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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.
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.
A lot of home computers are also working on things like DDoS attacks and spamming.
I use the net alot less now, got a girlfriend that keeps me happy
I generally use some kind of pit to catch mine...
Exactly the same crap is occuring with IPv4. Sure, there is lots of IP addresses, if everyone gets one number that changes all the time. Then you have to be a second-class "internet citizen", always stuck behind a NAT. Want to run a game server? maybe some bittorrent? Then you have to jump though hoops forwarding freaking ports all the time.
And let's not get started with port scans, virus probes and spammers wasting your bandwith. And that's on a new IP address. Some places can get a GB/mo of crap like this.
IPv6 solves all of these problems. No more NAT cruft or virus scans. A new IP address, when not in use, is acutally *clean* (no traffic). IPv6 solve many, many more problems than just increase number of addresses.
Oh, most people might not know or care, but has anyone seen some of the enormous routing tables on the internet? IPv4 is soooo fragmented, that the routing tables are now a serious problem in scallability of the internet. And everyone is paying higher prices thanks to this.
"mature markets?"
"next big thing?"
hmmmm... yeah, pr0n does spur growth in whatever it gets into.
wait, that sounded dirty.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
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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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.