Internet Use in 2012

Though we all agree that ours is a hustle-bustle world in which so much of our time is spent "on the go," it seems as if much of the running around people did in 2012 was actually spetnt in front of their computer. According to a set of statistics regarding Internet use released recently by Pingdom, the amount of internetting worldwide is quite astounding. Pingdom, by the way, is a company that monitors or tracks the uptime, downtime and performance of websites throughout the world. It is headquartered in Sweden. Their numbers reenforce the enormous popuularity of  the computer but also suggest we as a species are becoming more stationary.

Following are among the more astounding numbers: 2.2 billion email users worldwide; 144 billion total email traffic per day; 68.8 percent of email is spam; there are 87.8 million Tumblr blogs; there are 246 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains; there are 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide; 40.5 is the average age of a Facebook user; 37.3 is the average age of a Twitter user; there were 1.2 trillion searches on Google; Brazil is the most active country on Facebook; and the top trending question of the year on Ask.com was: "Will Rob and Kristen get back together?" Perhaps what is not surprising is that these and other related statistics Pingdom released indicate a notable jump from 2011.

As fascinating as the statistics are, they raise the question of how this relates to the efforts of communication professionals. Upon first glance, these numbers raise three basic questions: What impact does it have on the strategies they devise to best serve and support clients ? What  expertise do they need to possess in order to do well in the profession? and What does it suggest about the future of the communcation or public relations profession? Answers to the first two question seem obvious: more strategies will need to revolve around the Internet and that practtioners will need to become very comfortable with this tool. In terms of the profession, the statistics indicate this field is becoming more of a "young man's" game.