THE CUTTING EDGE: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : At Last Some Credible Numbers on Internet’s Incredible Growth
Who uses the Internet? How many Americans use on-line services such as America Online or CompuServe?
These questions are interesting for a variety of reasons. Businesses, of course, want to know whether they can use the new medium of cyberspace to reach people who might want to buy their products. But the questions also matter if you’re interested in how people get and exchange information, who will pay for it, and what our culture will be like in the not-so-distant future. The extent to which the technology catches on could also affect where we live and how we work.
Unfortunately, the Internet is so decentralized that it’s difficult to tell just what’s going on out there. Internet “surveyors” have given themselves a bad name at times by offering inflated numbers and growth rates so high that in six months the entire galaxy will be sending e-mail.
Lately, though, several more careful-looking studies have emerged, providing what appears to be a more reliable picture of who is using the Internet. The studies include one from the respected Nielsen Media Research organization and another by the research arm of O’Reilly & Associates, the well-known Internet publishing firm. On some points the studies contradict one another, of course, but taken together they do offer some fresh insights.
First things first: The Nielsen survey concludes that an astonishing 24 million Americans and Canadians aged 16 and above have used the Internet in the past three months, accessing it mostly at work.
Nor are all these people just sending e-mail. Nielsen, which conducted 4,200 telephone interviews, says that an even more astonishing 18 million Americans and Canadians have used the World Wide Web in the past three months. And a surprising 2.5 million Web users have purchased something over the Internet.
How old are they? The O’Reilly survey (1,000 Internet users and 500 on-line subscribers) found 81% of Internet users and 74% of on-line service subscribers to be 44 or under. O’Reilly, by the way, concluded that there are 9.7 million U.S. adults who either have direct access to the Internet, subscribe to an on-line service or both.
Internet users so far seem pretty desirable to advertisers. Nielsen found that World Wide Web users, for instance, are an upscale lot: 25% have annual income exceeding $80,000, and 50% are professional or managerial. Nearly two-thirds have at least a college degree.
What about commercial on-line services? Inteco Corp., a specialist in market research in this field, found that the number of households accessing on-line services increased to 6.7 million in August from 6.2 million in May. That’s some growth in a matter of just weeks.
But Inteco goes on to assert that, based on interviews with more than 10,000 Americans, “more than 6.2 million home PC users have tried and subsequently canceled subscriptions to America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, Genie, and Delphi.” That’s more than the nearly 5.6 million households that were subscribing to at least one of these services in August, Inteco says.
“There is a significant amount of dissatisfaction with all of the services,” said Inteco Vice President Rob Rubin. “What we found was that many home PC users switch from one service to another to take advantage of free trials or to try out new features and they eventually cancel the less satisfactory of the two.”
The Inteco findings are interesting next to those of a recent study by the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press, which found that less than a third of those who connect to an on-line service such as America Online would miss it “a lot” if it was no longer available. The Times Mirror study also found that e-mail was the only on-line feature used with any regularity, and that on-line services so far aren’t doing much to change traditional patterns of news consumption.
The latest round of studies does suggest that cyberspace is less male than many people think. The Nielsen and O’Reilly studies both found that males account for 66% of Internet users. So men predominate, but it’s 2 to 1, not 20 to 1. If the Net sometimes seems more male than that, bear in mind that men account for fully 77% of Internet usage, according to Nielsen.
The commercial on-line services are even less male. Nielsen says men comprise only 59% of users on those services, although men do account for 63% of usage.
Daniel Akst welcomes messages at Dan.Akst@latimes.com. His World Wide Web page is at https://www.caprica.com/akst/.
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Who’s On-Line?
If you want to see the recent studies of who uses the Internet and on-line services, the results are often freely available.
A thorough executive summary of the CommerceNet/Nielsen Internet Demographics Survey can be obtained by pointing your World Wide Web browser at https://www.commerce.net/. You can obtain the results of “Technology in the American Household,” a study conducted by the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press, at no charge by calling (202) 293-3126. The report isn’t available on-line.
“Defining the Internet Opportunity 1994-95,” from the on-line research unit of O’Reilly & Associates, is available by visiting https://www.ora.com/survey/.
Results of a study by Inteco Corp. of Norwalk, Conn., completed in August and released last month, are available by visiting Inteco’s World Wide Web page at https://www.inteco.com/uspr.html/.
A good way to keep up on Internet demographic research as it emerges is to get Robert Seidman’s Online Insider, a free weekly electronic newsletter. To subscribe, send e-mail to listserv @peach.ease.lsoft.com with any subject, as long as the body says only SUBSCRIBE ONLINE-L Graham Greene. If you’re not Graham Greene, of course, use your own name.
