Hello, goodbye

Telcos, life sure is getting more complicated. DT said today that line loss (which I make out at 5.7% annualized) was unexpectedly high in Q1, though this is tame compared to KPN's 15.5% in consumer, Telia Sweden's 10%, or Telenor's 16%. The company cut its revenue outlook for the Broadband and Fixed division by EUR600m based on this first quarter, and it looks as though the likes of Freenet and United Internet are really starting to bite.

Meanwhile, over on the Viacom call, management said XFire's user base is growing at 8 - 10% per month, and that one million of its four million users (heavy hitters) are on the service for an average of 91 hours a month. 91 hours a month! Two years ago at VON in London I put up some usage statistics from Social Networking 1.0 poster child, Friendster, which was hot sh^t at the time, and made the point that the time spent in the site was way ahead of time spent on any other "dating site" and more than on the PSTN typically. I made the point that communities of interest could generate this level of intensity of usage, provided they were tied to a compelling experience - and this made them fertile ground for IM and VoIP. I thought it was a no-brainer, but I think some people disagreed with me, and I'm not convinced the telecom industry has yet really grasped this, but old media seems to have gotten hip very quickly.