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An independent study by Equation Research found that today's consumers are disappointed with the performance of the mobile web. Despite the proliferation of smartphones with their full-featured web browsers, the majority of mobile web surfers have encountered issues with accessing websites via their handsets over the past year. The number one issue reported involves websites that are too slow to load, frustrating users to the point that over half said they would never return to the site in question.

We promise to refrain from any cynicism about the survey results we receive. That said the surveys are sometimes misleading, looking for a public relations hit. Hope that isn't too cynical but the results of a Citibank commissioned survey about small business use of social media makes us wonder.

Citibank and GfK Roper conducted the survey. GfK Roper interviewed 500 small business people over the phone. The businesses had fewer than 100 employees. They were drawn from a database and segmented by SIC code. Segments included manufacturing/construction, transportation and communication, wholesale/retail, financial services and professional services.

It's become fashionable among a certain set to declare that RSS is no longer the foremost pipeline for news and information on the Web. Steve Gillmor and innumerable others have said they've abandoned their RSS readers in favor of Twitter. Twitter hiring Feedburner's CEO seemed to compound this trend towards dismissing RSS as old hat (though headlines shouldn't always be taken literally).

The usual suspects, such as Dave Winer and our own RSS geek, quickly jumped to the defense of really simple syndication. But where was the data to back them up? And what do businesses think about RSS? The McKinsey Global Survey on Web 2.0 in business came out yesterday, and out of the almost 1,700 executives they talked to, 42% said they see a measurable benefit from RSS. That's 24% more than those who see any benefit from microblogging (i.e. Twitter).

According to a new survey of more than 300 enterprises by Gartner Research, software as a service has failed to impress business users across the board. Both U.S. and U.K. users polled were far from enthusiastic about their experiences with SaaS.

Most telling was that customers gave the most dismal reviews to areas where vendors are making the biggest promises: namely, low costs and high performance. Despite changing attitudes towards its security and reliability, these results suggest that providers are creating some of their own ills by overselling and under-delivering when it comes to key benefits of SaaS.

Generation Y, aka the "Net Generation," does not dominate every aspect of online life. That revealing statistic and many others like it come from Pew Internet and American Life's recent "Generations Online" report which takes a look at how the different generations of users - from Millennials to the G.I. Generation - use the internet.

Innovative search startup Lijit has done study of search widgets on pages around the web and says its widget is very close to becoming as popular as Google's own "site search". We think Lijit is quite interesting and we're not surprised to find out that many other bloggers around the web agree.

The Boulder, Colorado company did an interesting survey of the widget-o-sphere, if you will, and found that 45% of the search widgets it found were its own. 47% were from Google. We (more or less) believe these numbers and think we've got some idea why Lijit is as popular as it is.

A recent survey of iPhone users put out by Rubicon Consulting entitled "The Apple iPhone: Successes and Challenges for the Mobile Industry," reveals some interesting demographics about the typical iPhone user, their satisfaction with the device, and the revenue that the iPhone brings to AT&T. Not surprisingly, it seems that iPhone users are very satisfied with the product and are making heavy use of features like email and web browsing. The increased use of these types of data functions has also led to higher bills, which produces about $2 billion in additional revenue for AT&T, the exclusive iPhone carrier for the U.S., as well as higher bills for iPhone owners.

Zogby International and 463 Communications released the results last night of an interesting and well executed poll about the attitudes US adults have about the internet. Nearly 10,000 respondents were included and I presume the companies did not seek out the craziest 10,000 people in America (only 20% were from the West Coast, for example) - so these are probably pretty valid results.

To summarize: an alarming percentage of respondents are open to brain implants that allow them to access the internet with their minds and that allow their children's locations to be tracked, they think government censorship of online video content is acceptable, the internet makes them feel closer to God and less close their significant others - but their own identities on the internet are not very important to them. This is frightening stuff.