Hmmm.. what’s missing from this survey?
There are a lot of news stories (here’s one from Silicon.com’s Jo Best) out today on the latest Pew survey that shows search engines have become the second-most frequent online activity after e-mail. According to Pew’s Lee Rainie: These results from September 2005 represent a sharp increase from mid-2004. Pew Internet Project data from June ...
There are a lot of news stories (here's one from Silicon.com's Jo Best) out today on the latest Pew survey that shows search engines have become the second-most frequent online activity after e-mail. According to Pew's Lee Rainie: These results from September 2005 represent a sharp increase from mid-2004. Pew Internet Project data from June 2004 show that use of search engines on a typical day has risen from 30% to 41% of the internet-using population, which itself has grown in the past year. This means that the number of those using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 - an increase of about 55%. comScore data, which are derived from a different methodology, show that from September 2004 to September 2005 the average daily use of search engines jumped from 49.3 million users to 60.7 million users -- an increase of 23%. Here's a link to the data memo in .pdf format. What I found most interesting was "the proportion of that daily population who are doing some well-known internet activities": Email 77% Search engine 63% Get news 46% Do job-related research 29% Use instant messaging 18% Do online banking 18% Take part in chat room 8% Make a travel reservation 5% Read blogs 3% Participate in online auction 3% Two thoughts -- first, this blog number is consistent with other recent surveys suggesting that not a large fraction of Americans are blog consumers. Second, there's one very large invisible elephant in this survey. One obvious online activity was not included in the above list. See if you can guess what it is. [What is it?--ed.] Umm.... just guess. [Can you give the people a hint?--ed.] Ummm.... er.... Chapelle's Show had a hysterically funny skit about what people do when they're on the web that best captures this activity. If search engines are more popular than that invisible elephant, then I'll start to disagree with Asymmetrical Information about Google's share price.
There are a lot of news stories (here’s one from Silicon.com’s Jo Best) out today on the latest Pew survey that shows search engines have become the second-most frequent online activity after e-mail. According to Pew’s Lee Rainie:
These results from September 2005 represent a sharp increase from mid-2004. Pew Internet Project data from June 2004 show that use of search engines on a typical day has risen from 30% to 41% of the internet-using population, which itself has grown in the past year. This means that the number of those using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 – an increase of about 55%. comScore data, which are derived from a different methodology, show that from September 2004 to September 2005 the average daily use of search engines jumped from 49.3 million users to 60.7 million users — an increase of 23%.
Here’s a link to the data memo in .pdf format. What I found most interesting was “the proportion of that daily population who are doing some well-known internet activities”:
Email 77% Search engine 63% Get news 46% Do job-related research 29% Use instant messaging 18% Do online banking 18% Take part in chat room 8% Make a travel reservation 5% Read blogs 3% Participate in online auction 3%
Two thoughts — first, this blog number is consistent with other recent surveys suggesting that not a large fraction of Americans are blog consumers. Second, there’s one very large invisible elephant in this survey. One obvious online activity was not included in the above list. See if you can guess what it is. [What is it?–ed.] Umm…. just guess. [Can you give the people a hint?–ed.] Ummm…. er…. Chapelle’s Show had a hysterically funny skit about what people do when they’re on the web that best captures this activity. If search engines are more popular than that invisible elephant, then I’ll start to disagree with Asymmetrical Information about Google’s share price.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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