Slashdot Mirror
Nearly Half of U.S. 'Net Users Post Content
An anonymous reader copies and pastes: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly half of U.S. Internet users have built Web pages, posted photos, written comments or otherwise added to the enormous variety of material available online, according to a report released on Sunday. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that about 44 percent of the country's Internet users have created content for others to enjoy online." Don't read the blurb - cut straight to the study.
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In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet &
American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults have used the
Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and
otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. Some 44% of the
nation's adult Internet users (those 18 and over) have done at least one of the following:
21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their
computers.
17% have posted written material on Web sites.
13% maintain their own Web sites.
10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them have
posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they belong
such as church or professional groups.
7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see
live pictures of them and their surroundings.
6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
44% of Internet users have created content for the online world through
building or posting to Web sites, creating blogs, and sharing files
Content Creation Online
2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone
survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in
early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have
created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read
the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have
posted material to the blog.
Most of those who do contribute material are not constantly updating or freshening
content. Rather, they occasionally add to the material they have posted, created, or
shared. For instance, more than two thirds of those who have their own Web sites add
new content only every few weeks or less often than that. There is a similar story related
to the small proportion of Americans who have blogs.
The most eager and productive content creators break into three distinct groups:
Power creators are the Internet users who are most enthusiastic about contentcreating
activities. They are young - their average age is 25 - and they are more
likely than other kinds of creators do things like use instant messaging, play games,
and download music. And they are the most likely group to be blogging.
Older creators have an average age of 58 and are experienced Internet users. They
are highly educated, like sharing pictures, and are the most likely of the creator
groups to have built their own Web sites. They are also the most likely to have used
the Internet for genealogical research.
Content omnivores are among the heaviest overall users of the Internet. Most are
employed. Most log on frequently and spend considerable time online doing a
variety of activities. They are likely to have broadband connections at home. The
average age of this group is 40.
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why? forty-two.
What would really be interesting is how many people have their own web page(s).
13 percent, according to the survey. This number still looks rather high, though.
According to them, only 2% of adult American internet users visit "adult websites" on a typical day.
News flash: people lie about sex.
More seriously though, I find it hard to believe that only 54% of adults with internet access use that access on a typical day.
Dialup, which is what most people have, is a pain in the ass. While we're using our DSL lines to post 20 comments a day to Slashdot, most people are in front of a different kind of monitor, watching the latest Fear Factor or Joe Millionaire or biased "news" program.
Rank Presidents by th
The headline is misleading. From the report in html version
17% have posted written material on Web sites.
That wasn't the impression I got from reading the part of the article that was a link. Creative journalism indeed.
If you go to Preferences | Comments you can give a +6 bonus to interesting and informative posts.
I don't have a lot of suggestions for you (maybe K5 and Ars Technica), but finding sights similar to those in your "net-sphere" is easy. Do a Google query for them, using a form like "related:slashdot.org" (replacing with your favorite site names). Some of the results may be what you're looking for, some may not, but they'll get you started, at least.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
It would be nice if ADSL were extended to allow a kind of "reverse bandwidth" command. This command could be used dynamically by the customer's [router's] IP stack, e.g. like this: "As long as there's nothing receive, allow maximal outbound bandwidth. As soon as content is received, reverse direction."
Something like that exists, and the shift between using channels for upstream or downstream is done at the ADSL level itself; it's called Rate-Adaptive DSL or RADSL. Unfortunately, a bias is built in here as well - downstream goes up to 512kbps and upstream only up to 256kbps. (Notice that those rates are well below regular ADSL (G.DMT) speeds).
It should be fairly trivial to implement such behavior in G.DMT hardware, but you'd be breaking the standard, and there might be some issues with crosstalk on your neighbours' lines; since you're transmitting on the very frequencies they're receiving on, and you'd have to be doing so at a rather high amplification (since the signal fades out over the lengt of the wire; attenuation), your transmit might drown out the signal they're trying to receive from the central office. Everyone using symmetrical rates would be a much better idea of course, but alas.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
There was no authorisation to continue on to Baghdad. The UN Resolution and the corresponding Congressional action, both only allowed for expelling the Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Also, Operation Desert Storm/Shield was in 1990-1991, not 1989.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
- Read USNET groups related to your interests and follow the links
- Follow links from sites already in your 'net-sphere'.
- Follow links from Slashdot articles/posts
- Read web boards related to your interests and...
Well, you get the picture.I find my 'net-sphere' is growing at such a rate that I spend as much time pruning it as adding to it. (Which may also have a lot to do with my breadth of interests I admit.)
Gad, did you even test this theory out? Noooooo, you didn't!!! Google for AK-47 - the main Kalishnakov site shows up second on the list, along with sites dealing w/ the history, techical specs, and care and feeding of your AK. Do some research before you start posting blindly!
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno