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Nielsen Report Says Internet Usage Flattening
Ant writes "This BetaNews story says an analysis of major Internet markets revealed that the time netizens spend online at home has come close to hitting a plateau in many major markets. Nielsen//NetRatings, a syndicated rating system for Internet audience measurement, measured markets in Brazil, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States and found them to be maturing. In contrast, Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy and Japan experienced double-digit growth. According to Nielsen//NetRatings' press release (PDF) and current news story concluded that mature markets are in wait of "the next big thing" whereas emerging markets were rife with opportunity for companies online. Some of the growth engines cited in the report is the proliferation of broadband and societal changes in media consumption..."
I'd say that the japanese, and even hongkong (and that entire region) are experiencing such growth due to their proliferation of internet-enabled devices. When I was in japan, our tourguide was showing off on her phone how she can check CNN news and the weather and all sorts of cool things. Of course, I've seen all that stuff before, as current phones have that ability, but the previous year, she said that all the Americans were surprised to see that in a cell phone. Walking around NYC in recent weeks, I've noticed more and more and more people using their SideKicks, so that's more usage right there; that's a full-blown web browser.
I'd also say that most growth nowadays, in any market, is due to more widely available internet access. It seems that today, most businesses have broadband and have all of their computers online, which allows for employee surfing during slow time/breaks. Open, unsecured, and fee-based wireless access is available almost everywhere you go, and with more people having handheld and laptop devices, and all these portable gaming platforms with access, the numbers are only going to increase.
Even though usage seems to be leveling off in the US, I say in the next year, it's gonna spike again. Especially since there's so many regions where broadband isn't available and with cable modem/DSL trying to hit those markets.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
You get selected (much like Nielsen's TV thing), they send you a CD and the program redirects your IE browser to their local proxy, and it also watches for what processes are running on the computer (yes, I have this program, and yes, I'm AC).
How can they classify broadband in Japan and Hong Kong as "emerging" and then call Germany and the US "mature"? That's utterly absurd. It's completely the other way around.
If anything, this seems to suggest that countries with serious broadband horsepower are pulling away from the gawking pedestrians at an ever faster clip.
Well, it would except that both categories seem to include diverse collections of countries. Nonthless, the conlcusion they imply is hardly reflected in the numbers they gathered.
My only question is from reading another article on Slash is if the internet protocol tcp/ip is right for high speed video since the internet architecture was never intended for it.
Typically, streaming audio/video is done with UDP rather than TCP.
Also, Internet2 was specifically designed for large transfers like that.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Yeah, no one would ever span or port scan if there were *more* numbers. Naw, that would *never* happen.
I have a "pretty much" static IP. It's changed only two or three times over the past 4 or 5 years.
.. and with a Linux firewall/NAT box, I've never gotten a worm, despite always being way behind on patching, and can do a clean XP re-install for someone without worrying about infection within those vital first few minutes.
NAT allows me to not have to pay an extra $15/mo to my cable company to get 3 additional systems online, and it allows me to run servers for different things on different machines (for example, Apache and Samba run on the gentoo box, but VNC ports forward to my desktop machine and another set of ports forwards to each desktop computer for bittorrent use) while keeping one easy-to-remember hostname.
The truth is, my 4 systems don't all need their own IPs. I simply don't allow my windows machines to be exposed to wild traffic floating around on the internet
So I'd say NAT is a pretty good solution, and unlike IPv6, it's here now.
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