Growth Spurts

Time of growth to 50 million households:

radio – 38 years

television – 13 years

cable – 10 years

Internet – 5 years (projected)

(Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Reseach, 1997)

There will be 150 million worldwide Internet users by 2000.

(CyberAtlas, 8/97)

There are 1.6 million domain names.

(Network Wizards, 7/97)

There are an estimated 112.75 million online users worldwide. 525,000 online users reside in the Middle East.

(Nua Internet Surveys, 2/98)

62 million Americans are online users.

30 percent of the total American population is online.

(Intelliquest, 2/98)



Because of the vast amount of fiber-optic lines put in place for the 1996 Olympics, the city of Atlanta is now the second most wired city in America. San Francisco is first. New York is eighth.

(USA Today, 2/98)



Online users in India makeup 0.02 percent of that country's total population.

(Wired, 11/97)



45 percent of the total population of Iceland have online access.

(Gallup, 2/98)



Internet use jumped by 788 percent in Latin America between 1995 and 1997.

(Nazca, 2/98)



The Latin American Internet population will grow from 8.5 million to 34 million by the year 2000, a growth rate greater than any other region.

(Nazca, 2/98)



58 percent of all current Internet users are male.

(American Internet User Survey, 1997)



Women will constitute 60 percent

of the online population by 2005.

(NetSmart-Research, 11/97)



25 percent of the total online population, or 15 million people, first accessed the Internet in 1997.

(Intelliquest, 2/98)



51 percent of Web users surf the Web every day.

(American Internet User Survey, 1997)



Most visited Web sites among users 12 and over in 10/97:

Yahoo: 17,208,000

Netscape: 13,945,000

Microsoft: 13,022,000

Excite/Webcrawler: 11,793,000

AOL.com: 9,968,000

(RelevantKnowledge, 11/97)



The Almighty Dollar

24 percent of active American Web users shop online.

(@plan, 3/98)

Online spending will balloon from $2.6 million in 1996 to more than

$200 billion in 2000.

(IDC, 12/97)

Online advertising revenue totaled $55 million in 1995. Online advertising

revenue is projected to reach

$7.7 billion by 2002.

(Jupiter Communications, 1997)



There are over 500,000 commercial Web sites. 85 percent of the total ad revenue on the Web was earned by the top 50 commercial site.

(Computer Advertiser's Media Advisor)



Airline ticket reservations mark the greatest growth (301 percent) in online retail sales, followed by stocks and mutual funds, computer hardware, car rental and book sales.

(@plan, 3/98)



40 percent of all online shopping on America Online occurs between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m.

(Washington Post, 1/98)



Amazon.com's ratings are seven and a half times better than its number-one competitor's. It is the only book seller in the top 500 Web sites.

(Media Metrix, 10/97)



The number of people willing to purchase an automobile via the Internet more than doubled in 1997.

(Dohring Company, 1997)



Almost 25 percent of American households have the capability to bank online, yet only 7 percent have attempted it.

(SCI Software, 2/98)



28 percent of all Webmasters expect to generate revenues between

$10,000 and $100,000 in 1998.

(Zdnet, 2/98)



Webmasters expect revenue to be

generated from:

revenue from online sales: 40 percent

online advertising: 17 percent

subscriptions: 7 percent

commissions and downloads: 2 percent

other sources including

consulting, education,

Web design and book sales: 34 percent

(Zdnet, 2/98)



Webmasters are predominately male, ages 29 to 38, self-taught, and earn between $44,000 and $53,000.

(Zdnet, 2/98)



Over 11 Million Users Served

America Online boasts 11 million users worldwide, 8.6 million in America.

  • AOL's member base is larger than the combined circulation of the top five U.S. daily newspapers.

  • AOL added 3 million members and tripled its revenues to more than $1 billion in 1997.

  • Founded in 1986, AOL is the world's first billion-dollar new media company.

  • 63 percent of all AOL members are college graduates.

  • AOL connects more than 384,000 simultaneous users during peak hours.

  • 15 million e-mail messages are sent each day through AOL.

  • The average AOL user spends 37 minutes online each day.

  • 5 million hours a day are spent collectively on AOL.

  • AOL members spend 15 percent less time watching television than the general American audience.

  • AOL Japan was launched in April 1997.

(AOL.com)



Considering parameters such as speed of access, quality of service during peak times, technical support and e-mail service provision, a survey concluded that AOL is “a Web surfer's nightmare.”

(PC World, 12/97)



Extra, Extra,

Click All About It

A third of all newspapers surveyed said that their online editions had occasionally scooped their print editions.

(Editor & Publisher, 2/98)



20 percent of newspapers said that their web sites are 50 percent original content, a 13 percent increase from 1997.

(Editor & Publisher, 2/98)



The Internet accounts for 20 percent of total news intake for regular users. Use of TV, magazine and radio has drastically decreased for those users.

(Emerging Technologies Research Group, 8/97)



Microsoft's online magazine Slate has reached its halfway goal of 10,000 subscribers, generating $200,000 from subscriptions.

(Cnet, 3/98)



Knight-Ridder's 32 Web sites cost them $27 million while generating only $11 million in ad sales.

(Editor & Publisher, 1/98)



Growing Up Cyber

Five times more boys than girls use computers at home.

(MSNBC, 9/97)



Parents purchase twice as many technology toys and products for their sons as they do for their daughters.

(MSNBC, 9/97)



In 1995, 44 percent of teenagers believed it was cool to go online. Two years later some 88 percent of teenagers said the Internet, and specifically online chat, was cool.

(Growing Up Digital, by Don Tapscott, 10/97)



More than 75 percent of America's 80,000 public schools now have access to the Internet, up from 35 percent in 1994. But the number of actual classrooms with access is considerably lower, with just 27 percent having an Internet connection.

(San Jose Mercury News, 2/98)



7 million of the 9 million students in college use e-mail on a regular basis.

(Washington Post, 11/97)



Undergraduates spend an average of 10 hours a week online, with 18 percent clocking at least 20 hours per week online.

(Cnet, 1/98)



Dismissal rates on college campuses have more than doubled as a result of compulsive Internet use among students.

(Cnet, 1/98)



36 percent of parents believe that Internet use will increase their children's employment prospects.

(FIND/SVP, 10/97)



37 percent of parents would prefer that the Internet replace television in their children's lives.

(FIND/SVP, 10/97)



Va-voom

Adult entertainment is the number-one Internet revenue generator.
(Reuters, 8/97)



Sex-related queries are the most frequently entered criteria in search engines.

(Reuters, 8/97)



Seven of the top 10 search words typed into search engines by British people are related to sex.

(Nando Times, 10/97)



Pornography of various genres, including child pornography, exists on 25 percent of the office computers in America.

(Digital Detective Services Inc., 10/98)



The New Nuclear Family

60 percent of Internet users spend more time surfing the Net than watching TV.

(FutureScapes, 1/98)



Over 80 percent of Internet users have improved their relationships and facilitated communication with friends and relatives.

(FutureScapes, 1/98)



Nearly half of all users find the Internet to be confusing and difficult to use.

(The Emerging Technologies Research Group, 8/97)



15.9 million American adults who sampled the Internet for the first time in the last year are no longer users.

(American Internet User Survey, 1997)



One in every two Canadians has experienced negative effects of computers on family life, namely, excessive use detracting from the overall family experience.

(Information Highway and Canadian Communication Household Wave I Survey, 2/98)



Information courtesy Nua Internet Surveys. Check out more fun-filled Internet analysis at https://www.nua.ie/surveys/.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.