INTERNET USAGE

“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” - Eric Schmidt

I came across an interesting website that features up to date world Internet Usage, Population Statistics and Internet Market Research Data, for over 233 individual countries and world regions. There are some amazing figures that are published there, including the number of users and the penetration rate in the population.

For example, in the USA there are 239,893,600 Internet users as of June 2010, which represents a 77.3% penetration; while in Australia, there are 17,033,380 users as of March/11, with a 78.3% penetration. Contrast this with Ethiopia where there are 445,400 Internet users as of June 2010, representing 0.3% of the population. In terms of the highest penetration, Iceland boasts 301,600 Internet users as of June 2010, but has the highest penetration worldwide at 97.6%. In terms of the highest number of users, China has 477,000,000 Internet users as of March 2011, with only 35.7% penetration. India is an interesting case with 81,000,000 Indians being internet users, yet this representing only 7% of the Indian population.

Nevertheless, the Internet is a busy place! It is interesting to contemplate that in 60 seconds, Google will receive 700,000 queries around the world, 168,000,000 emails will be sent and 98,000 tweets will be posted on Twitter. 13,000 iPhone Apps are downloaded every 60 seconds while in 60 seconds there will have been more than 370,000 voice calls on Skype. It is estimated that on 31st March 2011, there were 2,095,006,005 Internet users worldwide.

It is encouraging to think that from a tool that was initially developed and used for military intelligence in the 1960s, the world wide web in its present form is an indispensable part of the lives of billions of people worldwide.

As it is Poetry Wednesday today, here is an amusing poem found (where else, on the internet) about social networking and blogging:

Community Creatures

A colony of bloggers secure in their topic
ranging in size from massive to microscopic.
The lesser ones surround and support the great
who set the direction for the others to debate.

A flock of forums grazing on knowledge
their shepherds guiding them to fresh foliage.
Free to chew the cud and relax within their walls
trusting the guardians to banish the jackals.

A hydra, a multi-headed oracle, it must be a wiki
tackling all problems from the simple to the tricky.
The multiple heads give it so much knowledge you see.
The only problem is... they do not always agree.

A mob of social bookmarkers, much like meerkats
take turns looking out and deciding what's good to peer at.
Hoping none of the sentinels is actually a pretender
directing them all according to their own agenda.

In the distance, a herd of social networkers
dashing all over the place. There's no room for shirkers.
Without any shepherds they all, every day,
have a role to play in keeping predators at bay.

©Adam Rulli-Gibbs 2007