Home Internet Usage Up… Except in Australia
By Anna Johnson on May 19th, 2009According to Nielsen Online, in March 2009 home-based Internet usage increased in all the 10 countries tracked, except for Australia. In Australia, the number of Internet users decreased by 4.91 percent.
ClickZ theorizes that the decline may be due to the Victorian bush fires Um… I think not.
Firstly, as horrific and deadly as they were, the bush fires affected a few hundred people in a confined part of regional Victoria. I doubt that those affected account for a rather significant 4.91 percent decline in the entire population’s Internet usage!
Secondly, it seems to me that more Australians were likely to go online to find out about the fires than go offline during the disaster. Everyone I know – including me – was desperately using the Internet to find out what was going on. We sure couldn’t rely on television, radio or newspapers.
Finally, the fires occurred in early February… not March. Yes, some fires kept burning into March but the greatest devastation occurred around Black Saturday, February 7, 2009.
As I’ve said many times… lies, damned lies, statistics, and interpretations of statistics!
For what it’s worth, Nielsen found that home Internet usage grew the most in the United Kingdom (by 6.11 percent), followed by Italy (5.65 percent) and France (3.08 percent).
Source: Enid Burns, “Active Home Internet Users by Country, March 2009,” ClickZ, May 15, 2009
