Internet television is happening, right now.

From Ankara to Cape Town, from Seoul to Sydney, from London to Moscow and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco – everywhere, in fact – we can see clear signs that a generational shift is under way, one that will result in a new type of television service – Internet Television – being delivered directly to TV sets in broadband-enabled households around the globe.

In the end, practically all new TV sets will incorporate internet television functionality as a standard feature that viewers will use alongside their existing television services.

There are already over 600 million fixed broadband connections in use around the globe. By 2016 this figure will have increased to over 866 million, or nearly 60 percent of TV households. By way of comparison, by 2016, there will be 577 million cable TV households, 216 million satellite TV (DTH) households and 91 million IPTV (Telco TV) households.

TV set vendors like Sony, LG, Samsung and others are busy introducing a new generation of TV sets – Smart TVs – that can be connected directly to the internet. Users can pick up their remote control, select ‘Internet TV’ and be taken to a new menu system that provides instant access to HD TV shows and movies from Netflix, Miramax, BBC and many others.

By 2016, there will be over 480 million such ‘Smart TVs’ deployed across the globe, all connected to the internet – plus around 100 million more that will be connected by other devices, such as games consoles, Blu-ray players and dedicated boxes.

It will have taken the cable, satellite and IPTV (Telco) TV industries over 60 years to build in excess of 500 major broadcast television networks that can together deliver Pay-TV service to nearly 900 million households. In contrast, the fixed broadband internet will have reached a scale of 580 million in just 20 years.

Knowing that change is coming, public service broadcasters, cable TV companies, satellite providers and terrestrial broadcasters around the world are busy rolling out their own internet television services. Meanwhile, they are trying to understand how internet television – along with a growing list of new entrants – will affect their existing revenue streams.

OK, we admit.  We are suckers for infographics.  Here’s a new one about Pinterest that we thought had some interesting stats on it.  The most interesting thing is that more men are getting involved with Pinterest.  I know I recently put a fantasy baseball sleepers pin up there and it got a lot of response.

If there was any doubt about the importance of search engine optimization, there shouldn’t be now.  Take a look at how many customers come from organic listings.  Nearly 39% of all customers of online merchants come directly from search.

The Mad Hatter Is Definitely Rather Loony is a memorable little acronym the beginner SEO’s can use to remember the basics of search engine optimization and how to improve your site’s ranking in the search engines.

T: Title tag
M: Meta description and keywords tag
H: Header tags: H1, H2, H3
I: Image file names and alt tags
D: Diverse keywords
R: Relevancy
L: Reputable links

Just how powerful is Google?  Take a look at this Infographic and you’ll know.  There’s still room to buy Google stock.

Making a website has just gotten a whole lot easier.  I remember the days when you had to actually learn html and start coding to make a website.  In fact, I took a college course to learn how to do it and was the oldest person in the class.

Today, however, it’s a whole lot easier to make a website.  There are so many options that you can create a website with limited knowledge of html or actually no such knowledge.  One such source of ecommerce software is eDirectHost.  It is a site that I am going to use when I create my next site, because its software gives you flexibility in design, but ease in operation.

I’ve used another ecommerce website builder in the past and it was a bit of a struggle and the websites turned out to look just like all of the other websites.  Moreover, you couldn’t really make any custom changes with it.  This site is quite different.

The ecommerce web design features of the site are excellent and you’ll be a pro on it in less than 30 minutes.  And, if things don’t come easy to you in technology, you can use their customer support and quickly gain a handle on what you need to do.

This is a good infographic full of interesting statistics, but I must admit, I don’t believe all of the stats if there’s not a source for them. Why not include what is the source so we are sure they are legit?

I’ll admit it.  I’m a sucker for infographics.  And, the infographic on meetings hit home with me.  I am continually amazed that managers don’t remember that “there’s a lot of money sitting in this room right now.”  Say what you need to say, let’s all learn from it and exchange ideas, but then let’s get back to work!

Pinterest is the hottest new commodity on the internet and this infographic helps to explain why.

A study by American Pulse shows that Hispanics and Blacks are more likely to log in to social media sites on a daily basis.  While Caucasians trail only slightly in the use of Facebook, they are way behind in the use of other social media tools.  It is especially interesting that only 4.8% of Caucasians log in to LinkedIn on a daily basis, but 15.5% of Hispanics do.

Social Media Adoption by Ethnic Group

Blacks are most likely to use Facebook: 85.5% report having an account, compared with 80.0% of Hispanics and 80.9% of Caucasians.

But Hispanics are more likely than blacks and Caucasians to have accounts on Twitter, Foursquare, and Pinterest:

• 60.4% have a Twitter account, compared with 59.5% of blacks and 35.9% of Caucasians.
• 28.4% have a Foursquare account, compared with 17.9% of blacks and 9.9% of Caucasians.
• 28.5% have a Pinterest account, compared with 17.3% of blacks and 15.0% of Caucasians.

However, black Internet users report spending the most time online in a given day (7.2 hours per day, on average) compared with Hispanics (6.6 hours) and Caucasians (5.3 hours).

If you’d like to Link In with Bob Bentz, please click on the link here.

Study by American Pulse.