeing others from around the world freely expressing how they feel in an open and honest manner for all to see.”

“i love coming here to meet people from all over the world and see their face while talking to them and seeing their type of life they have.”

Making ANYwebcam available in different languages is a good starting point.  Indeed, having 20% of our members reside in Europe is encouraging.  What we want though is to not only attract more European members, but to build a larger, stronger and more diverse community.

Here are some comments from European members that tell us we are heading in the right direction -

“AWC is a great community with many interesting people”

“Anywebcam is a place where people can express themselves anyway they want.to be made to feel respected”

2. MEMBERS AGE RANGE

It’s been an interesting exercise to map out the age ranges of our members. The fact that speaks loudly is that 50% of our members are aged in their 30’s. While our members span many different generations, ANYwebcam has a great mix of youth, maturity, life experience and wisdom.

Here is a quote from a younger member

“I just love how when I ask for advise, I am overwhelmed by so many kind people wanting to help me.”

And another from an older member -

“Coming to AWC makes me feel younger and that I have lots to contribute and my input is appreciated.”

Having a good mix of ages represented is vital in growing a diverse worldwide community. However, the community has a gender imbalance that we want to address as part of our future strategy.

Please consider these comments -

“Great site but need more women on”

and,

“Cause there aren’t enough women on the website. You should give some kind of promotion/discount to get more women memberships.”

We need to attract more female members across the age bands.  To help ensure that, we intend to provide our members with more of the tools they need to make the community more comfortable and enjoyable.

Here are what a few of our ladies have said -

“Its like being in a gated community. You’re keeping out the riff-raff. Haven’t seen anyone being abused. I say this is a safe site”

and another –

“to be honest the reason i am satisfied with any web cam is because i feel it is above all a safe environment for meeting like-minded people. The people who come in here are also what make the site so good”

Our female members agree that ANYwebcam is safe place where they feel like they are respected. We need to let every woman on the face of the earth know this and the most credible way of getting the word out, is for our female members to take an active role. Let your girlfriends and colleagues know that ANYwebcam is a safe community that values them and respects them.  Please help us achieve this important goal of attracting more women to ANYwebcam.com.

3. COMMUNITY SEGMENTATION

What makes our community vibrant, fresh and alive, are the inputs from the members. It’s the same in your local community as it is with our online community. There are people that create things, there are people that add through their involvement and there are people that are simply there to watch what’s going on. We’ve classified the different types of community members and this is what we have –

• Creators – People that create new material whether it’s broadcasting themselves on cam or uploading their media.
• Collaborators – People that involve themselves by adding their contribution by participating in chat and/or on message boards.
• Consumers – These are the people that come to the community simply to watch and observe.

There is a growing conventional wisdom on the internet called the 1% Rule which says that if you get 100 people online, 1 will create content (Creator), 10 will interact with it, comment or try to improve it (Collaborators) and 89 will just read and watch it (Consumers).

The ANYwebcam community eclipses the 1% rule. We achieve 20 times more. 20% of our members in some way, shape or form, create material while 45% of members simply come to view the content.

Perhaps the 1% rule is an overly simplistic model to overlay on our community because the reality is that just about every member of the ANYwebcam community is a combination of the 3C’s. This is represented in the diagram with the cross over areas.

What this diagram tells us is that ANYwebcam members are very involved with the site. Meaning that members are likely to take advantage of multiple features that ANYwebcam offers.

Here are some quotes taken from the survey –

“I love it because AWC offers so many things for me to do. I can chat with my friends, see the expressions change on their face, share my sense of humor on the message board and if I want more, I can look through ppls competition entries. It’s that great”

While the majority of our members use many of the features that ANYwebcam offers, we still have room to improve these features so that we can build a stronger, larger and more involved community.

Please consider some of the feedback we received –

“We have enjoyed every minute on here!! The cams could do with running faster but I am sure that will come.”

“I am surprised that more people aren’t on anywebcam”

And this –

“I find the site very user friendly! My only wishes are that searches for users were more specific so that for instance we here in the US could find all users in a selected state”

“i think more people would join if the membership was paid by the month and not recurring so you have to cancel it if you want to”

We hear the message loud and clear. Our technologies need to remain at the forefront and we need to improve the way that we communicate to both our members and our non-members. The last thing that we are doing is resting on our laurels.

Many of you will notice that we are now have internal advertising of the key features offered which the survey participants rated as important to them. We are also planning new initiatives to improve the member experience which we will release as soon as they are completed.

4. SITE FEATURES

This graph shows the percentage of members that access the individual features available at ANYwebcam.com. The way it reads is “95% of members watch cams, 90% of members view profiles, etc.)

A surprising statistic is that only 35% of members access the message boards.

The message boards are a snapshot of the community’s feelings, its moods and its thought at any given point in time. It is the community’s time capsule. Ever want to know how to cook up a Turducken or to remind ourselves of the horror of 9/11?  With a simple search of the message boards you can find these things and many more.

Here’s an encouraging comment  –

“Had to do a presentation at work and a colleague suggested I lighten it up and crack some jokes. All my jokes came from AWC boards and the audience were in stitches, some clearly didn’t approve but it sure was worth it”

The messages boards are open to all members however, some free members feel disengaged from the boards because of posting restrictions. Like this comment -

“It would be alot better if I could post to the boards”

or this

“you should give free members more access to the message boards”

We will definitely consider this feedback, however, for those Free members who want to get more involved we encourage you to look into all the benefits of being a paid member.

5. MEMBERS THAT BROADCAST

This is an interesting result that we got from the survey. Our logs show that 30% of members broadcast their cams but the result that we got is 75% of members intend to broadcast their cams. This leaves 45% of members wanting to broadcast that obviously don’t.

It does pose an interesting question. What can ANYwebcam do to get more members broadcasting their cam? The desire is obviously there and perhaps there is an obstacle between intention and actually broadcasting?

We would ask for the members to help us understand what the obstacles are as we couldn’t find any comments in the survey that give us clarity on the issue. We would encourage the community to post their idea’s on the Message Board’s or let Support know.

In closing, some of the results from the member survey made us go “wow” and other results confirm that we are on the right track in terms of building a larger and stronger community. We are actively developing Version 5 of the ANYwebcam software and website and you have helped us set our goals :-

• Develop a variety of strategies to get more people onto ANYwebcam.
• Modernize the usability and navigation of ANYwebcam and to improve the look and feel.
• Enable members to personalize ANYwebcam to their own requirements.
• Investigate true streaming video live cams with better resolution, larger cam window size and integrated audio for our Gold members.
• Ramp up research and development to deliver an improved chat experience.
• Move from Java to Flash platforms to enable better quality real time media tools for cams, chat and voice.
• Provide our members with new desktop tools where members can access ANYwebcam features without having to open an internet browser.
• Make broadcasting available to a much larger population as we are doing with ANYwebcam LIVE!

Stay tuned, 2007 is shaping up to be a great year at ANYwebcam

Thank you to all that participated in the survey.

We were lucky enough to see a most excelent talk last night by Shirley and Brian about their magnificent adventure.

http://www.aussiesoverland.com/

“What possesses two seemingly normal middle class professionals to turn their backs on the safety of their home and travel across the world on a motorcycle? That is a difficult question to answer – even for us.

Brian is a career policeman with more than 27 years in the job. He has risen to the rank of Inspector. Shirley is a journalist/author. She has established a good business as a freelance writer and publicist.

Together we have planned and prepared our way clear to spend 12 months on the road – two up on a motorcycle – Aussies Overland!”

These are just a normal couple who had the courage and passion to persue their dream. Their talk, which went way to quickly, was full of amazing stories, people and places. We were lucky enough to see some of the 8,000 photo’s they took of the joyrney.

As you would expect from a year on the road and 1,000’s of miles covered, they have an amazing collection of stories of people, places and a few harrowing situations. Their talk was but a teaser and for those interested you can buy their book “Two for the Road” dirtectly from Shirley and Brian by contacting them at riders@aussiesoverland.com

I want to send a big shout-out of thanks to Ivan from Snipperoo.com. A few days ago Ivan announced that the ANYwebcam.com Live webcam widget was now one of Snipperoo’s Top 10 most popular!

Many thanks to Ivan and everyone else for helping get the word out about our webcam tool. We are continually improving the service and expanding the list of compatible sites, so check back often and get your cam live today.

We have just updated our webcam live tool. You can now choose from over 30 different themes to personalize your webcam for your profile. I’m using the basic TV theme on my profile for example, or choose from various textures, colored shapes and more.

Get you new theme for free at http://www.anywebcam.com/myspace … and please don’t forget to let your friends know about this cool new tool

For those that haven’t checked it out yet our Webcam Live tool let’s you add your webcam to your MySpace profile for free.

We’re very, very excited. Last week we found a new home and our offer got accepted, still going through the approval process so keep your fingers crossed for us … but, hopefully, here’s our new home;

Back from holidays and I thought I’d share just a few of the pics;

Well it’s vacation time … I’m taking family and friends to the new Four Seasons in the Maldives for a few weeks, then hitting Singapore for shopping and back in time for xmass.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ANYwebcam.com launches NEW Webcam widget for Social Networking sites!

November 20, 2006 : Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

Utilizing advanced webcam technology, ANYwebcam.com announced the FREE availability of ANYwebcam.com LIVE!, a simple tool that anyone can quickly and easily add their LIVE webcam window to their blog or social networking profile page.

Anywebcam.com LIVE! is targeted to MySpace, Hi5, Xanga, Cherry Tap (and more …) users who wish to enhance their social networking presence with the addition of their real time webcam broadcast, enabling their friends to see them LIVE.

The technology used to power the new LIVE! service is the same used by ANYwebcam.com to provide webcams and chat to over 3 million members. The proprietary hub-and-spake technology avoids the limitations of the peer-to-peer cam model used by MSN, Yahoo and Stickam where image quality and speed suffer in direct proportion to the number of people viewing the broadcast. ANYwebcam LIVE! is based on the proven technology of Flash which has over the last 10 years, has grown to become the cross platform standard used by a staggering 96% of all internet users.

For an example, see http://www.anywebcam.com/myspace

About ANYwebcam.com
ANYwebcam.com is the world’s largest webcam chat community with 3.2 million active members and has been in business for over 6 years.

For further enquiries contact –
Randall Wood
randall@anywebcam.com
International Phone: +61 3 9525 2855

Gary over at Wireless Pursuits posted It was Already Here! today. Which, rightly so, points out this ‘Social Networking’ thing isn’t all that new … and while it’s nice being credited as one of the pioneers in the online communities space I must correct Gary on one point. ANYwebcam.com is far from ‘no longer with us’ … we have just celebrated our 6th year of operations and are now well over 3 million members. I absolutely recognize the need to continually evolve our offering and modernize the business. We are in the throws at the moment of creating our new version 5 software which will not only update the look and feel but enhance many of the community tools our members have come to enjoy.

If your a citizen of the United States you have the opportunity to Vote in the upcoming Mid-Term Elections on November 7th and have your voice heard.

Here at ANYwebcam.com I believe we have an obligation to talk to the situation for two reasons; we value your right to Free Speech, Privacy and the ability to enjoy responsible adult entertainment, and secondly, over the last few months ANYwebcam.com has been visited by over 20 million americans (according to Google Analytics).

Rather then focusing on an abstract Democrats v’s Republican argument I wanted to point you to some research the Free Speech Coalition released. The Congressional Report Card helps point you to key races being held and a comprehensive rating of all nominee’s.

“As you decide how to vote in November, Free Speech Coalition urges you to consider the voting record of the incumbents on the ballot and how that voting record reflects the member’s views. Unfortunately, bills in Congress that directly impact adult entertainment are generally by voice vote only, and are not recorded. In addition, they are often buried within worthwhile child protection, sex offender or other bills that are so hypocritically worded that members can hardly afford to vote against them. Therefore, we have compiled this Congressional Report Card based on Roll Call Votes in which the issue relates to your broad First Amendment rights to free speech, a free press, privacy rights, and the separation of church and state.”

Get informed and get out and Vote on Nov. 7th