In 1995, when The Harris Poll began measuring online activity, less than 18 million adults used the Internet in their homes, offices, schools, libraries or other locations. Now, thirteen years, later, fully 184 million adults are online. The proportion of adults online trebled between 1995 (9%) and 1997 (30%), and kept on climbing rapidly to 63% in 2000. Since then growth has been slower, reading 73% in 2004 and 81% now. Here are some additional figures to help you understand your online consumer and his or her web consumption.
Many People Go Online at Two or More Locations
While most people (75%), and almost all those who use the Internet, use it at home, more than two out of five adults (43%) go online at work and a third (32%) do so at other locations (schools, cybercafés, libraries, etc.)
Internet Users Are Spending More Time Online
Until 2002, Internet users spent an average of seven or eight hours online per week. That has increased to nine hours in 2005, eleven hours in 2007 and to fully fourteen hours in this new survey.
Virtually all Computer Users are Now Online
Before 1998, less than half of the people who used computers also used the Internet. Over the last ten years, that has increased steadily. Today only two percent of computer users do not go online.
Demographic Profile of the Online Population Looks More Like the Whole Population
In the early days of the Internet revolution, most of those online were young and well-educated. As the online population has grown it has come to look more and more like the population of the country. Internet penetration is still somewhat lower among people over 65, people who never went to college and people with household incomes of less than $25,000, but large majorities of all of these demographic groups are now online.
So What?
The internet revolution continues. The online population continues to grow and to use the Internet for more hours than ever before. Initially the Internet was used to do things we did before but to do them better, faster or cheaper. Now it is increasingly being used to so new things we could not do before which were prohibitively expensive or difficult.
As Roy Amara once said of the growth of new technologies, “There is a tendency to overestimate their short-term impact and to underestimate long-term impact.” The Internet now touches many parts of our lives. With each new year we use it, and depend on it more for communication, information, work, shopping, and entertainment.
In the election, Barack Obama and the Democrats used the Internet to drive their campaign, to communicate with many millions of people, to raise unprecedented amounts of money and to motivate and turn out their supporters. There is now talk of using these systems to enable the president-elect and his administration to communicate directly with the public and by-pass the traditional media.
We may still be at the dawn of the age of the Internet.
Tags: 501c3, accountants, Accounting, accounting services, ACH transactions, activities, amendment, apostille, assumed name, balance, banking, bill payment service, brad inman, business banking, business filings, business finance, business licenses, business services, c corp, CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS, CEO mobile service, certification of good standing, certified copy, certified public accountants, compliance services, consumers, conversion, corporate banking, corporate kit, corporate law, corporate services, corporation, CPA’s, DBA, dissolution, document, document retrieval, elawyering, eni number, entertainment business, fast incorporation, fast LLC, federal tax wires, financial findings, foreign qualification, form a business, Free LLC, getting a trademark, incfile, incorporate, incorporation, independent director, independent member, joel singer, lawsuit, legal document, legal issues, legal zoom, legalzoom, limited liability company, limited liability partnership, limited partnership, LLC, long beach, megan minich, merger, mobile banking, mobile version, name preservation, non-profit, non-profit companies, online banking, professional practice, registered, registered agent service, reinstatement, reporting information, residential brokerage, rocket lawyer, s corp, seal, secretary of state, service mark, small business tools, solutions, springing member, start an entertainment company, start your own company, stock designation, tax identification number, tax-exempt, tech tuesday, trademark, UCC filings, ucc search, users, Vcorp, vcorp services, wells fargo, wired for change