Stephanie Jordan's blog

EEC Adopts New Email Measurement Standards, Encourages Industry to Follow

The Email Experience Council (eec) is the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association and its members are professionals that represent trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners and others that focus on electronic marketing. Its founding came about for a few reasons, but mostly because email is largely unregulated when it comes to marketing. The council believes this lack of regulation has allowed what they term “unscrupulous marketers” to abuse email.

A function of the ecc is its member roundtables, which set standards and seek initiatives pertinent to email marketing and communications practices. One issue it recently tackled is measuring email campaigns. Email marketing success has traditionally been driven by measurement, however the metrics used have not been standardized across the industry.

“Industry standard metrics is so foundational that many marketers don’t even think to ask if an open is always an open or if delivered doesn’t mean reaching the inbox,” says eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable vice-chair and Return Path, Inc. VP of Global Market Development Stephanie Miller.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable worked to create standardized metrics for industry adoption. The two-year effort ended in March, when the eec introduced eight email marketing measurement standards that it hopes marketers will adopt.

As of late last month, just two vendors (AllWebEmail and Email Transmit) have actually adopted the standards, but the ecc notes that 11 others have promised to implement the standards in the coming six months.

“I believe in this standard because it provides four main benefits to the email marketers. It improves testing validity by limiting environmental variance, improves industry benchmarking through increased data conformity, improves internal reporting for benchmarking by easing the transition between vendors and finally use of the standards will normalize data across the industry, a key assumption required for any statistical analysis”, said eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable co-chair Luke Glasner of Glasner Consulting.

The new measurement standards include eight definitions for reporting on Accepted, Render and Click-through. In the past, not only were multiple names and terms used that confused some marketers, but also different vendors used different calculations for the same terms.

Project co-chair John Caldwell of Red Pill Email believes, “The email industry has long been without measurement standards, using terms and definitions that make it impossible to benchmark properly or compare vendor performance with confidence. The good work of our volunteer eec member committee is the first time the industry has rallied around a common set of measurement standards.” 

Organizations that adopt and conform to the eec’s email marketing measurement standards will be given an official seal to display on the company’s Web site. Those interested in participating will find an application on the ecc site.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Consumer Influence on Enterprise IT

Striving to understand the impact of social networking on the enterprise, Cisco conducted a survey earlier this year of 512 IT security professionals across the U.S., Germany, Japan, China and India. The results reflect, as I would expect, that consumer influence on IT is growing and that more employees are bringing personal devices and applications into the network.

“Increasingly, unapproved and unmanaged personal devices in the corporate environment are hastening the need for more intelligent security management,” believes Chris Christiansen, program vice president, Security Products and Services Group at IDC. “These ‘solutions’ must deal with the difficulty of protecting individuals and corporations, while providing a positive user experience and corporate data access from any device, anywhere, anytime.”

Exploring the security implications of consumer-oriented technology in the enterprise, the survey found that employees are consistently working around information technology security policies to use unsupported devices and applications.

Additional key findings included:

  • More than half of the survey respondents have determined that their employees use unsupported applications, including:
    • Social networking  – 68 percent
    • Collaborative – 47 percent
    • Peer-to-peer – 47 percent
    • Cloud – 33 percent
  • Nearly half (41 percent) of the respondents have determined that employees have been using unsupported devices, and more than one-third of that number said they have had a breach or loss of information due to unsupported network devices.
  • Despite these trends, about half (53 percent) of the IT respondents said they are likely to allow personal devices on the network in the next 12 months and 7 percent already support personal devices.
  • More than half (51 percent) listed “social networking” as one of the top three biggest security risks to their organization, while one in five (19 percent) considers it the highest risk.
  • Nearly three out of four survey respondents said that overly strict security policies have a moderate or significant negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30.

It is not unexpected that unsanctioned tools, like social networking, are so prevalent. As the report notes, social media is an unprecedented and highly beneficial tool for many parts of an organization, especially human resources, marketing and customer service. There is a clearly a place for the technology, and it appears that users are making the choice on behalf of the organization.

“As the lines between personal and business computing increasingly blur, it is becoming clear that employees are going to use social networking and personal devices whether permitted or not,” observes Fred Kost, director, security solutions for Cisco. “The best strategic approach is to focus less on restricting usage and more on effective solutions to ensure highly secure, responsible use. These solutions involve more than technology. Organizations should develop education programs, corporate policies and best practices in order to realize the extensive business benefits of social networking, while protecting against the variety of potential threats that it can present.”

The survey results are available now.

Nine Out of Ten Spam Emails Now Contain a URL Link

Last week the May edition of Symantec’s Messagelabs Intelligence monthly report published. The report states that the proportion of spam emails that include some form of URL or hyperlink has grown by one percentage point since 2009, from 91 percent in 2009 to 92 percent for 2010, to date. While that may not sound like much of an increase, the report reveals that it translates to nine out of 10 spam emails.

An interesting data point is about the domains used to form the hyperlinks: many are actually legitimate. The report distinguishes between disposable domains, those that are used within a few days for specific spam tactics and then abandoned, and the legitimate ones.

“Domains belonging to well-known Web sites tend to be recycled and used continuously compared with ‘disposable’ domains which are used for a short period of time and never seen again,” says MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst Paul Wood. “Perhaps this is because there is some work involved in acquiring them: the legitimate domains require CAPTCHAs to be solved to create the large numbers of accounts that are then used by spammers.”

The report states: “Of the most frequently occurring domains found in spam URLs, the top four are legitimate and belong to major well-known Web sites used for social networking, blogging, file-sharing and other forms of user-generated content.” These account for 5 percent of all domains found in spam URLs. The bulk of the spam URLs (95 percent) were of the disposable variety.

Known botnets are serving up the spam, using a combination of the legitimate and disposable with a heavier emphasis on the disposable domains, with the exception of Storm. The Storm botnet, which had been silenced for a time, has returned and is, according to the report, the only botnet that uses legitimate domains in greater number (65 percent) than it uses disposable domains.

MessageLabs’ analysts did some Autonomous System Numbers (ASN) sleuthing. (AS numbers are important because the ASN uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.) According to the report: “Where an AS number could be determined for a particular IP address, MessageLabs Intelligence identified that as few as five ASNs were responsible for hosting content for 42 percent of the disposable spam domains scrutinized during May. These were located in the following countries: United States (17 percent of all domains), China (13 percent), Ukraine (8 percent) and France (4 percent).

The whole report, which offers more information, as well as a variety of other findings, is available for download.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

 

Managed File Transfer Myth: MFT is Just for Big Organizations with Big Files

When asked who uses managed file transfer (MFT), the default response might be the enterprise when sending massive files, especially in industries that are heavily regulated. But today, according to providers of the technology, that is not necessarily the case.

“It is so NOT an issue of how big the file is.” says Paula Skokowski, chief marketing officer for Accellion.  “A Social Security Number is just 10 digits and you can get in trouble for sending that out.” Not only is the size of the file not the only driver if MFT should be in place, but also who uses it within the organization.

“What is the logic if we say security is important, yet we give MFT to just 10 percent of the organization?” asks Skokowski. “It only takes someone from the other part of the organization to send an email and you are on the headline news.”

Typical highly regulated organizations, like financial services, healthcare and government, are not the only ones that can see the benefit of MFT. “Cosmetics and media are two industries where external regulations are not the driving factor in managed file transfer decisions,” offers Jonathan Lampe, CISSP, VP product management for Ipswitch File Transfer.  “However, internal concerns around protection of intellectual property serve a similar function in the decision making process.” Lampe continues by noting that it is more about what needs protecting than who the company is, and how big the file is. “Whether we’re serving a bank sending thousands of credit card numbers at a time or a cosmetics giant sending its latest perfume formulas and advertising collateral around the world, the ability to protect and track every exchange remains.”

Skokowski is in agreement stating: “Obviously healthcare with HIPPA and financial services, and government, MFT is a given. Not even debatable. But for the other organizations, it is a case of confidential information that might be intellectual property or sensitive employee information. It doesn’t take any more effort to send a file securely, so really rather than debate, does it need to be secured or not? You might as well just send it securely.”

Really big files were the driver for FTP popularity, which is still used heavily today. As time has passed, however the need to ensure the security of the file and have an audit trail has led to the evolution to MFT. Large files are often loaded to CDs or USB sticks, but these lack the auditing component and can be easily lost.

“The need for establishing data security, especially around file transfer, is because human intervention is rising every day, especially as files keep getting bigger and companies become more aware,” observes Paul French vice president product and solutions marketing for Axway. “CTOs are terrified in how easy it is to send huge files, knowing that they have lost all control, lost all audit.”

French offers an example of YouSendit, where anyone can send a 2GB file. “YouSendit has some security – but the last piece is the audit and compliance and it really falls down there. It is really easy to send a file. We caught 50 people using that. There is a place for YouSendit, just not in the enterprise.”

Knowing where files are going is a benefit of MFT, no matter the size of the file, nor the size of the organization. “We have a customer that is very well-known and its whole business is around their intellectually property,” shares Skokowski. “They discovered files being sent to a country that certainly should not have been receiving it. They wanted to be sure that anyone that sends a file, the person on the other end has to authenticate and that there are controls in place. Using something like YouSendit means that the organization has no visibility.

Accellion, like the others, recognizes that MFT is not just for the enterprise. Last year the company launched a solution for SMBs. “We realized you can still get yourself in a lot of trouble even if you only have 100 employees! You can be handling very sensitive information, and need be responsible in securing, reporting and tracking. So while we do have multi-national, global corporations, we also realize the needs are great across a spectrum of organizations.”

 

For more about MFT read File Transfer Technologies Offer Security and Audit Trails.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

 

Preserve Your Online Reputation: Beware of Forged Email, Phishing Sites, Malware and Brandjacking

Organizations of all sizes, from the small-to-medium business (SMB) to the largest enterprise, have this in common: you must protect your business and your brand. While this is important in the brick and mortar world, it can be especially challenging for your online presence. Keeping your website free of malware and spoofing is an ongoing process. The work is never done.

This month saw WordPress blogs hacked on some shared hosting sites resulting in virus installations on the computers of unsuspecting site visitors. (According to the folks at WPSecurityLock, if you are hosting your WordPress blog at DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost, Media temple or on another hosting company, you should check your websites now to see if it has been infected. They also warn that you should not try to open your website unless you have an up-to-date anti-virus program, your computer is virus free and you’re on a secured network.) At the time of this writing, the genesis of the problem is unknown; it doesn’t appear to be specific to any one hosting company, nor to WordPress itself. This is (unfortunately) an excellent example of the threats that can compromise your site, and your reputation as being a “safe” place to visit in cyberland.

Another area where one’s reputation can be placed in jeopardy is brandjacking. In March, MarkMonitor, a provider of enterprise brand protection, reported that online brand abuse rose across major industries in 2009. Its latest Brandjacking Index reveals the total number of phishing attacks was at an all-time high, with attacks targeting social network sites increasing to represent two percent of all phish attacks in 2009. The report spotlights the techniques and scams used by fraudsters and cybercriminals to monetize Web traffic using well-known brands as the lure.

The report found that brand abuse increased across all industry categories measured by the Index with the automotive and media industries drawing the most abuse. Abuse targeting luxury brands demonstrated the greatest increase, growing 23 percent year-over-year, followed by abuse targeting apparel brands, which grew 14 percent year-over-year. For the third straight year cybersquatting, the method of using brands in bad faith within the domain name system, continued to be the most prevalent form of brand abuse. In addition, phish attacks reached a new record high with 565,502 attacks in 2009, growing 62 percent over 2008.

Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor, says that scammers are continually seeking new methods of monetizing traffic, and believes brands face a growing and pervasive problem from online abuse. “With billions of dollars worth of eCommerce sales, intellectual property and online marketing investments at stake, companies need to take proactive roles in fighting brand abuse online now more than ever,” he says.

Safety measures are improving, but are not failsafe. Last month the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) declared the majority of consumer websites remain vulnerable to online fraud, even as a growing number of businesses deploy online safety measures. In its annual survey of best practices meant to help protect consumers from the onslaught of forged email, phishing sites and malware, the organization determined of the 1,200 companies analyzed, only 113 qualified to be named to the OTA Online Safety 2010 Honor Roll

The survey examined 1,200 domains and analyzed 500 million email messages purporting to come from the Fortune 500, Internet Retail 500, top 100 financial Institutions in North America and consumer facing federal government websites. Sites were evaluated based on their usage of email authentication standards and Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL) and the presence of malware.

“While major corporations, banks, governmental agencies and industry working groups talk about best practices, the majority are failing to adopt, risking demands for added regulations,” warns Craig Spiezle, executive director and president of the OTA.

OTA is calling on all consumer financial institutions, commerce sites and consumer facing governmental agencies to implement EV SSL certificates, email authentication and complete daily site scans for malware and vulnerabilities by September 1, 2010.

While OTA focuses on the largest of those industries noted above, the lessons learned can be applied to all businesses, be it business-to-business, or business-to-consumer, and of any size. The lesson is this: take care of your online business, protect your brand, and protect those visiting your site with a solid security policy. No business can flourish without the trust of those that frequent your site.

 

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Social Networks Versus Email

As part of its preparations for Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit 2010 held earlier this month in Baltimore, Gartner analysts shared predictions on the use of social software and collaboration in the enterprise.

“A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space, observes Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner and co-chair of the Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit. “The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business.”

One of the key predictions that Gartner makes is that the greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications by 2014. Analysts think that during the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts.

Organizations are already finding ways to integrate social networking into marketing efforts and communications, so it makes sense that social networking will become more relied upon for business activities over email.

“The rigid distinction between email and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer email capabilities,” expects Matt Cain, research vice president at Gartner. “While email is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services.”

Other research seems to confirm Gartner’s prediction. Keith R. Crosley, director of market development for Proofpoint, Inc. is one who does not dispute the finding. “In some rather informal research we conducted last year, Proofpoint found that more than half of UK workers and more than 40 percent of U.S. workers use social media platforms more than email in their personal lives,” he says. “About 10 percent of UK and 7 percent of U.S. workers said they already use social media platforms more than email in their professional lives. So it’s not much of a stretch to see this trend continuing to encompass 20 percent of business users in the next 4 years.”

But with the coming reliance on social networks, will the security of the channel be ready? Crosley believes that it will. “Over the next four years, I think that the security risks associated with social media platforms will be both better understood and better addressed. It’s reasonable to assume that they will be mature enough from a security standpoint.”

In addition, Crosley notes that like email, many of the risks associated with social media have both a policy and technology dimension and will continue to be fairly complex. “I’m thinking of data loss risks, acceptable use and related policy issues.”

Gartner is in agreement. As part of the prediction, Gilbert expects that success in social software and collaboration will require a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and business units. Gartner recommends that organizations develop a long-term strategy for provisioning and consuming a rich set of collaboration and social software services, and develop policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes.
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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Email & Productivity

According to IT research firm Gartner, non-work-related Internet surfing results in an estimated 40 percent productivity loss each year for American businesses. While the Web surfing productivity drain is a loss to the company, there is another less talked about productivity drain that can directly hurt individual employees: the email inbox.

Marsha Egan, CEO of The Egan Group, Inc. — an executive and life coaching firm — is the author of Inbox Detox and the Habit of E-mail Excellence, a book that helps employees and executives examine and improve their email habits to save time and increase productivity. Egan challenges workers (and businesses) to admit that they have poor email habits.

“Email is a very effective communication tool upon which businesses rely heavily,” says Egan. “However, we have developed a dependency on email that saps productivity. Many people can’t keep up with their inbox and simply declare email bankruptcy.”

Egan points to statistics that show many employees check work email over weekends and while on vacation. “It’s clear that in the new decade, email users must take control their email before it controls them,” she declares. Egan asserts that between reading, responding, and recovery time, the average email interruption takes four minutes of valuable work time. “If a worker receives an average of 15 email interruptions per day, one hour of time is lost to email interruptions. If that worker is part of a 20-person department, 20 hours of work time are lost per day. Then, if the employees average $20 USD per hour, the company loses $2000 USD per week due to a loss of worker productivity.”

Egan believes that without healthy email habits, the problems will only get worse. While seemly simple, there are a few steps that Egan recommends:

Place the main point, assignment, or request in the first two lines of the email. People have a tendency to build up to a conclusion when they write. At times, this habit makes it very difficult for email readers to figure out what the main issue or request is. By putting your main point in the first two sentences, you can avoid misinterpretations and get readers focused on exactly what you want, right from the get-go.

Keep emails short. When you send short, easy-to-read messages, people will respond in the same manner and you save incredible amounts of time sorting through your inbox.

Send less email. While this may seem a no-brainer, email begets email. Consider your alternatives. In many cases, it is better and easier to pick up the phone, visit the would-be recipient’s desk, or simply not respond.

“There is a cure for our current email e-ddiction,” Egan says. “If you practice productive email habits, you will not only loosen the grip email has on you, but you will also reclaim hours of productive time every day.”

More on increasing email productivity can be found on her website and her blog.

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Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

Simplifying IT Continues as Mantra

Reducing IT complexity has been a goal for many enterprises for the past few years. As is typical of a trend, many factors contribute to this desire to simplify today’s IT infrastructures, systems and applications that have created a complex mix of vendors addressing multiple issues.

As a result, simplicity as a key message in product positioning seems to be spreading. In the last few days alone a handful of announcements have prominently incorporated IT simplicity.

Yesterday HP and Microsoft Corp. announced a three-year agreement to “invest $250 million to significantly simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes.”

According to a written statement, the companies expect to deliver new solutions that will:

  • be built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model;
  • advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation; and
  • eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower overall costs.

The companies say the reason for the agreement is to improve the customer experience for developing, deploying and managing IT environments.

Tuesday’s announcement from VMware of its intent to purchase Zimbra from Yahoo! also pushed the theme of simplicity. Steve Herrod, chief technology officer for VMware, used a form of the term simple (simplify, simplicity, simpler) at least a dozen times in his blog talking about the acquisition.

Herrod writes: “VMware’s mission is to simplify IT, and every VMware product focuses on attacking the complexity and rigidity that has crept into this world. In many ways we see the excitement over cloud computing to be a longing for a simpler, more flexible way of doing computing. The VMware strategy is to help customers achieve cloud-like efficiency and operational improvements across the major IT infrastructure investment areas. To date this strategy has involved products and services targeting complexity in datacenter infrastructure (e.g. VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server), desktops (e.g. VMware View and VMware Fusion), and application development (e.g. SpringSource, VMware Lab Manager, and VMware Workstation). With this acquisition, we will extend our focus into email and collaboration, one of the core services (along with areas such as file and print services and identity management) that IT departments universally provide to their users.”

As IT infrastructures age while budgets constrict, the appeal for IT organizations to re-think and simplify in 2010 will only grow. It will be interesting to see if the vendor promises of simplification truly translate to increased productivity and better IT management.

Happy New Year to All

As 2009 draws to a close, my thoughts turn to the year in review. The messaging space has never been slow moving, and this year has proved no different.

I won’t offer a replay here, but suffice it to say the topics that I will most remember include social media growth; malware exploits, botnets and the take down of Mega-D; cloud computing with more email infrastructures making the move off premises than ever before; virtualization adoption and message archiving.

I suspect that we will see more of all in 2010, with a special emphasis on social media as Twitter and Facebook continue to mature and new ways to take advantage of those mediums (from legitimate businesses and malware makers alike) are created. Applications, designed for everything from Web sites to mobile devices, will continue to emerge making it the job of IT administrators to not only figure out how to best manage the applications, but also understand the security implications too.

Data will also continue to be a focus, as more regulations surround storing, accessing and securing data in motion and at rest. Archiving will continue to be more widely adopted, as fast access to electronic data becomes expected of all industries. Social media and unified communications archiving, along with its eDiscovery implications, will be an interesting topic to follow in 2010. Privacy too will be more and more of an issue to watch, what with all this data being maintained and accessible.

There is never a dull moment in this space, be it in security, social media, collaboration, virtualization, online marketing, compliance & privacy or any of the other topics we like to follow. The Messaging News team is very grateful to our readers, advertisers and industry experts that have offered support and good wishes for our continued success and for contributing to our unique offering. As we anticipate 2010, our goal is to continuously improve ourselves, so we can provide you with a trustworthy source of messaging news, trends and insights.

My Messaging News colleagues join me in sending our best wishes for 2010.

iPhone Popularity and Data Usage

iPhone power users may need to keep tabs on AT&T, as the company is considering plans to encourage users to cut down on wireless usage. At the company analyst meeting this week, Ralph de la Vega, who runs the wireless and consumer arms of the company, noted that growing use of data is requiring more bandwidth and expensive network equipment, and as a result is considering taking action. That action could take the form of a tiered pricing structure that would charge based on usage, including possibly instigating usage caps.

At the investor conference in New York, de la Vega noted that just 3 percent of iPhone customers account for about 40 percent of the traffic on the company’s wireless data network. His hope is that incentives would be enough to curb the data use. Early responses from power users were not favorable, as the news spread across the Internet.

It is not surprising that AT&T has bandwidth concerns, as the iPhone market shows no signs of stopping. San Francisco-based Flurry Analytics, which monitors mobile applications, reports: “life-to-date, more than 34 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices have been sold in the U.S. through the end of September 2009. This equates to roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population.”

Clearly, the popularity of the iPhone shows no signs of slowing and it is impacting other markets. The iPhone App Store Games category of the iPhone App Store drew the most new content each month from the store’s launch in July 2008 through August of this year — taking a bite into the business of Nintendo DS. Similarly threatened is Kindle, as iPhone is taking a big bite into the book category of Media & Entertainment with more books than games being introduced in October.

Last month, however, saw the launch of Droid, as Google, Verizon and Motorola attempt to cash in on the iPhone craze. Flurry believes that, “while the Android platform is the most legitimate challenger to iPhone smartphone dominance, it’s important to remember that the iPhone’s flank is protected by an often overlooked, powerful fighting brand: iPod Touch.”

In an interesting analogy, Flurry compares iPod Touch marketing to teens as being a kin to McDonald’s Happy Meal marketing strategy, stating: “When today’s young iPod Touch users age by five years, they will already have iTunes accounts, saved personal contacts to their iPod Touch devices, purchased hundreds of apps and songs, and mastered the iPhone OS user interface. This translates into loyalty and switching costs, allowing Apple to seamlessly ‘graduate’ young users from the iPod Touch to the iPhone.”

Droid’s debut, while launched only in the U.S., did well. Flurry estimates that in the “first week showing, the Droid is the fastest-selling Android phone to date. Compared to the myTouch 3G on T-Mobile, Droid outsold it by more than four times.” Flurry does point to the fact that Verizon has nearly 90 million subscribers to T-Mobile’s 34 million, and that, “Verizon has shown a willingness to outspend previous carriers with its $100 million campaign.”

With this strong start by Droid, the competition is increasing with more devices on par with the iPhone than in the past. It will be interesting to see how the competition uses the ammunition of AT&T’s sometimes-slow network, and the company’s potential threat of a new data usage structure to its advantage. According to de la Vega, there is no timeline or finalized action plan to address the usage issue.

Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com

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