Slashdot Mirror
2001 UCLA Internet Census
Merry_B.Buck writes: "UCLA's Center for Communication Policy has finished
its second annual survey on Internet usage.
Some interesting claims: online shoppers believe prices
are lower in brick-and-mortar stores, and experienced Interneters are less likely
to use chatrooms, play games, and download music than their newbie counterparts. An
unrelated
report from Forrester Research claims that
Internet newcomers tend to gather at LookSmart and
MSN portals, while old-timers prefer InfoSpace and
Yahoo. [I'm suspicious of both surveys -- neither had a
Cowboy Neal option.]"
Having a lower price isn't really the advantage of Internet shopping -- the point is that brick-and-mortar stores quite often don't have the products you want. I simply can't find the books, movies, or CDs I want to buy locally, so I buy on-line.
I used to use Yahoo exclusively until they started placing search results higher for pay. Now I use Google, and will until they start doing the same.
Online will always be serving the niche market, not the mainstream, I mean I rather drive down to the nearest futureshop to get my stuff rather ording it online and have to wait for it.
If oldies don't download music, p0rn, what do we do? paying 40 bucks a month just for slashdot?
I personally don't use any of those crappy portals, Google all the way!!!
kawai
One of the charts looks like this, I kid you not...
All of the different education levels rose in percentage from 2000 to 2001! Apparently in 2001 381.7% of people on the internet had some level of education... hmm...
Everything is mainstream now.
because it's the default homepage for Internet Explorer, and as we all know, 90% of people don't bother to change their defaults. I wonder how many of those MSN hits are people who actually stay on the site, compared to those who just let IE load it up on startup then immediately go somewhere else.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
Working in a brick-and-mortar store, let me just tell you:
HAHAHAHAHA!
We routinely sell items for at least twice the PriceWatch price. And people continue to buy from us.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
a better example is one I 've seen at radio free nation, where the current survey asks if you stongly support the war, or is it worried support, or relectant support, or conversly strongly oppose, or is it worries opposition, or reluctant oppsition.
There's a bunch of folks who think everyone's crazy!
This woould show soft the support for a position is. I can imagine a similar survey on the internet experience, Micorsoft, or Open source, or whatever.
How many people would have reluctant support of Microsoft, or are frustrated by their ISP?
more than one way to skin a cat.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Some of miss the old days of yahoo.leland.stanford.edu, which later became this yahoo.com startup.
Also, one often wonders about slashdot users. Not only it is interesting to see if they've been online more than 3 years, but I'd like to know how long they've been using Linux and Windows. I hate making a pro-Windows comment like "in the last 4 years, I've found my Windows and Linux servers to be equally stable and fast", only to be flamed by a kid who has used Linux less than 6-months flame me for not knowing what I'm talking about.
These report is pure drivel. There is a very interesting report / Rebuttal from Odlyzko of University of Minnesota about the growth of the Internet itself. It seems that the numbers banted around is between 400% year and Zero. Second the makers of these reports can't do basic math.
Help fight continental drift.
and they use a pdf instead of html. go figure.
-- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
doesnt mean you have a clue what you are talking about! These things are clearly confused, misleading, and just plain dead wrong.
If you thought that was interesting, then you really need to read this.
Experienced net users are less likely to download music?
I think it's more likely that experienced users just create a pseudo-
newbie indentity on the fly, rather than waiting for a friendly
lawyer to speak with them about the advantages of Digital Rights
Management...
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
it's true, as an experienced internet user, I don't use chatrooms nor download music. However I do play online games; not the browser based ones.
I know that prices are lower in Brick-And-Mortar stores.
Look a monkey!
i don't find it "interesting" that newbies use chat, music swapping, etc. more than old timers. the internet was hyped for that. Newbies get in, do that sort of stuff, overdose, then find better things to do (real world again) as they become experienced.
While I haven't reached the stats on online shopping yet (at 95 pages, this thing is massive), but I would like to point out to the submitter of this article a few stats from one of the charts (new users (those less than one year) and very experienced users (five or more years in 2001) that is located on page 18):
- Chatrooms:
- New users: 6.5%
- Experienced users: 1.6%
- Games:
- New Users: 5.7%
- Experienced Users: 2.8%
- Download Music:
- New Users: 2.0%
- Experienced Users: 2.8%
Now, last time I checked, 2.8% > 2.0%, so while, yes, newbies do play games and hang around chat rooms more (geez, they had to do a survey of that? I could have told them that), it seems that the 'old-timers' are (slightly) more likely to download music.So let this be a lesson for you: Always make sure your facts are correct when submitting an article, it's a little less embarrasing.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
It sounds about right.
I'm not convinced online stores are cheaper. Often if you shop around you can get as cheap, or cheaper prices. Also, even when an online store is cheaper...once you add in postage etc, it often works out more expensive.
I still shop online though...its definately more conveniant!
When I was a newbie, all I did was chain mail, chat, play games, and go to flashy sites. Now that I've been surfing the web for 7+ years, I tend to play fewer games, block span and chain mail, only use messanger from time to time, and use Yahoo for all my searches. I don't know about you, but I seem to fall right into the experienced web users groove.
Click here if you need more time [alexchiu.com]
lol, isnt he the guy with the infinite youth machine or something? comedy page - brought hours of fun back at uni....
MSN
/. for lameness....
Looksmart
InfoSpace
Yahoo
Personally, my portal is Google for searching, Mutt and Sendmail for messaging, and
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
...If you have to pay for both sales tax AND shipping.
I have found living in California, where many of the e-tailers are, that having to pay CA sales tax (& sometimes even being forced to pay the higher Los Angeles city rate, even though I don't live there), and having to pay $2-$5 for Shipping & Handling per item, totally wipes out any online discount off of the retail price for a product.
See, B&M Stores do bulk shipping from major distributors, so the actual shipping cost is low enough to them so that they can "eat" the cost -- actually, the cost winds up being built into the retail price nicely for them (Plus, you pay the cost for the "final mile" shipping, by driving the merchandise to your house).
Online stores don't have that luxury. Their shipping costs are much higher. So they have to tack on the shipping costs, or lose a bundle, and go dot-bomb up.
I have no problem with this. But, when I am also forced to pay sales tax, the price of the product is likely to be un-competitive with the final B&M price, even though they have to charge sales tax too.
So every time I hear mom & pop stores and state governors whining about lost revenue to Internet sales, it really boils my pot. Because if they have their way, and ALL Internet sales are charged state sales tax regardless of point of origin (to say nothing if the govt. one day decides to levy a special federal level Internet tax on purchases), all online shopping will be un-competetive price wise, and nobody will buy anything online except for those hard-to-find items. And guess what, people? those hard-to-find items won't be there if companies can't make money off of common items as well!
Why, yes he is.
Sorry, brick and mortar just isn't cheaper for most things (especially hardware :D).
Have people acutally looked at some of these places?
Plus there's always eBay if you want something really cheap.
According to page 18, the very experienced users (more than 5 years online) are 40% MORE likely to download music. And about 1/4 as likely to use a chat room and 1/2 as likely to play games.
Of course, this is all as a percentage of time spent online, so if the very experienced spend more time online, all bets are off....
who thinks that portals suck? What kind of experienced user uses a portal? I'm just curious as wether somebody can enlighten me on this. I'd think experienced users know what they are doing, meaning they go directly to the most relevant specialised site that gives them the info they are looking for at that point in time. Personally, google is my choice. Fast, reliable, popup and ad free, and it contains a link to absolutly everything I could want (or almost)... I'm interested to hear your thoughts on why anybody experienced should use a portal.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
This is an amazing job my fellow AC. Keep up the great work!
Brick and mortar stores have cheaper prices than online, eh?
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Merry.B_Buck writes: "The university of UCLA, yesterday made an announcement at the new building in the Center for Communication Policy that it has finally finished the rest of the long awaited
second annual of the year 2001 survey about Internet and its usage.
Some interesting claims indeed have been put ahead by the people at UCLA. For example only a few of them: online shoppers actually believe that prices as well as connection costs are not lower in any way near brick-and-mortar stores, and unlike all inexperienced Interneters are more or less rather unlikely
to ill-use chatrooms, or play games, and download music and p0rn, or crapflood innocent little sites like slashdot.org and others than their newbie counterparts share the same will to learn and soon contribute their most beneficial efforts to it.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, a completely unrelated report which appears to come from Forrester Research Center, seriously claims that
Internet newcomers as well as the experienced Interneteers usually have a tention to gather at vairous random shaites, portals, MSN portals, while on the other hand old-timers as well as their new-commer counterparts usually prefer InfoSpace and Yahoo respectivelly (the latter). [Personally, I'm a bit suspicious of both surveys because neither of them two had a Cowboy Neal option. Ed,] "This is unbelievable" officials commented. "Is that a dream?" or "You remember when we were in Italy?" are some more comments made by the officials. "Did somebody actually sat down to write that?" and "what? can you repeat that please, I didn't hear your question sire" as well as "why???" and "But Census means 'hairy pussy' in korean" and similar comments attracted our interest during the announcement"
-1
Your command of the English language is so terrible, I cannot understand what you're attempting to communicate.
but no relative of gene ray.
How did this Internet surveys even get off of the ground? While MSN and Yahoo are certainly two of the most prominent search-engines around I myself still shun Yahoo because of its commercialism and MSN because I never know if I can trust the outcome of what I'm searching for.
Ever since I first discovered AltaVista I used it over Yahoo. Then, ever since I discovered Google I used it over Altavista. One would expect that as an Internet user "matured" they would move away from gaudy directory services and see the appeal of a less complex and more raw interface that brings them more direct information like Google.
I find it extremely hard to believe that Google didn't show up in the top two of "mature" Internet users.
(Of course being able to set my language to Gaelic on Google didn't hurt either.)
Amerist.
Mill Avenue Vexations
Terrorist! Terrorist!
Those words could be used to guess people's passwords... and they have no commercial purpose...
The only reason to have a list of words like that is to hack!
Terrorist! Terrorist!
Many of your Joe-Windows-users likely said they were experienced.. Who decides the person's skill level? If they aren't chosen by the person being tested but rather by a selective approach.. what constitutes experienced? The testing for if someone is experienced or not could end up rigging the voting process. Anyway, this is probably answered on the webpage if only I bothered to read it.
:)
I vote you must grok this to qualify as experienced
When i first really got involved with the internet i used those search engines because they are easily accesible (i.e. MSN is your default start page). In addition, in college I downloaded a lot more music in my free time while on the computer, and in my early days on the computer i visited chat rooms a lot more, I think the survey is at least on the money for me. What about the rest of you slashdotters?
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
Were you to ask me if I supported the war or not, I would tell you that I support it. If you offer me the choice between whether I support it strongly or relucantly, I would be apprehensive about your motives in asking the question like that. Why do you want me to commit strongly or weakly?
The suggestion that comes to my mind is, "strongly" and "weakly" are weasel words that the surveyors can use to nudge the outcomes of the survey any way they like. For example if it proves beneficial to the surveyors to show that people are in some way divided in their support of the war, then it suffices for them to show that, even though the overwhelming majority of people supports the war, only (say) 10% does so strongly (considering that most people, when offered the choice between committing strongly or weakly, will commit weakly).
So all things considered, I'd prefer surveys to just ask people what you need to know. And leave the weasel words out of it.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
The top reason for use according to the report is to get information quickly. The second was this "other" catagory.
pr0n hun?
come on, if you want to be a true yahoo geezer, you have to reference jerry's sumo site on akebono. that's where it all started - the guy started collecting sumo links.
perhaps this is another chapter in the governments plot to throw out cowboy neal options everywhere.. !break out the tin foil and start wrappin fellahs"!
VAX
.
Well, you have to admit there's more information there than in the average Slashdot post...
Take note in future, any posting which expresses an opinion other than that held by the majority of Slashdot readers will be moderated down as "Flamebait" or "Troll". We don't want any debating on our website!
Mosty professional surveys by politcal consultants do that anyhow, by prefixing the survey question with biased viewpoints.
You can see how the biase was applied. you list out all the good things that people agree with, then align your candidate, product, company etc with the desired characteristics. This is far more complex then finding out how people really feel about something. But most posters are truly clueless about reading human emotion, and so you use a simply list.For example "Strongly supporting the war " covers a world of sins, including Strongly supporting with an Evil Laff, or with Anger, or with Pain, or with Joy (happy to go to war) or what ever.
So it really depends on what the purpose of the survey is. Simply put while a majority of Americans do support the war, many do so with some kind of second thoughts. It is definitely not "Rah Rah Rah!" for this whole thing.
While surveys should ask what you "need to know", what you think you need to know, and what you really need to know often differ. To say that 90% of the people support the war is misleading if you do not know that many people have reservation, and will cut someone to ribbons when they start to really screw up.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder how much these studies were skewed by the fact that most very experienced Internet users stopped filling out surveys years ago. They're either too busy, too paranoid, or have burned too many times by "surveys". How many of the people here would have contributed to this survey if asked. I'm sure somewhere in these 95 pages it talks about this, or at least gives the numer of experienced vs newbies, but I didn't read it all the way through. Will there ever be a poll that accuratly shows what experienced users do?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Forrester claims that Looksmart is "the most popular among novices", but they really mean that it has the lowest average years of experience per user (read: users leave ASAP). That's because LS is mainly distributed through ISP's' installed-with-browser homepages, a la MSN. The upshot of this tactic is a miniscule 2% reach, as the report states, *not* a number one rating in any sense of the word.
LS itself has no interest in having users at all any more (honestly, the CEO said this). They now envision themselves as the middleman in paid listings, but that's another sad story.
-- an insider
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
As you said, all "the presents from me" will be there.
And where are the presents FOR me ? 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker