Yesterday we began collecting information from people who’ve signed up for the beta trials.55% use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, vs 12% for the general public. Savvy little net denizens, aren’t you?

Nearly everybody uses YouTube (88%). Um, yeah, big surprise.

Bittorrent is by far the most popular filesharing method. Not surprising in itself, but the lead it has on Limewire is impressive. In percent of respondents:

“Free”
62% Bittorrent
24% Limewire
13% Kazaa
13% Peekvid.com

“Paid”
10% Usenet
38% iTunes
12% Adult

19% of you used some other service. We’ve been busy checking them all out, making sure that we know what’s out there and we’ve incorporated the best and avoided the worst of the lot. The most popular of the “other” was Joost. Beta junkies.

The most entertaining part of reading the responses was the freestyle commentary. Quite the philanthropic bunch, our beta testers. Numerous calls for ending cancer and poverty. A surprising number of comments on the war in Iraq (all involving negative comments about Bush). Apparently, not a lot of White House staff made it onto the beta list.

Of course there were the usual calls for unlimited free access to every piece of video content ever produced, upgraded to high-def and recolorized where necessary. The most useful piece of data for us was how strongly you all feel about the quality of the video stream. That’s great. Graboid’s streaming quality rocks.

80% of testers are male, 16% female, and 4% are confused. And finally, a whopping 6% of you heard about Graboid through a dream epiphany. Apparently the rest of you have to rely on online blogs. Keep reading this one for ordinary updates. We’ll beam the good stuff out in your dreams.

Please do not post comments requesting account or technical support, they will be deleted. For tech support go to our user forum, and for account questions, use our contact form.