Pew Report: Content Creators are Almost 50 Million Strong

According to a recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “48 million Internet users have posted content.” Sure, some of this “content” is nothing more than a few photos of the family vacation, but it’s clear the web is rapidly evolving from what was primarily a read-only platform to much more of a read-write one. Other highlights from the report include:

Home broadband grew by 40% from March 2005 to March 2006, from 60 million to 84 million.

DSL is now the dominant broadband connection method, representing 50% of all home broadband connections vs. only 41% for cable. (I’ve got to dump this darned $100+/month cable habit…)

The average monthly service bill for DSL in December 2005 was $32 vs. $41 for cable. (Yet another reminder to dump cable…)

Despite all the hype, only 3% of online users say they use a VoIP service at home. The report shows awareness has gone through the roof, but it’s clear this one hasn’t “crossed the chasm” just yet. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen so many Vonage commercials on TV in awhile…

More than half of those still using dial-up (60%) apparently are quite happy and have no intention of moving to broadband anytime soon.

Comments

[Anders Tomilsson]

There's potential for sophistry in two ways:

1) how much duplication there is in those numbers - how many people were counted (e.g., "fifty five million people will fly this year" yet that means how many butts they put in seats, not how many distinct passengers there are, contributing to the total.

AOL used to walk around, thumping their chests when they'd announce how many users they had. But they didn't qualify it. A single account could have multiple sub-accounts. Were they counting all accounts availble for and in use (not to mention "what qualifies as active") and which accounts they considered they were pondering. IIRC, people can create seven (now?) accounts -- back then, I believe it was five, intending Mom & Dad to sign on to the big the master account and set up the remaining ones for their kids. I think we can guess what actually happened.

There are many people who do not have web sites (mine are currently paried) and their primary activity is working upon something such as Wikipedia (or something equal).

I'd have to say this is a "ball park" figure and say, "no more than people have been online, then determine the minimum to determine a particular range.

Just remember what Mark Twain said about measuring things:
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."