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Friendly Fires - Hurting

Facebook beats phone for a fifth of Britons

The majority of people aged between 25 and 34 said they preferred contacting to their friends and family online instead of speaking to them directly, according to a survey by TalkTalk, the broadband provider. The research also indicated that the landline phone has been comprehensively overtaken by mobiles. Nearly 40% said they preferred using their mobile phone to communicate, compared to 22% who liked to use their landlines.

BT earned ten per cent less from fixed voice calls last year, while revenues from land lines fell by £300 million overall, according to data from Ofcom, the Communications regulator. Earnings by mobile phone networks rose by £200 million.

The average amount of money earned per fixed line has now been falling for two years in a row, according to Ofcom. Overall, the number of fixed line connections in the UK is also falling, as younger people increasingly opt for mobile phones and mobile broadband. The total volume of fixed line phone calls fell 20 per cent between 2005 and 2010.

A total of 10.7 million Britons still ‘phone home’ once a week, while the majority of parents used their landlines to call children who had left home. Many, however, were concerned about making calls to mobile phones because they considered it to be too expensive.

Women were twice as likely to talk to their mothers every day as they were there fathers, and twice as likely to text sisters than brothers.

The survey, which interviewed more than 2,000 subjects, also found that people used smartphones 2.7 times per week to talk to colleagues, and 2.6 times per week to talk to friends. One in 20 men said they email their colleagues every hour.

One recent survey suggested that 72 per cent of people would prefer to lose their wallet than their mobile phone.

Though mobile phone technology dates back to the 1940s, the first mobile phone call in Britain did not happen until January 1985, and they started to take off until the 1990s when digital technology was introduced, which allowed text messaging.

Amazon 'to launch book rental service'

The service, which is expected to only be available in the US at first, would see customers pay an annual fee for access to a library of ebooks, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Amazon was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

Publishers are understood to be having mixed reactions to the concept, which has proved to be a successful model for digital movie rentals, as proven by the popular US film service, Netflix.

Amazon is believed to have offered book publishers a large fee for joining the service. However, the negotiations are said to still be in their early stages. The Seattle-based technology company, which is expected to imminently launch a tablet device to rival Apple’s iPad, has also said that the digital ebook library would feature older titles and be accessible to those who pay for $79 a year for Amazon Prime, the service which allows people unlimited two-day shipping and films and TV shows on demand.

One US publishing executive told The Wall Street Journal: “What it [the digital book rental service] would do is downgrade the value of the book business.”

Digital book rental services already exist, with sites like booksfree.com and bookswim.com having been live for some time. However, these services send out the physical books to their customers, rather than just offering limited ebook acces

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