Alex Kelleher’s Blog

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in being a wired-social-media-twitter-myfacespace-er and forget that actually, most people aren’t that wired.  By which I mean, most people on this 3rd rock from the sun aren’t participating in the heady-Web 2.0 life, and even those we might assume are, are not.  I meet a lot of people who would normally be included in the statistic of “internet users” who, unsurprisingly, are still largely untouched by the latest developments.  Some basic info-graphics (if you can call them that) to illustrate:

So, 5bn people aren’t internet users, versus 1.7bn who are (numbers courtesy of World Internet Stats).  A significant majority of the world’s current population who wouldn’t know a tweet from a poke, let alone who are actively using the internet for any purpose whatsoever.

Next, let’s assume that really wired internet users are members of one of a couple of key sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Sure, we could add MySpace, Orkut and so on into the mix, but it’s fairly obvious that the crossover between the different sites is going to be heavy – i.e. most Twitter users will have a facebook account, listen to spotify, whatever whatever.  Another high-tech infographic for your enlightenment:

(The twitter number I’ve derived from various sources, the other figures are from the sites’ own published stats)

Finally, here are a couple of other indicative statistics to keep in mind:

• The median number of tweets per twitter user is 1.  The vast majority of twitter users have bouts of occasional activity, and either give up/stop or take long periods off.  Only a few could probably be classified as very active – maybe less than 1 million?
• Even in the UK 10 million people still don’t have an internet connection.  That means 1/6th of the country who couldn’t even access it if they felt they wanted to.  And of the rest, my wager would be another 30-40million are very light users.

Obviously I’m not saying any of this to try and claim the “internet” is dead or broken or flawed.  The fact facebook has 300m accounts is hugely impressive, and a feat not achieved by any business before that quickly.   In fact, I’m saying the opposite: I’m underlining the huge potential still wrapped up in its growth, despite few people in our worlds talking about that growth, and despite the temptation to assume that everyone is equally tech savvy.

I’m fully aware that those with businesses exposed to BRIC countries know all this – and are building their businesses based on this potential growth.  But I’m also confronted daily with a significant section of the web-culture in the UK/US (including me) who can take a fully-wired society for granted.

Back in 1995 when I started my first company (a web agency) I thought then that maybe I was too late…!  Fact is, we’re still all very early to the game.

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