QuickLinks - Statistics

recent items

Issue no. 379 - 2 September 2007

• Parents shaky about kids' safety online (CNET News.com)
  by Stefanie Olsen. The majority of parents say they've taken some action to ensure their child's safety online, but at least some will admit they're clueless about how to protect kids. According to a new study from research firm Harris Interactive, roughly a third of parents said they don't feel confident about teaching kids how to use the Internet safely and responsibly. Nevertheless, as many as 94 percent of parents have turned to Web content filters, monitoring software or advice from an adult friend to help shield their kids from harm on the Net.

• UK - Bebo edges ahead of MySpace (vnunet.com)
  Teen social site Bebo has overtaken MySpace as the most visited social networking site among UK surfers, according to web monitoring firm comScore. Bebo attracted 10.6 million unique visitors, an increase of 63 per cent over the start of the year. MySpace enjoyed a 25 per cent increase in traffic, to reach 10.1 million. The fastest growing social networking site was Facebook, which has grown 366 per cent to attract an audience of 7.6 million.

Issue no. 378 - 5 August 2007

• ComScore's latest numbers: Worldwide social-networking growth (CNET News.com)
  ComScore released some numbers pertaining to how quickly a handful of popular social-networking sites are growing worldwide, and which ones dominate in which regions of the globe. The main set of numbers tracks worldwide social-networking growth, with June 2006 and June 2007 as the benchmarks, for seven services: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Friendster, and Tagged. Facebook has grown quite a bit - 270 percent, from 14,083,000 uniques to 52,167,000. ComScore charts Bebo as having grown about 172 percent.

• OECD - Global broadband prices revealed (BBC)
  Broadband users in 30 of the world's most developed countries are getting greatly differing speeds and prices. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report says 60% of its member countries net users are now on broadband. The report said countries that had switched to fibre networks had the best speeds at the lowest prices. See OECD Communications Outlook 2007.

Issue no. 377 - 5 July 2007

• Online sales lose steam as buyers grow Web-weary (New York Times)
  Since the inception of the Web, online commerce has enjoyed hypergrowth, with annual sales increasing more than 25 percent overall, and far more rapidly in many categories. But in the last year, growth has slowed sharply in major sectors like books, tickets and office supplies. Growth in online sales has also dropped dramatically in diverse categories like health and beauty products, computer peripherals and pet supplies. Analysts say it is a turning point and growth will continue to slow through the decade.

• UK - Half of Britons cannot exist without email (Guardian)
  Half of Britons cannot exist without email and 30- and 40-somethings are more reliant on it than teenagers, a survey reveals. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, 50% felt they could not carry on without access to email, the ICM poll found. This age group was identified as the pioneer in using electronic communication to keep in touch with the office as well as friends.

• US - Gaming has no significant effects on schoolwork, sociability: study (Ars Technica)
  by John Timmer. Results of a survey of American adolescents have appeared in the June edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, and they paint what is likely to be a reassuring picture for those willing to listen: less than half of adolescents are gamers, and they spent a small enough time gaming that it plays a minimal role in their lives. The researchers found that 36 percent of adolescents played video games, and that there's a stark split along gender lines: 80 percent of those gamers were boys. Typical use was about an hour of gaming a day during the week and an hour and a half on weekends (females played less than males).

Issue no. 376 - 10 June 2007

• Google service chases what's hot and what's not (Reuters)
  The art of trend-spotting is set to take a more scientific turn as Google, the world's top Web search company, is expected to unveil a service to track the fastest-rising search queries. Google Hot Trends combines elements of Zeitgeist and Trends--two existing Google products that give a glimpse into Web search habits, but only in retrospect based on weeks-old data.

• US - Spam 2007 (Pew Internet & American Life Project)
  The volume of spam is growing in Americans' personal and workplace email accounts, but email users are less bothered by it. 37% of email users said spam had increased in their personal email accounts, up from 28% of email users who said that two years ago. And 29% of work email users said spam had increased in their work email accounts, up from 21% two years ago. Yet fewer people say spam is "a big problem" for them.

Issue no. 375 - 9 May 2007

• Global net use makes rapid rise (BBC)
  The net is helping to close the digital divide between industrialised nations, suggests a report. The annual e-readiness rankings by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) shows Asian and African nations catching up with big net users such as Denmark. The report says this is partly due to broadband which is now cheap and affordable in almost every nation. But it warns that much hard work remains to be done to get the best out of the net for citizens and companies.

• Google draws 64 percent of search queries (Reuters)
  Web search leader Google's market share inched up to 64 percent of all queries among U.S. Internet searchers in March, gaining further ground against Yahoo and Microsoft.

• Study Finds Europeans Dominate Second Life (Reuters)
  Virtual reality world Second Life was born in the United States, but 61 percent of its active residents are Europeans, a study by research firm comScore said. The number of active German residents exceeds the number of active residents in the United States, although growth rates in the U.S. are the highest worldwide.

Issue no. 373 - 11 March 2007

• 'Adult' spam hits all-time low (CNET News.com)
  There's still plenty of spam going around, but "adult" spam has been on a steady decline and hit an all-time low in February, according to a new Symantec report. Of all the spam filtered by Symantec's e-mail security tools in February, only 3 percent could be classified as adult spam. Adult spam, according to Symantec, contains or refers to "products or services intended for persons above the age of 18" and is "often offensive or inappropriate.

• US - Study: Identity theft keeps climbing (CNET News.com)
  The rate of identity theft-related fraud has risen sharply since 2003, a report from research firm Gartner suggests. Gartner's study shows that from mid-2005 until mid-2006, about 15 million Americans were victims of fraud that stemmed from identity theft, an increase of more than 50 percent from the estimated 9.9 million in 2003.

Issue no. 372 - 25 February 2007

• DE - Studie: Acht von zehn Kindern haben Computererfahrung (Heise)
  Acht von zehn Kindern haben nach einer aktuellen Umfrage bereits Erfahrungen mit dem Computer gesammelt. Dabei liege der Anteil bei Jungen (85 Prozent) um neun Prozentpunkte höher als bei den Mädchen (76 Prozent), wie der Medienpädagogische Forschungsverbund Südwest (mpfs) als Auftraggeber der KIMStudie 2006 mitteilte. Befragt wurden 1200 Kinder im Alter zwischen 6 und 13 Jahren und deren Erziehungsberechtigte. Der Forschungsverbund ist ein Projekt der Landesanstalt für Kommunikation Baden-Württemberg (LFK) und der Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation Rheinland-Pfalz (LMK).

• FR - Seuls 15% des fichiers téléchargés en France sont payés (ZDNet France)
  Une nouvelle étude sur le téléchargement montre que les internautes téléchargeant illégalement sont toujours les plus nombreux en France. Mais elle laisse apparaître qu´une amélioration des offres payantes pourrait inverser la tendance. [ copyright ]

Issue no. 371 - 28 January 2007

• FR - Peer-to-peer: moitié moins de fichiers téléchargés en 2006 (ZDNet France)
  Par les effets conjugués de la loi Dadvsi et d´une plus grande maturité des internautes, le nombre de fichiers téléchargés sur les réseaux P2P a été divisé par deux en 2006, soit 620 millions. Les Français sont pourtant plus nombreux à télécharger. Selon une étude de l'institut GfK, en partenariat avec le magazine SVM, le volume de fichiers téléchargés (musique, films, jeux vidéos, logiciels) en France a été divisé par deux en un an: leur nombre est passé de 1,3 milliard en 2005 à 620 millions en 2006. Plus de 95% sont récupérés illégalement.

Issue no. 370 - 3 December 2006

• Cell phone porn to ring up $3.3 billion (Silicon.com)
  Like the Internet before it, it looks like mobile's content explosion could be set off by porn. Adult content on mobile devices will be worth $3.3 billion by 2011, up from $1.4 billion this year, according to industry analysts JupiterResearch. Europe is the biggest spender on porn, due to both its appetite for smut and the relatively high-priced nature of adult content. The Asia-Pacific region follows in second place.

• EU - Eurobarometer survey on roaming (RAPID)
  Mobile roaming charges continue to be very high in Europe. This is shown by a Europe-wide survey by Eurobarometer, and by the recent development of international mobile roaming prices. An overwhelming majority of EU citizens believe the EU should step in to make sure that prices for making and receiving calls on mobile phones when travelling in other EU countries are not substantially higher than those at home.

• US - Podcast Downloading (Pew Internet)
  Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time. However, few internet users are downloading podcasts with great frequency; just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day.

• US - Study: About 1 percent of Web pages have sexually explicit material (Mercury News)
  A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Microsoft's giant Internet indices showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material. The analysis was presented during a federal court hearing in Philadelphia in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

• US - The Internet and Science (Pew Internet)
  Fully 87% of online users have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept and 40 million adults use the internet as their primary source of news and information about science.

Issue no. 369 - 5 November 2006

• Netcraft survey: 100 million web sites (Netcraft)
  There are now more than 100 million web sites on the Internet, which gained 3.5 million sites last month to continue the dynamic growth seen throughout 2006. In the November 2006 survey we received responses from 101,435,253 sites, up from 97.9 million sites last month. The Internet has doubled in size since May 2004, when the survey hit 50 million.

• UK - Digital divide could be deepening (BBC)
  The number of people in the UK who have no intention of getting internet access has risen. Net refuseniks account for 44 percent - or 11.2 million - of UK households. Of those, more than 70 percent say they have little or no intention of getting connected.

• UK - Mobiles have 'key role for young' (BBC)
  More parents than ever now see mobiles as vital tools in supervising children's behaviour, giving them peace of mind, and making young people feel safer. Despite fears over 'happy slapping', text bullying and mobile crime, parents say that young people are safer with them than without, say researchers.

Issue no. 368 - 15 October 2006

• UK - Net crime 'big fear' for Britons (BBC)
  More Britons fear net crime than they do burglary, a survey suggests. The Get Safe Online study released by the government found 21% of respondents felt most at risk from net crime, while 16% worried most about being burgled.

Issue no. 367 - 23 September 2006

• DE - Mobile phones are taken for granted by more and more children (GHeise)
  A poll by the institute Synovate Kids + Teens (formerly known as Institut für Jugendforschung [Institute for Youth Research]) indicates that two thirds of 11- to 12-year-olds in Germany have their own mobile phone. In the age group 9- to 10-year-olds 37 percent said that they owned a mobile phone; among 6- to 8-year-olds that figure was still a remarkable 8 percent. At 89 percent almost every one of the 13- to 14-year-olds, the age bracket of teenagers proper, was found to own a mobile phone.

Issue no. 366 - 3 September 2006

• CN - Chinese mobile users hit 426m (vnunet)
  China had more than 431 million mobile phone users by the end of July, according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Local research firm Analysys International put the total number of mobile subscribers slightly lower at the end of June at 426 million,

• UK - OSS Watch Survey 2006: UK colleges and universities consider open source options (OSS Watch)
  More than three quarters of all UK colleges and universities consider open source options when engaging in IT procurement despite only one quarter mentioning 'open source' in institutional policies. The marked discrepancy between policy and practice is just one of numerous facts emerging from the OSS Watch Survey 2006 report.

• UK - Queen's English preferred for satnav (Reuters)
  Given the option, most British motorists would prefer their in-car satellite navigation systems to give directions in the well-modulated tones of the Queen's English as opposed to regional accents. A survey of 1,337 people found 57% opted for Queen's English compared with just 2% who said they would enjoy being told where to go by someone with a Birmingham accent.

Issue no. 365 - 15 August 2006

• UK - Britain is home to nearly 7 million bloggers (Guardian)
  One in four British internet users keeps a blog and more than half of that number share their online musings with the public, according to a report. The research suggests that, with 27 million internet users across the UK, the country now holds nearly 7 million bloggers - equivalent to nearly one in nine of the population.

• UK - Young drive 'radical media shift' (BBC)
  The 'networked generation' is driving a radical shift in media consumption, says UK telecoms regulator Ofcom. Sixteen to 24 year olds are spurning television, radio and newspapers in favour of online services, says the regulator's study. The 2006 Ofcom report also found that increasingly households are turning to broadband and digital TV. see also Ofcom Press release.

• US - Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers (Pew Internet)
  A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology.

• US - Parents shaky about kids' safety online (CNET News.com)
  The majority of parents say they've taken some action to ensure their child's safety online, but at least some will admit they're clueless about how to protect kids. According to a new study from research firm Harris Interactive, roughly a third of parents said they don't feel confident about teaching kids how to use the Internet safely and responsibly. Nevertheless, as many as 94 percent of parents have turned to Web content filters, monitoring software or advice from an adult friend to help shield their kids from harm on the Net. See Cable in the Classroom Press Release and Internet Safety page.

• US - Teens online: Major study (Net Family News)
  Several surveys about online teens have just been released, but the biggest news in Net safety this week was the much-anticipated 'Second Youth Internet Safety Survey' (the first, much-quoted, study came out back in 2000) from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, sponsored by the US government-funded National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. see also For kids, more online porn, less solicitations (CNET News.com) Fewer American children are being targeted by sexual predators on the Internet today than five years ago, according to a new study - an improvement researchers attribute to a growing awareness of the problem among young people. The findings come from a survey entitled Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later.

Issue no. 364 - 7 July 2006

• DE - Studie: Interesse an mobiler Mediennutzung nimmt zu (Heise)
  Das Interesse an an mobiler Mediennutzung ist unter den Internet-Nutzern in Deutschland stark angestiegen. Das ergibt die noch nicht online erhältliche ARD/ZDF-Online-Studie 2006 im Auftrag der ARD/ZDF-Medienkommission. 34 Prozent der "Onliner" verfügten bereits über die Möglichkeit, via Laptop und Handy ins Netz zu gehen. Weitere 16 Prozent planten den mobilen Empfang. Auch wachse die Nachfrage nach mobilem Fernsehen: 44 Prozent der Internet-Nutzer bekundeten demnach starkes Interesse, wobei als Empfangsgerät der Laptop vor dem Handy und dem Organizer rangiert.

Issue no. 363 - 25 June 2006

• EU - More than a third of EU25 population have no basic computer skills (RAPDI)
  In the EU251, in 2005, 37% of people aged between 16 and 74 had no basic computer skills. This percentage was slightly higher for women (39%) than for men (34%). Among Member States for which data are available, the survey showed notable differences between countries. Large differences also existed between age groups and between different education levels. These figures are published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. How skilled are Europeans in using computers and the Internet ? - Issue number 17/2006.

• FR - Médiamétrie : bilan de 10 années d'internet en France (PCINpact)
  L'institut Médiamétrie a réalisé une étude retraçant les 10 dernières années d'internet en France. Objectif : mesurer l'évolution de l'arrivée du net dans les foyers. De 1997 à 2006, le nombre de foyers connectés a été multiplié par 100. 95 000 foyers début 1996, contre 9,9 millions en 2006. Cette mise en place s'est faite selon trois phases : de 1997 à 2002, c'est l'arrivée du net, avec d'abord son introduction sur le marché puis avec une croissance exponentielle. En 99, 1,4 million de foyers disposent d'une connexion, fin 2000, 3,1 millions. L'année 2000 sera marquée par l'avènement de l'ADSL en France, qui aura un effet catalyseur.En 2002, 6,2 millions de foyers sont équipés soit 1 foyer sur 4.

• TW - Spam: Made in Taiwan? (CNET News.com)
  The majority of spam servers are physically located in Taiwan, according to CipherTrust. The e-mail security company found that 64 percent of machines sending out junk mail were in that country. Next was the United States with 23 percent and third China, with 3 percent. CipherTrust also determined that unwanted e-mail traffic went up as much as 20 percent worldwide in May. The company attributed the spam rise to two factors: the demise of antispam efforts by Blue Security, and growing use by spammers of image-only e-mails to defeat filters.

• UK - Football fans flock to BBC site (BBC)
  The BBC Sport website is the most popular online source for World Cup news in the UK, according to a study. More than 1.3 million football fans visited the site in the first week of the tournament.

• US - Parent poll on Net safety (Net Family News)
  Where their kids' use of the Internet's concerned, parents' greatest fear is sexual predators, a new study by CommonSenseMedia.org found. 'Still, they perceive other dangers to be more likely to occur: 80% are concerned about sexual predators online; 39% think that they are likely to happen to their kids, according to the study press release. Among media in general, the Internet is seen as the most risky - 85% of parents thinks so, vs. 13% for TV.

Issue no. 362 - 11 June 2006

• US - Home Broadband Adoption 2006 (Pew Internet)
  Home broadband adoption is going mainstream and that means user-generated content is coming from all kinds of internet users. At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or a 40% increase. And 48 million Americans - mostly those with high-speed at home - have posted content to the internet.

• US - Internet Penetration and Impact (Pew Internet)
  internet penetration among adults in the U.S. has hit an all-time high. Our latest survey shows that fully 73% of respondents (about 147 million adults) are internet users, up from 66% (about 133 million adults) in our January 2005 survey.

Issue no. 361 - 23 May 2006

• Google (service name here) isn't that popular (ZDNet)
  posted by Garett Rogers. Google does a poor job of cross-marketing their services. There are so many of them that it's hard for anybody to keep up. New statistics from hitwise suggest that the only service Google can call a 'huge success' is Google Search which has, according to them, a 79.98% market share. The runner up is Google Image Search with 9.54%, and from there the market share for the rest rapidly shrink.

• US - Internet Use Involves Both Pros and Cons For Children And Adolescents, (APA)
  Between 75 and 90 percent of teenagers in the United States use the Internet to email, instant message (IM), visit chat rooms and explore other sites on the World Wide Web. According to the latest research published by the American Psychological Association (APA), spending a lot of time on the Web can have both negative and positive effects on young people, i.e., the sharing of self-injury practices by some and the improvement of academic performance and health awareness by others. Full texts of the articles are online.

• US - Online socializing: Latest data (Net Family News)
  The Top 10 social-networking sites now reach a whopping 45% of active Web users, according to Nielsen/NetRatings' latest figures. Together, the ten sites have grown 47% in the past year (from 46.8 million unique visitors in April 2005 to 68.8 million last month). Nielsen's Top 10 are: MySpace, Blogger, Classmates Online, YouTube, MSN Groups, AOL Hometown, Yahoo! Groups, MSN Spaces, SixApart, TypePad, and Xanga.

Issue no. 360 - 14 May 2006

• A nation's interests? Google tells all (International Herald Tribune)
  Google Trends measures how often particular phrases are searched for from computers in individual countries and cities. Pakistanis look up 'Danish cartoons' more avidly than anyone, according to Google. They also lead the rankings for 'sex' - with their neighbor and nuclear rival India seldom far behind. The British look up 'handcuffs' most often, while Mandarin ranks second only to English as the language used to look up 'democracy'.

• EU - Eurobarometer survey on Safer Internet (Safer Internet)
  The Eurobarometer survey presents the attitude of European Union citizens towards illegal and harmful content on the Internet and their knowledge of how to protect their children against it. It covers 25 Member States, candidate and acceding countries and was conducted in December 2005. It was commissioned by the Directorate-General Information Society and Media and was carried out by TNS Opinion & Social, a consortium formed by TNS and EOS Gallup Europe. Eurobarometer survey 2005 Report (530 KB) | Annex (860KB)

Issue no. 359 - 9 May 2006

• Sophos report reveals latest 'dirty dozen' spam relaying countries (Press Release)
  Sophos has published its latest report on the top twelve spam relaying countries over the first quarter of 2006. While the United States has continued to make good progress in its efforts to reduce spam-relaying statistics, there is still more spam sent from US computers than any other nation. China is second. Europe is in danger of overtaking North America as the second worst spam-relaying part of the world.

Issue no. 358 - 21 April 2006

• EU - 40% of individuals in the EU used the internet at least once a week (RAPID)
  In the EU25, 48% of households had access to the internet during the first quarter of 2005, and 23% had a broadband connection. At the beginning of 2005, 91% of enterprises had access to the internet, and 63% of enterprises had a broadband connection. This information comes from a report by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. This report presents the results of surveys of internet access and broadband connections for households and enterprises, and internet usage by individuals, in the EU25 Member States, Norway and Iceland. It also covers e-commerce.

more items

QuickLinks consists of

• a free newsletter appearing approximately every two to three weeks. The newsletter is distributed by electronic mail through an "announcement only" mailing list.
• a Web site with frequent updates, an events page, news items organised by category as well as chronologically by issue and full text search.