How many people are there on the Internet, 25 million? 30 million? 40 million? According to the first statistically defensible study of Internet users, the whole of the US is home to only 5.8m users. The study, put together by Internet veterans O’Reilly & Associates and Trish Information Services, is the first telephone poll specifically to target Internet and on-line use: 29,901 individuals were canvassed in the random-dial survey, giving a sampling error of less than 1%, according to O’Reilly. The previous dearth of hard data is highlighted by the fact that the company got funding from International Thompson Publishing, IBM Corp and its Lotus unit, Turner Broadcast Systems/CNN, MCI/News Corp Online Ventures and a few others. Research sponsors pay $25,000 a year for the privilege of shaping the research and getting unlimited access to the results. The study defined an ‘Internet user’ as someone of 18 years of age or over that has direct access to the Internet and uses electronic mail as well as one or more Internet-specific applications, such as File Transfer Protocol, Gopher, Telnet or Web browser. When sizing the Internet, the company made the bold, but sensible decision to exclude people that connected via a commercial on-line service, explaining that as their access becomes more universal and their tools more complete, such users will be included in future studies.
The bell curves
O’Reilly discovered that Internet users already outnumber users of traditional on-line services quite considerably: the US has 3.9m people who’s only on-line activity is through a conventional on-line service; compared with the Internet’s 5.8m (about 1m of whom also use an on-line service). As for growth, the company predicts that the total on-line population will grow to 15.7m; the number of pure on-line-service users is reckoned to remain constant at 3.9m, with a further 6m using both on-line and Internet services and 5.8m using nothing but direct Internet feeds. The demographics of the traditional on-line and the newer Internet user still differ. The most likely inhabitant on either is a salesman (women make up only 33% of Internet users and 36% of on-line users). After that, things diverge – the next most likely denizens of on-line services are managers, administrative staff and engineers – in that order. On the Internet, by contrast, it is engineers, information systems guys, administrators or research and development people that you are most likely to find. One un-answered question is ‘where are all the educational users?’ It is impossible to move on many parts of the Internet without tripping over a student, yet O’Reilly’s figures are surprisingly student-free. As for age, you are most likely to find 35- to 44-year-olds on on-line services, a peak that also appears among Internet users. However, the distribution of Internet users has another peak at the 18- to 24-years mark, suggesting that there is a growing wave of relative youngsters that are Internet-savvy, but not particularly attracted to the more traditional services. A weakness in the survey is the way it ignores the under-18s. Are on-line users rich? Well, they are not badly off. The bell curves for both types of service peak at a household income of $50,000 to $75,000 per annum.
