Consumers rule the Web. Consider bloggers; they freely praise or pan products and services, and companies can’t stop it.

While errors and incidents were easily swept under the rug during past decades, the Internet has made it easy for consumers to share horror stories with the masses.

When complaints about ongoing no-shows and screw ups fell upon deaf ears, I felt compelled to share my story about Rogers Customer Service. Now, when someone types Rogers customer service into Google and friends, there’s a good chance they’ll read about the poor service.

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China’s government reported the country has surpassed the U.S. as the online population leader with more than 221 million Internet users.

The figure, reported this week by the Xinhua News Agency, reflects China’s explosive growth in Internet use. It was a 61% increase over the 137 million Internet users reported at the start of 2007.

Nielsen Online estimates the U.S. online population with home or work access at 221 million. By contrast, one-third of Chinese Internet users surf through cybercafes.

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Webcopyplus is involved with a Yale study and would appreciate your participation in a survey that takes less than 10 minutes to complete. There are 20 questions, and you could win a $20 Amazon gift certificate.

Just click on Soe City Survey.

— Thanks!

The New Yorker recently featured “Out of print: The death and life of the American newspaper.”

Journalist Eric Alterman speaks of the Internet’s rise, and how it’s made newspapers seem “slow and unresponsive.” Plus, the dawn of websites like Craigslist is killing print classified advertising.

The outcome, according to media entrepreneur Alan Mutter, is that independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost 42 per cent of their market value in the past three years alone.

“Until recently, newspapers were accustomed to operating as high-margin monopolies,” wrote Alterman. “To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money.”

Meanwhile, eMarketer reported more than $8.6 billion was spent on search engine advertising in 2007, an amount that could reach $16.6 billion in 2011.

It gives the impression it’s just a matter of a few years before newspapers become obsolete.

A total of 480 Internet users who participated in a recent Webcopyplus poll rated the overall quality of web content, and the marks are less that stellar. In fact, more than 88% of the online poll respondents believe they are served “poor” content on the Web.

Additionally, subsequent interviews with web users revealed numerous common concerns.

Read the full story: Poll: Web Delivers Poor Content.

While growth of the US online population has slowed in recent years (projected to be 3.1 per cent in 2008), the number of the nation’s Internet users will reach nearly 200 million in 2008.

That’s according to eMarketer, which analyzes Internet information from more than 3,000 sources.

The Internet research firm also reports Internet usage in the US is becoming a daily habit. Moreover, it reports US Internet users spent 15.3 hours a week online last year.

eMarketer also projects that this year there will be 193.9 million US Internet users — two-thirds of the population. By 2012, 217 million Americans will be online, it reported.

Meanwhile, Internet World Stats, which utilizes data from Nielsen, ITU and other reliable sources, reports 215 million Americans already use the Internet — 71.4% of the US population.

In either case, those are huge numbers and worth tapping into — regardless what business you’re in.

When delivering web content courses, business owners often ask, “How do you find a good copywriter for the Web?” Whether you’re based in London, Toronto or New York, the answer is simple.

Do an online search.

Good copywriters know how to craft copy that persuades people to act, be it to enlist as a member, sign up for a newsletter or purchase a widget.

Good web copywriters can deliver potent copy for people. But they also understand how to write effectively for search engines. They help businesses choose and strategically use select words that will drive targeted audiences to their websites.

Consequently, an effective way to find a good web copywriter is to see who shows up on the top rankings of Google, Yahoo, MSN or your search engine of choice. If they can promote themselves, they can promote you.

Plug in words surrounding web copy writers, professional web copy or what have you, and away you go. A few searches and you’ll be well on your way to finding the right web writer to optimize your website and your business.

Despite major drawbacks of Flash-based sites, some business owners continue to fall into this trap.

As previously noted in Backbone Magazine, Webcopyplus recognizes Flash is an outstanding tool for adding audio, video and animation to a site. However, Flash-based sites can’t be indexed by search engine spiders, which account for the majority of traffic to websites. As a result, these beautiful websites often draw little, if any, traffic.

Moreover, Flash intros prove to be a waste of time and resources. Fortunately, most businesses and designers are moving away from this pointless gimmick, which squanders visitors’ time and web owners’ money.

The Flash topic is one that many individuals are passionate about. In fact, the noted Backbone article prompted a prolonged Ubuntu Forums debate that involved more than 3,400 viewers, more than 300 votes and more than 100 responses.

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Content Convergence and Integration 2008 is coming up from March 12 to 14 in Vancouver, B.C., which promises to help content professionals find more strategic ways to manage content.

This is integral in the new digital world where content gets created and syndicated, integrated, repurposed and redistributed.

Content professionals, from Web to marketing to technical communication professionals, can discover and tap into new techniques to stay ahead of the curve.

European web designers are churning out poor text legibility, unclear menus and confusing task flows, reveals a recent study by Forrester Research.

Nine top European web design agencies offered two of their best reference sites to the research group for rigorous review. Forrester reported it was surprised at the blunders, which it stated “are all well-researched usability problems, often with known solutions.”

The research group went on to state: “Customer experience experts can fix these problems by simply applying scenario design principles and better standards for text fonts and sizes, and by using web analytics to identify task-flow problem spots.”

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