2003

Blog Bog and an E-Mail Pony Express

Are Web logs more fizzle than sizzle? A recent study by Perseus Development, a research firm and maker of software for surveys, finds that fully 66 percent of the 4.12 million blogs, or online journals, created on eight leading blog-hosting services have been "abandoned" - that is, not updated for at least two months. And 1.09 million of those were one-day wonders.

The study went on to puncture other bits of common wisdom about blogs, like the frequency with which they are updated. Fewer than 50,000 of the sites in the study were updated every day. As for the notion that most blogs comment on the news, only 9.9 percent had a main-page posting that linked to a traditional news site. Perhaps most biting, the study found that the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends. Are blogs just that old friend from the 90's, the Web diary, dressed up in new tools?

- in NYTimes.com, October 2003

Blogs and Nanoaudiences

Who is the typical blogger? A middle-aged college professor, journalist or software enthusiast? "These make up the tip of a very deep iceberg: prominently visible, but not characteristic of the iceberg as a whole," writes Perseus Development's Jeffrey Henning in his analysis of the recent Perseus survey of blog hosting services, which found that 92.4 percent of blogs are created by users age 30 or under.

Perseus Development has hired Alan J. Farias as vice president of professional services

Braintree-based Perseus Development, a provider of web-based survey research and software, has hired Alan J. Farias as vice president of professional services. Farias was previously director of primary research at IDC.

- in MassHighTech.com, October 2003

CeBIT America 2003 On the Floor

Perseus Development Corporation of Braintree, MA featured three new survey applications, providing next-generation market-research software to the enterprise. Of particular intrest was Perseus MobileSurvey, a brand new PDA-based survey collection application, available immediately for Pocket PC and Palm OS powered devices. MobileSurvey provides the power of Perseus SurveySolutions web surveys on a handheld device, supporting all SurveySolutions question types and validations, as well as advanced branching. To work around the small screen size of PDAs, MobileSurvey offers glossary support and an image library, enabling data collectors to view definitions and images associated with each question on separate screens.

One license of MobileSurvey is bundled with each copy of SurveySolutions 6 Professional ($495); licensing for field-force automation is available, with one field force of 1400 units being rolled out this month, additional licenses are available for $195 per PDA. Field-force licensing is available.

MobileSurvey runs on PDAs powered by the Pocket PC 2002 OS or by Palm OS 4.0 or later. Palm OS powered devices are recommended to be 66Mhz or faster.

- in BostonPocketPC.com, June 2003

And the Winners of Best of CeBIT America Are

Hundreds entered eWEEK/PC Magazine Best of Show Awards for CeBIT America, but these winners and finalists stand head and shoulders above the rest.

CeBIT America, PC Magazine, and eWEEK announced this afternoon the winners of this year's eWEEK/PC Magazine Best of Show Awards for CeBIT America. The awards select outstanding products and technologies from show-floor participants.

"These products represent a broad cross section of products and capabilities that impact everyone from the small business user up to the enterprise. Each impressed the editors of PC Magazine and eWEEK with their new and innovative approaches to the high-tech needs and desires of the computing marketplace," said Michael J. Miller, PC Magazine's editor-in-chief and Editorial Director of Ziff Davis Media.

In order to be considered for these awards, products had to be displayed at the show (on the show floor or in a public meeting room) and had to be newly available between February 1st and October 31st of this year.

Enterprise Applications Finalists:
Expertcity DesktopStreaming 4.0 help desk application
Perseus Development Corp. SurveySolutions 6 Web survey software

- in eWeek.com, June 2003

D.C. Website Gets Extreme Makeover

The District of Columbia has unveiled a revamped Web site at www.dc.gov. The services offered might be about the same as on the site's previous generation, but the packaging is considerably changed.

The site has added powerful search capabilities, she said. To provide quick navigation of the most popular topics, the new site uses SurveySolutions ranking software from Perseus Development Corp. of Braintree, Mass. The home page shows the top 10 subjects, ranked from one to 10.

- in Government Computer News, May 2003

Perseus Co-founder Profiled by Inc. Magazine

Perseus co-founder Jeffrey Henning is profiled in the May issue of Inc. Magazine. "He is co-founder of one of the fastest growing tech companies in New England... Perseus Development Corp. is committed to living up to the PC Magazine award it won in 2000 for making the best web surveying product around. Henning wrote the software which, with services, sells for more than $50,000 to clients such as MasterCard or as a $495 standalone to smaller businesses... After studying computer science and linguistics at Arizona State, spending years in market research, and launching two failed start-ups, his dream remained the same: Could he combine his love of programming and market research into a thriving business? In 1993, he tried, founding Perseus with Richard Nadler. They struggled for three years until Henning wrote a program that could spit out a web survey quickly. It was a huge leap from the more time-consuming database products then offered. He was onto something. In 2000, business doubled. Companies like Intel and Microsoft signed up. Perseus had arrived."

- in Inc., Magazine, April 2003

Poll: Patients Find Value in Content

A survey shows cancer patients find value in treatment information options on the American Cancer Society's Web site, http://www.cancer.org. The society offers the NexProfiler Treatment Options Tools for Cancer which includes medical literature for 20 different types of cancer. NexProfiler, from NexCura Inc., Seattle, gives patients detailed analysis of specific conditions, statistical breakdowns of treatment types and suggests issues they should discuss with their physicians. The Atlanta-based American Cancer Society developed the survey, which was conducted by Perseus Development Corp., a Braintree, Mass.-based independent research firm. The results from 1,080 patient respondents found that:

92% found the content enables them to make more informed treatment decisions
71% believe the content helps them communicate better with physicians
88% would recommend the treatment tools to others

- in HealthDataManagement.com, April 2003

Best 100 Communities for Music Education Mark Small Bright Spots In Impending National Crisis - Roster Calls Attention to Unprecedented School Budget Cuts

This year's survey was conducted jointly by the country's top organizations devoted to music and learning. The American Music Conference (www.amc-music.org) joined MENC: The National Association for Music Education (www.menc.org), The Music Teachers National Association (www.mtna.org), The National School Boards Association (www.nsba.org), Yamaha Corporation of America (www.yamaha.com) and VH1 Save The Music Foundation (www.vh1savethemusic.com) in creating the survey and interpreting the results. Perseus Development Corp. of Braintree, MA donated its time and expertise to implement the web survey and to analyze the data it generated.

- in BrainConnection.com, March 2003

Surveying Your Way To The Top

What do customers want? Are they happy with the services they are receiving? Is there anything else they need? And - perhaps most importantly - how the heck do you find out?

As president of Perseus Development, [Rich] Nadler is one of several software developers who in recent years have made customer-survey software affordable to small businesses. Once the sole domain of big corporations, these sophisticated client-satisfaction measurement tools now are available at a price point that brings them within reach of the small-business owner.

As the leader in the field, Perseus offers basic survey tools for between $500 and $1000, with its more sophisticated packages running to $5000 and above for larger corporations.

The whole point of a survey, said Nadler, is not just to gather data, but "to make sure that you are meeting you customers' needs."

- in SmallBusinessComputing.com, March 2003

Perseus Offers Human Resources Executives Free Online Survey

Perseus Development Corporation, a company specializing in web-based survey research, is offering human resources executives a free online survey so they can obtain job satisfaction feedback from their employees. For a limited time, companies can assess employee satisfaction regarding job security, wages, bonuses, training, vacation policy, health plans, pensions, supervisors, and fellow employees.

- in Mediapost.com, March 2003

Perseus Is A Corporate Sponsor of the 2002 WebAwards Competition

Perseus' flagship product, SurveySolutions, is the easiest and most cost-effective way to gather information from the Web. From one-click web publishing to one-click result presentation SurveySolutions stands apart in its ease of use, power, and complete Microsoft Office compatibility. Common survey applications using SurveySolutions include customer and employee satisfaction surveys, course evaluations and opinion polls. In February 2000, Perseus SurveySolutions for the Web, won a PC Magazine Editors' Choice Award. In October 2001 and 2002, Perseus was named one of the "Fast 50" high-technology companies in New England by Deloitte & Touche.

- in Web Marketing Association, February 2003

Survey Options - The Online Advantage

[The SurveySolutions] Survey Wizard allows the user to format a survey template with a pre-selected set of questions. Likewise, the collection of data is highly automated. While the survey itself can be published on your local server, the user has the option to have responses automatically e-mailed upon completion, summary responses stored on the Perseus server, or store responses to a file on your local server with Microsoft FrontPage server extensions. SurveySolutions' strength is in its presentation of data. Press one button and the AutoPresent and AutoReport wizard creates a full presentation analyzing the results of the entire survey. It can generate charts and graphs which analyze respondent's answers to each question. Presentations can be edited and new charts selected or modified. As new survey responses are collected and added to the aggregated data, presentations are easily updated. Presentations may be saved in Microsoft PowerPoint, HTML or RTF formats.

- in Tech Learning, February 2003

Perseus Draws Shower of Large Customers

It’s a pretty big deal to land a software license agreement with a company the size of MasterCard International.

For Perseus Development Corp., it’s just the latest in an impressive line of megacustomers that includes State Farm Insurance, General Motors Corp., MSN.com, Intel Corp. and the National Basketball Association.

Braintree-based Perseus, a developer of desktop survey software and enterprisewide survey systems, has sold corporate licenses for 2,200 MasterCard employees to use its SurveySolutions Enterprise product.

MasterCard chose SurveySolutions for its "combination of flexibility, capability and simplicity," according to MasterCard IT manager Christopher Sousa. "It’s easy to create surveys, yet powerful."

- in Mass High Tech, January 2003

Perseus Development Corp. Offers Free Comparative Job Satisfaction Survey to Human Resources Executives

Perseus Development Corporation, an industry leader in web-based survey research, software and services, is offering a free web survey and analysis to human resources executives for the purpose of obtaining job satisfaction feedback from their employees. Companies will have the opportunity to assess employee satisfaction regarding job security, wages, bonuses, training, vacation policy, health plans, pensions, supervisors, and fellow employees.

This promotion is being offered for a limited time. Perseus will provide a survey to interested companies, collect survey responses for one month and deliver final survey results per company and in comparison to national benchmarks. These national benchmarks were collected by The Conference Board by NFO WorldGroup, a member of The Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG). The comparative data are based on results from surveying a representative sample of 5,000 U.S. households.

- in Cnet.com, January 2003

MasterCard To Use Perseus Software

MasterCard International has selected Perseus Development Corp.'s software to keep track of Web-based survey results. MasterCard will use Perseus' SurveySolutions Enterprise program to tabulate survey results of employees, member banks and cardholders, Perseus president Rich Nadler said. MasterCard selected Perseus' product after a six-month trial that included several competitors.

Founded in 1994, Perseus develops Web-based marketing surveys for businesses, health care and educational institutions and government agenices. It has about 450 large corporate customers, including General Motors and Reuters.

- in The Patriot Ledger, January 2003

Five Highlighted Meeting Industry Favorite Sites

Survey Tips from Perseus Development Corporation

http://perseus.com/surveytips/index.html

If you are planning on conducting surveys of your membership, attendees, or clients, I highly recommend this site from Perseus. Lots of articles, sample surveys, and other helpful ideas can be found in the "Survey Tips" section linked above.

- in TechTalk Newsletter, January 2003

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