More Internet Statistics

 Over 80% of internet users use mobile devices to surf the web.

    83% of mobile users expect a flawless experience whenever they visit a website with any mobile device.
    Up to 70 percent of web traffic comes from mobile devices.
    95.1% of active Facebook traffic comes from mobile devices.
    57% of LinkedIn traffic comes from mobile.
    Mobile devices are responsible for more than 70% of watch time on YouTube.
    90% of Twitter views happen on mobile.
    Google is responsible for 96% of search traffic coming from mobile.
    80% of Alexa’s top-ranked websites are mobile-friendly.

World Wide Web Turns Thirty

The World Wide Web turns 30 during 2019. It took 16 years to add the first billion users, six more years to add the second billion and is now adding a billion users every 2.7 years.
During 2014, 26% of users connected to the web using a cellular phone. Today that has grown to 48%.
There are 11 new users on the web every second. The most considerable growth of internet users is in India, which had almost 100 million new internet users during 2018, a 21% increase. That represents 25% of all new internet users in the world for last year.
About 40% of internet users now interface with the web using voice. In China and India, over half of users interface the web with voice.


GlobalWebIndex reports that 92% of Internet users (about 4 billion) now watch video each month. Incidentally, there are an estimated 6 billion people around the world have access to a television.

Internet Update

It has been about 30 years since the beginning of the internet. As of April 2019, an estimated 4.4 billion people around the world use the internet. That is about 56% of the world's population, and 81% of the developed world.

Cell Phone Usage

During January, 2009, only about 10% of the U.S. population had smartphones, resulting in network traffic that mostly involved texts and voice, and some modest picture messaging.

Four years later the faster LTE wireless network that Verizon had launched during late 2010, still had not gone mainstream. AT&T said that data usage on its D.C.-area network was more than 16 times larger than it was during 2009. By 2016, 88% of the population owned smartphones.

Dark Web vs. Deep Web

Many people use the terms Dark Web and Deep Web interchangeably, but they are two very different things. Dark Web is basically just a part of the internet that is not completely public and you need special software to access. The Deep Web is designed for extra security and privacy that the regular Internet does not have. The Deep Web cannot be accessed by a search engine, and consists mostly of data stored on private networks of corporations.

The Dark Web is an encrypted network of darknets that makes up a portion of the Deep Web. Accessing this hidden section of the web requires a special encryption software called Tor. There is nothing wrong with the Dark Web, nor is it actually Dark. Originally it was designed with privacy, security, and anonymity in mind. It is not illegal, in fact, legitimate sites such as Facebook have sites on the Dark Web. Many people use it to browse the web without being tracked by an internet service provider or the government. There is a dark side to the Dark Web, including graphic content, evidence of kidnappings, hit-men for hire, prostitution, child pornography, drugs, guns, and more. Due to the anonymity the Dark Web provides, it is more difficult for law enforcement officials to track down and stop illegal activities.

The regular web, or Internet you use every day to search for your daily news, shop, Tweet, and watch viral animal videos can be just as bad. Many criminals and other predators hide in plain sight. Almost everything you can find on the Dark Web can also be found on the regular Internet. This includes drugs, solicitation, stolen data, terrorism groups, and various types of pornographic material.

The Deep Web is estimated to be around 500 times larger than the regular Internet and the Dark Web is estimated at 7,000 to 30,000 sites hidden from everyday access. Bottom line, the Dark Web is not so dark, the Internet is not so innocent, and the Deep Web is owned by corporations and governments.

Internet Growth

The number of Google indexed pages has grown from 1 trillion to 30 trillion during the last 7 years.

The number of net additional pages indexed by Google each year is also increasing. There were 3 trillion additional pages added during 2010, 5 trillion during 2012, and 8 trillion during 2014.

Dial-up Internet

According to a study from the Pew Foundation, only 3% of U.S. households went online via a dial-up connection in 2013. Thirteen years before that, only 3% had broadband.

What is IoT

We see these letters more and more, but many folks do not know what they mean. They mean the "Internet of Things."  The IoT is a network of objects connected to the internet that can collect and exchange data.

The new car loaded with apps, the smart home devices that let you control the thermostat and lights with voice commands, the fitness tracker that lets you share your exercise progress with friends and health data with your doctor are all part of IoT. Think about GPS-guided agricultural equipment that can plant, fertilize, and harvest crops.

Business Insider Intelligence estimates that there will be 24 billion IoT devices installed globally by 2020, along with an additional 10 billion PCs, and other devices. It is estimated that $6 trillion will be invested in IoT solutions during the next five years.

Internet and Web

The Associated Press announced that the next edition of its stylebook will endorse 'internet' over 'Internet' and 'web' over 'Web'.

The change is the latest in a long-running debate over whether 'the internet' is a proper noun,  no different than a television or a hair roller. AP Standards Editor Thomas Kent said, “The changes reflect a growing trend toward lowercasing both words, which have become generic terms.” Hopefully the automated spell checkers will be updated by then.

Five More Internet Firsts

Computer-to-computer email started when Bolt Beranek and Newman was hired by the United States Defense Department to work on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.  Employee Ray Tomlinson started working on an experimental file transfer protocol that could send a message from one computer to another. He also came up with the “@” symbol to connect the user and network, simply because it made the most sense to him. It would include the user’s name and the host where it should be sent. In July of 1971 Tomlinson sent the first email to the computer next to his, which read, “QWERTYIOP”.

Pierre Omidyar was thinking that the web might make for a great marketplace, specifically utilizing an auction format for fair pricing on items. He launched the website AuctionWeb (which became eBay) on September 3, 1995. The first item to sell was a broken laser pointer, which went for $14.83. He was confused by someone paying for that much for a defective item and discovered the buyer collected broken laser pointers. He thought it was interesting that collectors were so passionate about ordinary items.

The first book sold on Amazon in July of 1995 was Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought, by Douglas Hofstadter.

The first Internet single released by a major label happened during 1993, when Geffen Records released the single “Head First” by Aerosmith.

During October 27, 1994, Joe McCambley, who ran a small digital advertising company, created the first banner ad for AT&T. The all-text ad, which said “Have you ever clicked your mouse here?” appeared on Hotwired.com, the first digital magazine. Forty four percent of Hotwired’s visitors clicked the ad, and some even shared it with friends. Today, only about 0.0004 percent of website visitors click on banner ads.

Tech Tidbits

Many people are afraid to charge their phone or tablet overnight because they think it might overcharge and destroy the battery, but modern electronics automatically stop charging and will not overcharge.

Do not leave your gadget in the car or outdoors as extreme heat and cold will harm both your battery life and battery health. Cell phone batteries can swell and be destroyed within hours due to extreme heat. In extreme cold areas batteries run out very fast

Older Nickel-Cadmium batteries had a memory effect that meant you had to drain them every time. Newer lithium-ion batteries do not have that problem. In fact, li-ion batteries last longest when you keep them between 40% and 80% charged.

Whether you shut down your computer nightly comes down to personal preference and the vagaries of Microsoft operating systems. If you never shut down your computer, it tends to slow down over time, so a restart every now and then will keep the speed up.

If your Internet connection is slower than usual, try unplugging both your modem and router from the Internet source for 10 to 15 seconds. This usually works to speed things up. Unplugging many from the power source does not work as they have internal batteries, so using the reset button another way to solve this.

Every Web browser has a private mode. When private browsing mode is on, the browser will not record where you go and it wipes most of the information someone could use to piece together your online travels. However, private browsing isn't foolproof. It doesn't hide your browsing from your Internet service provider, the sites you visit, or any law enforcement that happens to be watching. Companies typically log sites visited. Private just means that it is harder to find.

Five Internet Firsts

Symbolics Inc. registered the first domain name, Symbolics.com, on March 15, 1985, before the real internet was born. Symbolics Inc. grew out of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence lab, and was the first company to make workstation computers.

CERN launched very first website on August 6, 1991. It was a simple page, similar to a Word document with black lettering on a white background with blue hyperlinks. It briefly described project W3, better known now as the World Wide Web.

The first picture ever uploaded to the World Wide Web on July 18, 1992 was a picture of the all-girl comedy group Les Horrible Cernettes. The group was made up of administrative assistants and partners of researchers at The European Organization for Nuclear Research.

A little-known band called Severe Tire Damage, played live on the Internet for the first time on June 24, 1993.

YouTube was registered as a domain on February 14, 2005. On April 23, 2005, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim posted the first video called 'Me at the zoo'. The 19-second video features Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, talking about his interest in “really, really, really long trunks.”

Incidentally, the Internet is what you connect to and the Web is how you view it.

Deepweb and Darknet

These two words are often spoken by the news media and we hear them on some TV shows, but they are never explained.

The Deepweb refers to part of the Internet, specifically the world wide web (anything that starts www) that isn't indexed by search engines, and can't be accessed by Google.

The Darknet refers to non-www networks, where users may need separate software to access them. For example, Silk Road and many illicit markets are hosted on Darknet networks like I2P and Tor.

Internet, IP, Web, and URL

The Internet is a collection of computers and cables that form a communications network.

The Web (World Wide Web) is a collection of HTML (web) pages on the Internet. The Web is the user part of the Internet.

The term Interweb is a combination of the words Internet and Web. It is most often used in the context of joking or sarcasm.

A URL (universal resource locator) is synonymous with Internet address.  A URL is usually a combination of code and text, such as 'http://www.google.com', but numbers are also allowed. A URL always starts with a protocol prefix like http://, but most browsers will type those characters for you. URLs are internally converted to IP addresses

IP address (Internet Protocol address), is a unique identifying number given to every device on the Internet. Like a car license plate, an IP address is a special serial number used for identification, such as  208.185.127.40 = www.about.com.

Bottom line, all URLs have an IP address, but not all IP addresses have a URL.

Internet Time

This is what happens every sixty seconds on the internet.
2,635,217 Google searches
204,709,030 emails sent
1,865 new mobile web users
51,763 app downloads
847 new websites created
200,743 people watching porn
$238,651 is spent on web shopping
$89,300 revenues from products sold on Amazon
778,520,485 Gb of global data transferred
1,875,734 new Facebook likes
159,745 new photos uploaded on Facebook
243,040 new tweets
104 hours of video uploaded on YouTube
2,780,653 YouTube video views
About a million Google searches happened while you were reading this tidbit.

New Internet Rumor Tracker

Emergent is a real-time rumor tracker. http://www.emergent.info/about  It is part of a research project with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media. It aims to develop and best practices for debunking misinformation. Kind of like a "real time" version of Snopes.

You can view a list of rumors being tracked on the homepage, along with their current claim state (True, False, Unverified). Click on a story to visit a page that visualizes the sources reporting the rumor, and a breakdown of social shares per source. You can also click on individual articles on the story page to see specific revision and social share data about that article.

Stores Meet Iternet

Home improvement giant Lowe’s just bought 42,000 handheld point of sales devices for its 1700+ outlets. Its competitor Home Depot spent $64 million placing 30,000+ of its First Phone Motorola mobile devices. Nordstroms has 6,000 devices. Urban Outfitters and Pacific Sun are following. Mobile and tablet technology is changing the way we shop.

Smaller businesses use Square, a free tiny box like card reader that plugs into smart phones or pads to transform them into registers on the go. In fact, there are a host of other companies offering ways for stores and vendors to capture sales without using a cash register. Great for those who have small stores or do kiosk type shows to now accept credit cards and sales with little expense and no hassle.

Major chains like Whole Foods Market, Gap, Patagonia, Sears, and Kmart are now using mobile devices to email receipts to customers instead of handing them paper. Of course, they are also tacking on email alerts and advertisements, which may explain why only about one third of customers are opting in. Customers can now try and buy in the store and have stuff shipped home for free. Better than lugging it around the mall as they continue shopping.

Amazing how, in a few generations telephones, cash registers, typewriters, incandescent light bulbs, etc., once revolutionary, have already become obsolete. For techies in the crowd, the Singularity has begun.

Future of the Internet

Cisco does annual predictions about the internet and here are few interesting predictions for the year 2017.

• In the year 2017 more data will move on the internet than the beginning of the internet.
• The Asia pacific region will generate 36% of all internet traffic by 2017.
• There will be 3.6 billion internet users.
• There will be over 19 billion connection.
• Internet speeds will be 3.5 times faster than 2012.
• Almost half of the world's population will have internet access.
• Personal tablet access will increase from 27 million 2012 to 190 million.
• Overall tablets will be about 425 million.
• More than 827 million TVs will have internet access.
• Average household internet traffic will increase from equivalent 13 hours of HDTV to 30.
• Smartphones and tablets will increase to 29% of all usage and PCs will slip from 88% to 57%.

Cisco has proven to be very accurate in its past predictions about the net.

Internet Usage

Iceland (96%), Norway (95%), and Sweden (94%) have the highest percent of populations using the Internet. The Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Bermuda, and Finland all have over 90% of their respective populations using the net.

Canada is 16th with 86% of its population using the Internet. The US ranks 28th, with 78% (244 million people) online.

China has 591 million people using the Internet, but that is just 44% of the country's 1.3 billion population.

Top Ten Web Facts

There are 14.3 trillion web pages on the World Wide Web.

68.8% of all email traffic is spam. (back in 2008, 53.8 trillion spam emails were sent)

51% of all spam is about pharmaceuticals, the top category of all spam.

30.8% used Internet Explorer in 2012 (in 2008 it was 70%)

43% of the top 1 million websites are hosted in the U.S.

44.8 % of internet users live in Asia

11.4% of internet users live in North America

68.4% of smart phones use Android operating system (introduced Sept 2008) vs. iPhone (introduced June 2007) 19.4%

4 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube each month

In 2012, there were 2.7 billion likes on Facebook each day and 5 billion Google's +1 button  each day.