Currently connecting 2241 New Zealanders and Australians with 18 research available opportunities
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The internetThe internet has been growing rapidly since its inception and more and more people are connected to this global information network. The Oceanic / Australasian region has some of the best penetration, with 3.4M registered internet users in New Zealand and 17M users in Australia. (http://www.internetworldstats.com).Facilitating communicationsThe term “web 2.0” refers to the generation of web content that is dynamic and user controlled. Unlike the static book-like pages that dominated the earlier internet years, this new generation of web culture has spawned the development of a myriad of social media opportunities. These include blogs, forums, flogs, tagging, sharing, social networking sites such as Facebook (1.3 million New Zealanders and 7.6 million Australians), myspace, twitter and bebo, as well as social bookmarking. In some cases, tradition media are merging with online strategies. Online versions of popular newspapers may reach as many people as the hard copies (NZ herald receives 3M+ unique visitors per month, while hard copies are regularly received by 250,000). The logistics and cost of reaching such large volumes of individuals with traditional methods would be prohibitive, and thus it is not surprising that the internet has yielded communications that would previously have been impossible or impractical.Online media has the potential to become viral, with consumers themselves serving as online media distributors. Anyone may spread news via a link or post on a blog or forum, and specific sharing tools encourage and make information distribution and sharing incredible easy (try the Sharethis link on the bottom of this page). There are no equivalents of this in traditional media. A source of informationIt is not surprising that the internet has become a health information portal. An August 2006 survey (1) found that 80% of American adults have searched for information on at least one of 17 health topics, and among this group, 66% reported to commence their inquiries via an internet search engine (e.g. Google). Closer to home, a Southern Cross Healthcare (2) survey found that 73% of respondents use the internet to access health information. In Australia, it is estimated that 27% of regular internet users and about 75% of internet users who are in poor health, seek health information online (3).Overall, the internet provides a valuable medium to locate and appeal to potential research participants. Incorporating this medium into your marketing campaign could significantly reduce the trouble and time it takes to find the people you need. References
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