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75% of Network Connections Not From Browsers
Trailwalker writes "An article at BigBlueBall.com states that 75% of web connections do not use a browser. IM and P2P applications are used instead." While surprising, this is probably more indicative of how instant messaging has been able to complement and/or replace email in recent times.
IM has less spam than e-mail!
One would think that spam and email worms constitutes a significant portion of that 75%.
The World is Yours.
I would think that msblast makes up a larger amount of the applications with network connections. I work for an ISP and there a still many customers who are afflicted with that virus.
The article states that 75% of users use non-browser applications to access the internet.
It DOES NOT say that 75% of the connections are made by non-browser applications.
There is a difference, and I blame the lack of any sober editors at Slashdot today for this getting through.
how do they come up with this number?
From the article: "Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, December 2003". More information on Nielsen's products may interest you.
If Nielsen's net ratings work anything like their TV ratings, then lucky families get paid to put a spybox between the cable modem and the home router, with full knowledge and consent of what's going on. I'd expect an airtight privacy policy; Nielsen has provided TV ratings for over a decade.
AIM isn't very formal either....I wouldn't dream of IMing someone regarding a job interview, or a professional deal, etc...but I agree for informal communication, for the most part. Email's paper trail also has niceness about it though, but I suppose if MS has its way, Emails will be DRMed too. :)
"Internet users spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes per month using Internet applications."
I don't mean to badger at statistics without seeing their complete methodology, but many people just leave their IM client connected. And don't WMP and RealPlayer phone home? So it seems hard to hold to numbers without specifying an activity which can more easily be linked with HCI time.
The truth is that IM and music players probably are the big draw for most people, which is the conclusion in article title ("Instant Messaging and Media Players are Primary Internet Applications"). Of course, hasn't the Internet always been a majority of activity not directly related to a web browser? Is this news, or a new (more realistic) perspective?
After reading the article, I noted that Windows Media Player is the #1 application accessing the internet. All I can ask is, why?
Why does a media player need to connect to a server so frequently? What information is it sending out? What good does Windows Media Player provide the end user, that it is taking up 34.43% of the web connections?
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I would assume "most people" don't even use instant messaging though. I've never understood what people see in using instant messaging. If I want to chat online I'll just use IRC and if I want to send someone a message without waiting for a reply I'll use e-mail. IM seems to serve no real purpose except for people too lazy to use the already existing technologies. Besides, if I really need instant gratification from someone THAT bad it's more likely I'll just call them on the phone.
It might be broken, exploited, less sophisticated, and maybe even not as convenient as IM, but it's still at least as ubiquitous. Also, IM has a lot of conventions which make it often times (not all times) less professional or even communicative. For example, IM stresses ways to shorten words but not necessarily make things anymore clear (or more developed). It's a lot like a phone in many ways. And sure we use the phone a lot - to varying degrees of success.
Email is just becoming a mainstay of many people's life. And it is very accessible - it really is like electronic mail (it has many mail conventions) and people seem to respond to its simplicity well. Also, the art of writing a coherent sentence, proof reading it, and then choosing a better word or phrase is much more suited to email.
I just hope I didn't prove my ignorance of these things in this post ;)
...for the common man like STunnel, FreeSWAN, or OpenVPN, how long can it be before people are just using private networks between family and friends at home to do IM, P2P or even Windows File Sharing? I've moved in this direction already with my family and friends. All it took was a little of my time to set up SSH clients with Local and Remote forwards that my family and friends initiate connection to my server with. Then they just access the Jabber server I run or, the internal mail server using IMAP, or the recipe database I've created, etc... Since some of my friends and family are Windows bound, I've been able to get them to use the Exodus client for Jabber with cygwin SSH to communicate with me. We even share RDP and VNC sessions. So... what does this have to do with the article? I would argue that there are a good number of people out there doing more than just IM, P2P or web browsing and they are probably doing it via tunneling. It can't be long before this becomes a part of the OS (even for Windows) to allow people to share data in new and very secure/private ways. It's done wonders for the support I offer my friends and family too...
Un-news
I wonder if this is because IM and P2P applications are left active all the time. In many cases running whenever the users computer is running.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
This article is ridiculously confusing. First of all, it looks like they're saying that 76% of people who use the web also use other programs besides web browsers to get internet content. But it doesn't help that apparently "Internet" has a very particular meaning, which excludes email (otherwise email traffic would have figured in here somewhere) but also miraculously excludes the web, since "Internet Applications" are only used by 76% of web surfers according to this article. This means either that web browsers are not, in fact, "internet applications," or that 24% of web surfers surveyed have direct telepathic connections to the 'net.
Unfortunately, there's no better info available... The company's original press release is pretty much reproduced in its entirety, word for word, by bigblueball news. I hope that Nielsen's clients aren't actually paying for info like this.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
The answer is, get better friends. The whole point of IM is you can see whose online and available. For things that are time sensitive it's great. For example, I could email want to go to the movies at 7 tonight? around to all my friends. They could then reply when they get it, which might be the next day, or in 15 minutes. By the time they respond to my email, I might not be in a position I can check mine. With IM, you looks whose on, and talk with them. Furthermore, you can just strike up a chat, if you want to talk to that person, but anyone that gets annoyed if you dont chat with them is just retarded. If you just tell them you are busy at the moment, most people understand. If you dont want to be disturbed unless it's very important, put up an away message. If someone is really annoying, just block them. Most IM clients just show you as logged off, so if you need to talk to that person later, just unblock them. IM is best when used in situations where you would normally have to make a phone call, but don't want to interrupt the person the way a phone does. If IM isn't for you, dont use it. But most people like it the way it is, so I doubt it needs an overhaul. From the sounds of it, you and the people you talk with are trying to use it like a replacement for phone or email, instead of using it for what it's good at.
They may be different server side, but client side, how much difference is there, especially if you use a meta-im (eg kopete). In kopete, adding an AIM, YIM, or IRC contact is the same. Though when you first setup the account you have to specify which of the IRC networks that account connects to, being an extra step over setting up AIM or YIM (one server) on a meta-im client.
PS, Email and IM can work together (psst KDE devs: add kopete into kontact)