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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..."
Apparently it's impossible to average more than 24 hours online a day.
I'm still waiting for things to fall apart with IPv4...
What they don't say is that the "time online per user per day" plateau they have reached is 24 hours.
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The statistics in the news article show time online in February 2005. I would expect a decline in time online compared to February 2004, since February 2004 had 29 days and February 2005 had 28 days.
Then again, maybe they compensated for that descrepancy when computing their statistics.
How do they get these net-ratings? A cursory glance of their website didn't reveal much. Is it the same way they get tv ratings? Like, where they send you a little book to fill out and 5 dollars for your time?
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The headline of the BetaNews site seems misleading to me. Reading "Internet Usage Flattening", you might come to the conclusion that the use of the Internet is not growing.
It appears that the actual Nielson report is just showing that the amount of time an individual user spends on the Internet is not growing. They don't appear to be making any judgements as to additional users coming online.
From data that I have seen, there are a large number of older people that have no desire to use the internet - ever. As the older population that has never been exposed to the internet and never will dies, they will be replaced by people that grew up with an intimate knowledge of the internet providing substantial organic growth.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I use the net alot less now, got a girlfriend that keeps me happy (as opposed to my ex who kept me miserable), ever since I met her the internet has lost its boredom killing magic and has since become a source of boredom. Of course i still visit /. many times a day, I am still a geek after all.
Has "linux distros" become the universal euphamism for "porn and music" these days or are people really downloading Linux 24/7?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
All major telecoms now route calls over IP; massive private networks now exist that are based on IP technology; my stereo talks to my portable music player using IP.
The internet is one of the most valuable human made public goods on the planet and it must remain open and standards based.
Surveys that suggest that the internet is "over" or was a failed experiment because kids in the suburbs have stopped downloading music are not only wrong they have an ulterior motive.
Nielsen
has the full report in PDF format, It was a short article
I imagine many people are like me, when I'm hanging out watching tv(which I do on my second monitor mainly), I'm also connected to the internet, either to followup on what I saw on TV, or to see if friends are on IM, or even just because I'm board and just do a sweep of news sites. The article says:
Nielsen//NetRatings 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'm waiting for a more fully interactive TV/Computer/Internet I think, more then TIVO, and Digital Cable has given me.
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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...
As far as I'm concerned NAT is a workaround, not a solution to IP address shortages.
From the press release ...
The latest Nielsen//NetRatings global research shows that the majority of usage growth has come from increased frequency of access or user session growth.
Which other type of "usage growth" am I too stupid to think of while assuming that they are talking about "average time" spent on the net on a "per user basis"?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
If the music and movie biz would get their act together and not worry about non-existent lost sales and release non-restricted content on the internet, its use, and their pocketbooks, would still be zooming to new heights.
But that's not likely to happen.
Actually, it's getting to the point where Internet usage is impossible to measure/meter, because the Internet is increasingly woven directly into the fabric of our lives. The idea of sitting around and "using the Internet" is about as obsolete as the idea of turning on your modem and dialing into your ISP -- in other words, not obsolete yet, but definitely on its way there at a high speed (no pun intended).
We have AIM on our cell phones. Some of us have computers turned on 24/7 with the speakers turned up loud enough that we'll hear it anywhere in the house when we get new mail or someone in real time wants our attention. We have our telephones and even televisions integrated into the 'net now. Internet usage is everywhere, it's always on, and it's going to be impossible to say "I got online at 7:00 and I stayed online until 9:00."
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Sitting around all day doing nothing but playing warcraft and looking at porn doesn't burn too many calries... oops, misread the headline. :)
I just finished downloading MD 10.2 rc1. I thing the debian iso's (the complete set) would have helped more, maybe next time.
With ie usage droping and firefox increasing, this alone would cause the flattening - even in a mild growth scenario.
Nielsen are the guys that keep TV programming dumbed down by reporting that all consumers want to see is dancing poodles, reruns of sit-coms and bad news.
Don't believe anything you hear from Nielsen. Their studies are unscientific bunk. To the extent they are given credibility, they will dumb down the internet too.
Nielsen Report Says Internet Usage Flattening
In case you don't know, Nielsen Net Ratings works by giving a family some software to install that acts as a proxy between them and the rest of the Net. You get paid a savings bond every 6 months for as long as you keep this installed. Your only interaction with it is selecting which user is on the computer by way of a dialog box with radio buttons that appears if the system has been idle for a while and at system start up.
The problem with Nielsen NR (and the TV audience version, too) is that they're tracking only the people they have deployed tracking software/hardware to, which is only a segment of a cross section of the population.
This is like calling say, 150 people, at random from your local phone book, asking them questions about an issue/person/product and calling them your test market.
As someone pointed out, you can't be on much longer than 24 hours in a day. More than that though, once a portion of the population using a tool (the Internet in this case) reaches saturation, further growth is impossible among that group and so new ways must be found to draw in new groups of people.
At each step of the way, you're going to get plateaus.
R(k)
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.
yeh, that makes about 70 hours a week.
gotta do mahhh johb...
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910) American author, humorist
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There are statistical equations that measure the relative accuracy of your results if you have a truly random sample. The trouble is that it's hard to get a truly random sample.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
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...
I don't know why the study would be based on time. You can't show a meaningful trend with time.
Think about people who have transitioned from dial-up to broadband. Most folks, at least in my experience, have specific tasks they perform on the internet each day, week, whatever. Transitioning to broadband allows them to accomplish those same tasks in less time.
For these people, their internet usage may actually go up, because they'll be able to get more done, even while the amount of time they actually spend doing it goes down.
usage is definitely flattering...
Oh, wait...
From data that I have seen, there are a large number of older people that have no desire to use the internet - ever. Am I the only one astounded by some peoples' disinterest in the 'net? I mean... kings used to spend a fortune on what, today, would amount to a small local library. And they would consider that a huge resource, in the knowledge is power sense. I'm sure I recall historical tales about the quest for the sum of human knowledge. The Internet, by comparison, really is getting close to the sum of human knowledge, in the sheer variety of information available, the speed at which new events are documented by it, and the level of worldwide, interpersonal communication involved. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to spend time just seeing what's out there, unless they simply don't realise what's out there.
No, the concealed cameras are in the hospital elevators.. Another good reason to use the staircase, if not just for the exercise.
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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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I'll get back up to my regular usage soon.
Also, why does the grandparent assume that NAT and IPv6 are mutually exclusive?
They're actually orthogonal--I'm sure we'll see NAT on top of IPv6, and I don't see anything wrong with that, for exactly the reason you described: to be able to install XP without getting immediately infected. And to be able to continue to use older devices which cannot be upgraded to IPv6 for whatever reason (closed source, manufacturer dot-bombed, etc.).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I think you don't understand what IPv6 address space means. You get 2^64 addresses. Pick a random one. Now, what is the probability that a random scan of the 2^64 block will find you?
New XP boxes would NEVER get infected by random worms. Internet worms (not the email type) would be obsolete. You would have an almost infinate amount of time to get to windowsupdate to patch your box (unless you go to getmystupidemailsmileys.com and get infected from that site :).
IPv6 also puts an end to spammers easily finding fresh open relays. You can't scan a given address block for hosts listening on :25.
NAT and IPv6 or not mutually exclusive. But NAT's main purpose is obsoleted by IPv6.
IPv6 allows you to have a minimum of 2^64 addresses. You would never have to pay for extra IP addresses. (unless you want to run multiple networks or something)
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
That's what a firewall is for. Furthermore, there would not be any random network traffic with IPv6. The address space is 2^96 bigger! Random IP traffic would not work.
So I'd say NAT is a pretty good solution, and unlike IPv6, it's here now.
Go to tunnelbroker.com and get your free /64 IPv6 addresses. You will need a static IPv4 address though.
IPv6 "is here" 5 years ago. You don't hear about it because it is much better for your ISPs to sell off one IP for $5/mo and only offer real static IPs for "business" acconts.
That won't work as well as you think. All a worm would have to do is sniff the packets on a network (even easier if it is a wireless network). From there, they'll know your IP and be able to infect you as before.
If, as the parent says, it's a local proxy, then it should work fine with firefox.
"Wow! Now that we've completely converted our ISP to IPv6, we can stop charging our customers for IP addresses and loose buckets of money!"
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I think a lot of the growth in Japan is because the connections speeds are much faster. http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/ There are more services such as TV. Japan is already pulling fiber into the home at + 100MBS. http://www.gate01.com/. And of course the wireless 3G networks. It is not uncommon to see mini laptops on trains with 3G Wireless cards at 380KBS. Of course the majority of cellphones are just used as Instant Messaging machines. You are not allowed to talk on cell phone on the commuter trains. It seems to me that the more bandwidth offered is realated to the services that are available. I would not be surprised to see Japan sustain the high growth rates for some time. There is currently a major battle in the media. It is complicated but basically the Internet firm Livedoor is buying up the old business of Radio and TV. The internet firm Livedoor is pursuing the marriage of interactive TV. Conversely, I think the US has reached a plateau on speeds and is still trying to get "High Speed" faster than 56KBS to the consumer. Until the US populace has breeched the boring aspect of waiting for content to load, I think usage will stay flat. If the US brings Fiber to the home there will be a similar effect of high growth rates.
when is it coming out ? to the mass market i mean ..
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United States trend along the worldwide average of hours spent online per month at nearly 14 hours.
I think I'm quite a few standard deviations from that mean.
I am not 100% positive why cell phone use is discouraged on commuter trains. When I lived in Japan in 1996 their use on trains was ubiquitous. I think a lot of it is due to the cultural norm of respect. Perhaps, there is a generational gap and the cell phone users on the trains were most frequently the younger generations. But the regulatory power in Japan is the older generation. In fact the areas surrounding the "courtesy seating" there are signs requesting the cell phone be turned off completely. Maybe it is out of concerns for health from pacemakers? The button you touch on your cell phone when you board the train is called "manner mode." Japanese commuter trains are legendary. In the morning the trains are so tightly packed that the train employees push the people on so the doors will close. The amazing thing is on the early morning trains you can hear a pin a drop, and people are sleeping while standing. There are other social problems, due to the extremely tight conditions, such as groping. The Japanese are punishing gropers and some train lines have women only cars. The Japanese cell phones are very powerful, they are complete entertainment centers. Many models have TV's so you can watch TV over the high speed connection, music players, scheduling calendars, notepads, web access and I use mine for the online up to date route finding on the train lines. Driving and holding a cell phone is also prohibited in Japan, you can use a headphone & mic. I am amused to watch the people walk in the crowded subways. They are busy Instant Messaging and walking. I think to truly understand the profoundness of this is they are using Kanji which has 5000 characters, on a cell phone with 20 buttons. So in reality, perhaps the number of personal computers per capita is less than in the United States the usage of online systems is more because of the cell phone. I do not see how people driving in their cars in the US would be interested in typing messages in the same way Japanese people with free time on trains.
I am a Nielsen//Netratings panelist. Their measurement tool is a Java application called Insight that runs on Windows startup. It runs as a http proxy a la Achilles, and edits IE and Netscape configs to make the browser go through the proxy. It hasn't detected Firefox, so it can't see most of my activity.