Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: iPhone Users Are Lousy Dates, Study Says

Written by Erin Barker

Thursday, November 5. 2009 at 10:25 AM EST 1 comment

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In a recent study, consumer electronics specialist Retrevo investigated the dating habits of iPhone users. And they sound like terrible dates.

iPhone users are more likely to see themselves as "media buffs, extroverts, and intellectuals," Retrevo says. One in three of them said they would be turned off if their partner had "out-of-date gadgets," and in potential partners they prefer ownership of "cool gadgets" to ownership of college degrees, three to one. [Ed. note: "intellectuals"?]

It basically goes downhill from there: One in three iPhone users has broken up with someone via text or email. One in five admits to "frequently watching 'adult material' " on their iPhone -- this is twice as many, compared to BlackBerry users.

Ironically, the report also said one in four iPhone users has broken up with someone for spending too much time on his or her mobile device.

In other news:

On News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s earnings call last night, CEO Rupert Murdoch criticized the Amazon Kindle, saying, "The Kindle is a fantastic invention for books, but it's not much of an experience for newspapers." He also complained about the revenues -- News Corp.'s Wall Street Journal charges $15 for a Kindle subscription and only gets to keep about $6. Murdoch said he looks forward to the introduction of more competing e-book readers this holiday season, explaining, "We want to get our fair share of revenue."

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has introduced Privacy Dashboard, which allows users to view all of the information that Google has gleaned about them through things like users' Gmail accounts, Web History, and blogs. [Ed. note: For instance, Google seems to know everything about me, ranging from my fleeting interest in yoga to the fact that my dog was vaccinated for lyme disease yesterday.] The Dashboard also allows users to manage this information and change privacy settings.

"We think of this as a great step towards giving people transparency and control over their data, and we hope this helps shape the way the industry thinks about these issues," Alma Whitten, software engineer on privacy and safety at Google, said in a press release.

Tags: Amazon, Apple, Business, E-books, Google, iPhone, Kindle, News Corp, Newspapers

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