The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s has released its first major report on on-line video. According to Pew, more than half of on-line video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch a video that others have sent to them. In a consumer survey, conducted for the report, 6% say they watch or download adult videos on-line.

Read the Full Report

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project the volume of spam is growing in Americans’ personal and workplace email accounts, but email users are less bothered by it.

Spam continues to plague the Internet as more Americans than ever say they are getting more spam than in the past. But while American Internet users report increasing volumes of spam, they also indicate that they are less bothered by it than before. Users have become more sophisticated about dealing with spam; fully 71% of email users use filters offered by their email provider or employer to block spam. Users also report less exposure to pornographic spam, which to many people is the most offensive type of unsolicited email. Spam has not become a significant deterrent to the use of email, as some observers speculated it might when unsolicited email first began flooding users’ inboxes several years ago. But it continues to degrade the integrity of email. Some 55% of email users say they have lost trust in email because of spam.

Read the complete Pew Internet report.

A recent newsletter from the Leichtman Research Group, citing the LRG updated study, Broadband Across the U.S., shows that cable and DSL providers in the U.S., representing about 94% of the market, acquired a record 3.06 million net additional subscribers in the first quarter of 2006. The top broadband providers now account for nearly 46 million high-speed Internet subscribers, with cable having nearly 25.8 million broadband subscribers, and DSL having about 20.2 million.

Other key findings for the quarter include:

• The top DSL providers added a record 1.66 million subscribers, representing 54% of the net broadband additions for the quarter versus cable
• The top cable providers also had a record quarter with over 1.4 million subscribers added
• DSL providers have added more broadband subscribers than cable providers in each of the last six quarters, acquiring over 1.1 million more subscribers than cable during this period, but the top cable broadband providers maintain a 5.6 million subscriber advantage over DSL and have a 56% share of the US residential broadband market versus DSL

In related broadband research, LRG found that as of the middle of last year:

• 85% of cable broadband lines had speeds of over 2.5 mbps in the fastest direction, compared to 14% of DSL lines
• Approximately 11.5% of DSL subscribers were non-residential, compared to 1.8% of cable subscribers
• The top five states in residential broadband penetration were Connecticut, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts and California
• The bottom five states in residential broadband penetration were Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kentucky and Montana

The first quarter of 2006 was the best ever for both DSL and cable broadband providers in net additions of total broadband subscribers, according to recent information culled from a variety of sources, including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and others.

Source: MediaPost Communications

According to new consumer research from Leichtman Research Group (LRG), 69% of all US households now subscribe to an online service at home, and high-speed Internet services now account for about 60% of all online subscribers.

Overall, cable remains the most common source for residential broadband driven by its strength among higher income households. But DSL now has a greater market share than cable among middle income households. Based on a telephone survey of 1,600 randomly selected U.S. households:

• Thirty-seven percent of all households with annual household incomes over $75,000 subscribe to cable broadband and 27% subscribe to DSL
• Among all households earning $30,000-$75,000 per year, 21% subscribe to DSL and 18% to cable

Other key findings include:

• The mean annual household income of cable broadband subscribers is 12% higher than their DSL counterparts
• The mean income of broadband subscribers is 35% greater than narrowband/dial-up subscribers
• 40% of current narrowband/dial-up subscribers are interested in getting broadband
• 80% of all US households have at least one computer, but just 58% of those with annual household incomes under $30,000 have a computer at home

LRG forecasts that by the end of the year 2010, there will be over 105 million residential online subscribers in the US, with over 80% subscribing to broadband.

Source: MediaPost Communications

According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 172 million, a five percent increase. Harris Interactive calculates that 77 percent of U.S. adults are now online, up from 74 percent in February/April 2005, 66 percent in the spring of 2002, 64 percent in 2001 and 57 percent in spring of 2000. When Harris Interactive first began to track Internet use in 1995, only nine percent of adults reported they went online.

The proportion of adults who are now online at home has risen to 70 percent, up from 66 percent in 2005 and 55 percent in the spring of 2002. The percentage of those online at work has not really changed (35% now, 36% in 2005) yet is still up from 30 percent in the spring of 2002. Adults who are online at a location other than their home or work also remains steady at 22 percent (21% in 2005, 19% in the spring of 2002).

As Internet penetration rises, the demographic profile of Internet users continues to look more like that of the nation as a whole, says the report. However:

• More young than older people, and more affluent than low-income people, are online
• Eight percent of those online are now age 65 or over (compared to 16% of all adults who are 65 or over)
• 39 percent of those online (compared to 47% of all adults) did not go to college
• 14 percent have incomes of less than $25,000 (compared to 19% of all adults)

Source: MediaPost Communications

According to the Pew Internet Project, more Americans are turning to the Internet as a place to hang out. Nearly a third of Internet users go online on a typical day for no particular reason, just for fun or to pass the time.

Two-thirds of all Internet users have tried surfing the Web just to pass the time, according to a Pew survey conducted in December 2005. Some 40 million people said they were surfing for fun on a typical day during the month. This number is up from 25 million people who were browsing for no particular reason in November 2004, the most recent time when this question was asked by the Pew Internet Project.

View full report in PDF

According to M:Media data, 39 percent of all SMS text users in the U.S. are adults 35+, and 69 percent of all mobile news subscribers are over 25. This is interesting data considering, up until now, all the reports suggested the dominant demographic was teens.

The report, “How Women and Men Use the Internet”, a new study that examines gender and Internet use, by the Pew Internet & American Life Project was released yesterday. The study that looked at adults, 18 and older, included some findings that are of interest to the adult industry.

Currently, one of the most pronounced gender differences is that more men than women have high-speed connections at home; 52 percent of men use broadband at home, compared to 48 percent of women.

Men tend to use the Web for entertainment more than women do. Women, on the other hand, are more enthusiastic e-mail users.

Men were more inclined to download video files - 22 percent of men, compared to 13 percent of women.

Of those that would admit to viewing an adult web site - 21 percent men and 5 percent women.

The report also revealed that 48 percent men and 31 percent women are more likely to download and share adult content.

Pew Internet made an annotation that, over the years, the percentages have been consistent; of all adults using the Internet, 13% to 15% admit to visiting adult web sites.
Traditionally, 3 to 5 times as many men as women admit to visiting adult sites.

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/171/report_display.asp