Ever wondered whether the Internet is evolving, how many domain names were registered, how many emails were sent etc. in 2008? Here is the compilation (courtesy of www.pingdom.com) for your attention.

Email

• 1.3 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008.
• 70% – The percentage of emails that are spam.
• 53.8 trillion – The number of spam emails sent in 2008 (assuming 70% are spam).

Websites

• 186,727,854 – The number of websites on the Internet in December 2008.
• 31.5 million – The number of websites added during 2008.

Web servers

• 24.4% – The growth of Apache websites in 2008.
• 13.7% – The growth of IIS websites in 2008.
• 22.2% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2008.
• 336.8% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2008.
• 100.3% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2008.

Domain names

• 77.5 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2008.
• 11.8 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2008.
• 7.2 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2008.
• 174 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains.
• 19% – The increase in the number of domain names in 2008.

Internet users

• 1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008).
• 578,538,257 – Internet users in Asia (39.5%).
• 384,633,765 – Internet users in Europe (26.3%).
  
• 248,241,969 – Internet users in North America (17.00%).
• 139,009,209 – Internet users in Latin America/Caribbean (9.5%).
• 51,065,630 – Internet users in Africa (3.5%).
• 41,939,200 – Internet users in the Middle East (2.9%).
• 20,204,331 – Internet users in Oceania/Australia (1.4%).

Blogs

• 133 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by Technorati).
• 900,000 – The number of new blog posts in a day.
• 329 million – The number of blog posts in 2008.

Images

• 10 billion – Photos hosted by Facebook (October 2008).
• 3 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (November 2008).
• 6.2 billion – Photos hosted by Photobucket (October 2008).

Videos

• 12.7 billion – The number of online videos watched by American Internet users in a month (November 2008).
• 87 – The number of online videos viewed per month per Internet user in USA.
• 34% – The increase in viewing of online video in USA compared to 2007.
• 3.1 – The number of minutes of an average online video.

Malicious software

• 1 million – The number of computer viruses in April 2008.
• 468% – The increase in malicious code compared to 2007.

Data sources: Compiled by www.Pingdom.com. Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Blog stats from Technorati. Email stats from Radicati Group via About.com. Spam stats from DCC. Virus stats from Symantec via Times Online. Online video stats from Comscore. Photo stats from CNET and Flickr.

I have come across this very interesting article on Birmingham Post’s website today.  The article discusses the research results conducted by Ofcom. I will try to quote some of the points below.

As the the article claims, a new research from Ofcom reveals many people from ethnic minority groups lack confidence finding content online and are concerned about content delivered on digital communications.

Ofcom’s media literacy audit of UK adults from ethnic minority groups draws on quantitative research from the four largest ethnic minority groups in the UK: Indians, Pakistanis, Black Caribbeans and Black Africans.

Despite almost all adults from ethnic minority groups showing interest in internet functions, they are less confident about general use of the internet.

For example, they are less likely to say they are confident finding information online (69 - 83 per cent, compared to 91 per cent of the UK population as a whole). All four ethnic minority groups are also less likely than the UK population as a whole to shop or bank online (19 to 29 per cent, compared to 41 per cent).

For example, between 65 and 79 per cent of ethnic minority groups say that they use the internet to listen to or download music online, compared to 57 per cent of the UK population.

The full article can be found here.