Has Your Life Been Changed?

The Internet has touched virtually everyone's lives in the last two years. It has grown at an astounding rate and proved itself to be an important source of information, communication and services. These are the main research conclusions from Jupiter MMXI's new "Web Milestones October 1999 - September 2001" report published recently.

Subtitled "Two years in the evolution of the Internet in the UK", this latest research provides a detailed examination of the "at home" Internet behaviour of Britons since 1999. The analysis starts with the month of October 1999 when Jupiter's first monthly research shows there were 7.8 million at home users in the UK. The Top 10 domains then included Freeserve.com, UKplus.co.uk. geocities.com, demon.co.uk and MSN.co.uk.

By December 1999 the research shows that e-mails, instant messages and e-greetings had started to grow in popularity, largely due to Christmas. The following month of January 2000 saw the number of unique visitors to travel sites (e.g. British-Airways.com, EasyJet.co.uk and Expedia.co.uk) increase by as much as 50% month on month. Lastminute.com topped the travel category for the month, and has remained at the top of the Jupiter MMXI travel category ever since.

By April 2000, data shows that time spent on entertainment sites, such as virgin.net, windowsmedia.com, pokemon.com and MP3.com, had increased 600% since the beginning of the year. By May 2000, the number of Britons accessing the Internet from home had reached 10 million.

The big media event of the summer of 2000 (July and August) was Channel 4's Big Brother. Jupiter found that general consumer interest led to the show's site becoming the fastest moving since the company began reporting. Entering the rankings at 26th position in July 2000 with a reach of 8.1%, by August it had catapulted up the rankings, with 17.8% of the UK online population or 1,926,000 individuals visiting the Big Brother house online. The phenomenon was also mirrored in other panels measuring the Internet in Germany, France, Italy and the US.

By the Autumn of 2000 (November) Jupiter found that, for the first time, women constituted 50% of the online population. The same trend had occurred in the US only three months earlier. Moving into the new year (January 2001) the research revealed that over 50% of UK at home Internet users visited a retail site. The biggest growing categories over the last 12 months were Entertainment, Directories, Retail, Education, Government and Community destinations.

The new year (February 2001) also bought a change in the number of households with an income of less than £15,000 per annum accessing the Internet from home. This level rose to 17.3%, whilst the highest income households of £45,000 or more experienced a decline in the number of people going online from 19.3% to 14.7%.

The report concludes with the state of play as of March 2001. The findings here relate to the spread of Foot and Mouth disease, with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries website appearing on Jupiter's monthly report for the first time. The data shows that nearly half a million people logged on to the site during that month. The trend for Britons to turn to the Internet as a source of reliable information in a crisis was also seen during the winter storms, rail network delays, and most recently, the terrorist attacks in America.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.