Proponents of the latest Web trends were warned on Tuesday that the rest of the world may not have a clue what they are talking about.
A survey of British taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers — often seen as barometers of popular trends — found that nearly 90 percent had no idea what a podcast is and more than 70 percent had never heard of blogging.
“When I asked the panel whether people were talking about blogging, they thought I meant dogging,” said Sarah Carter, the planning director at ad firm DDB London.
Dogging is the phenomenon of watching couples have sex in semi-secluded places such as out-of-town car parks. News of such events are often spread on Web sites or by using mobile phone text messages.
More people (56 percent) understood the phrase “happy slapping” — a teenage craze that involves assaulting people while capturing it on video with their mobile phones — than podcasting (12 percent) or blogging (28 percent).
By Jeffrey Goldfarb