the finger-keyboard synapse

Surveys starting up, results coming in!

The active user survey is now running completely automated, sending the survey link to online active users (according to our definition of active) at regular intervals. The user survey for users who stopped using BitWise are being sent a link via email, but these are still being done manually until the backlog of slightly old accounts can be processed. Pro Groups have also begun to receive their own special survey. Thanks to those of you who have already filled out the survey, and thanks in advance to those of you who haven't yet received the survey.

There are enough surveys to make some interesting results, and while I haven't had time to consider a lot of the fill-in answers, the radio and checkbox results are always easy to share.

Some interesting results:

• Over 50% of respondents said that they first heard about BitWise from a friend, family member or coworker. Word of mouth is real!
  
• The most used features by a large margin are basic chatting, file transfers and offline messaging.
  
• Less than 1% of respondents reported using macros.
  
• The most popular Linux distribution is Gentoo.
  
• Just under 30% of respondents reported that they do not use any other instant messenger.
  
• Of those that do use other IMs, almost 35% reported using MSN.
  
• Greater than 50% of respondents reported no trouble establishing direct connections. (I find this rather hard to believe given the prevalence of firewalls and routers, honestly.)
  
• About one-third of respondents said that they never read documentation, and another 20% said they didn't know any was available. I guess that my lamentations about no one reading the laboriously created documentation aren't too far off the mark. (See here.)
  
• Almost 50% reported experiencing any bugs or crashes. Only 7% report having crashes or bugs frequently or very frequently. Of those, a lot of them were bugs, not crashes, and some of them aren't even bugs--there were a few cases in the comments where the "bug" was being unable to connect for voice chats.
  

This is great stuff. As the results continue to come in (and we have time to analyze them), I'll try to post some interesting things here.

Readers: any results you're particularly interested in? Anything from the results above startle you?

im just curious about 2 statistics. how many people want emoticons?(that was an option, right? i dont remember anymore) ... and how many want themes?

Emoticons wasn't an option because it was listed as already being planned (which it is), plus everyone and their mom would want them, we don't need a survey to tell us that. ;)

About 13% said they want complete theming of the interface, about in the middle of the features listed. The most commonly wanted: webcams, by about one-third of respondents.